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“He had this stab-or-be-stabbed mentality that made you wonder why he hadn’t gone into the military,” says Mike Wise, a beat reporter for the New York Times.
In his very first practice as a Knick, Harper was preparing to reach down for a loose ball during a scrimmage. Before he could grab it, two other players, Oakley and Anthony Mason, had already dived onto the floor for it, beating him to the punch. It was a wake-up call for Harper, who’d played on a losing team for four straight years, but now saw the desperate level of intensity the Knicks played with—even during practice.
Hubbard just kept wondering when, if ever, New York was going to run some drills that focused on offense. “After a while,” he says, “I told myself I didn’t need to go see practices anymore. Each time I went, it was always the same thing as the day before. Defense.”
At times, the Knicks very much looked like a team that didn’t work enough on their offense.
Earlier in the West Coast trip, trainer Mike Saunders had gone out of his way to ask Riley whether it might be wise to ease up on the Knicks.
But after declining Saunders’s suggestion, Riley watched the Knicks deliver that listless, 78-point showing against the Suns, which forced him to rethink his hard-charging approach.
As he sat on the Knicks’ Sacramento-bound plane, Riley wondered if it might be time for a detour.
“We’re gonna take time off from basketball,” Riley said as players looked on. “For the next thirty-six hours, I ask one thing: that we eat together, party together, and have fun together. Don’t talk about basketball. Do what a group that loves each other would do. Have fun. But just do it together.”
As players entered the casino with enormous smiles, they walked to the cashier’s booth where they’d each get $500 worth of gaming chips, courtesy of their coach’s $10,000 act of generosity. It was a bizarre scene, resembling a parent giving a child tokens to play at Chuck E. Cheese—only this was Riley, the most accomplished coach of his generation, handing over thousands of dollars’ worth of gambling currency to a team of six- and seven-foot-tall millionaires. “They all had their hands out,” Riley said.
With the victory, New York would begin another streak, holding eight straight foes under the 90-point mark, becoming the first club since 1954—the year the shot clock was introduced—to do so. That stifling span marked the club’s most dominant defensive stretch of Riley’s tenure in New York; impressive for a team that would lead the NBA in defense for three consecutive years.
As usual, he had his reasons. Not only was it Senior Night for the 1988 squad, making it Mason’s last home game as a college player. It was also the first time his mother had been able to make the trip from New York to see him play in person. To be subbed out midway through the second half, with her finally in the stands? That was more than enough provocation to send Mason on a roller coaster of emotions.
What the presence of the newborn did change was Mason’s desire to play professional basketball, which had gone from mere dream to necessity. Suddenly, he needed to provide. And reaching the sport’s highest level would allow him to do it.
To that point, no one at the Garden—man, woman, or child—was enjoying the game more than Spike Lee.
By the end of the onslaught, Miller had 39 points—25 of which came in the fourth quarter, when he hit five triples and connected on eight of his 10 shot attempts. Miller and the Pacers had outscored New York by 19 in the final period to win, 93–86, at the Garden. And Indiana suddenly had a 3–2 lead in the series.
“Coach, you told me we didn’t have one,” Starks said. “I just got married!” “Well, we’ve got one,” coach Ken Trickey Sr. said in response. “Do you think you can make it anyway?”
After explaining this to Jackie, and asking her blessing, Starks and his wife hopped into their Chevy Impala and raced up Highway 75—they ended up getting a speeding ticket—in an effort to make it to the game. When Starks arrived at halftime and went from tuxedo to basketball uniform in the gym’s bathroom, his school trailed by 25. But his presence, and his 22 points, turned things around.
“Patrick could just block my jump shots,” says Olajuwon,
“But with Mason and Oakley, they’d beat up on me so much before I could even get the ball. They knew I had a height advantage and could just shoot over them if they let me catch it. So they did everything they could to take me out of my comfort zone. They just had bruiser, after bruiser, after bruiser. They wouldn’t let me have anything easy.”
Starks] basically looked around and said, ‘If no one else is gonna shoot, I’ll shoot,’ ” Daily News beat writer Curtis Bunn says. “It’s almost like the moment was too big for everybody else other than him.”
“Well, old buddy, I know at least three people are gonna show up tonight. You, me, and John,” Riley told Butera, referring to Starks.
He’d finish an unthinkable 2-for-18 from the field, and 0-for-11 from three; still among the worst performances ever in a do-or-die game for a championship.
(Riley called not subbing Blackman in “the biggest mistake I ever made.” The coach has sent handwritten letters to Blackman over the years, but Blackman says he’s never written Riley back.)
Riley had inherited a mediocre-at-best club—one that couldn’t sell out its games and swapped out head coaches and executives the way a runway model changes outfits. Yet the culture changed swiftly.
The Knicks, who featured a low-scoring offense with a physical, pound-of-flesh style of defense, felt the new rules were aimed directly at them. The stylistic changes came just weeks after an NBA Finals that struggled ratings-wise—not having Jordan in them was certainly a factor—where neither team managed to hit the 95-point mark in any of the games.
“You’re gonna be an NBA head coach someday. I know it,” Riley said as Rivers prepared to walk out. Rivers let out a loud chuckle. “Yeah, right,” he said.
Most Knicks considered themselves to be extremely hardworking. To be chastised over something that inconsequential felt like a petty mind game.
“[Riley] tried to sell them on sacrificing for a championship. But it’s a tougher sell each year, because we worked so hard and came up empty for two years. They’ve already heard that sales pitch, and got nothing out of it,” ex-Knick Doc Rivers said.
“You lose the edge when you start losing big games, and you don’t finish,” Riley would say years later. “As you keep elevating, and you keep getting turned back, you do start to lose that edge.”
The asking price was undoubtedly a small fortune. But paying it—and getting perhaps the best coach in basketball to take over an otherwise listless organization—could prove a worthwhile investment if Riley turned the Heat into a winning club.
Butera and Riley hammered out a list of asks that would eventually become a four-page, fourteen-point memo. In it, Riley wanted an immediate 10 percent ownership of the team and another 10 percent share over the course of his deal. He also wanted Arison to loan him money to pay taxes on the initial 10 percent stake.
He wanted complete control over Miami’s basketball operations, and to be named the team president. Riley wanted Arison to purchase his sprawling homes near suburban Los Angeles and New York City. He wanted a limo service to and from games in Miami. He wanted credit cards and a $300-a-day per diem.
the man who had taken a 39-win Knicks club and squeezed 51, 60, 57, and 55 victories out of them in four years while coming up just short of an NBA championship was officially out the door.
Miami got what it wanted—a star coach to establish a winning culture—even
The trip from Vancouver was a microcosm of Nelson’s tenure in New York. In so many ways, the 56-year-old was either unaware of—or indifferent to—just how frustrated his players were with him. And much like that flight back to New York, it took things coming to a halt for him to wake up to his reality.
Two days after getting the opportunity, Daly officially turned it down. “Without question, the toughest decision I have ever made,” Daly said, calling it one of the best jobs in sports. “I can only say that if you were an alcoholic, and I have not been there before, it had to be the most seductive drink that’s ever been placed in front of me. The Knicks were a replica of my Piston team. Everything was right about it.”
Mad-scientist, savant-like stuff.
Webber despised Nelson so deeply that he exercised an opt-out in his deal, making him a free agent, and essentially forcing a trade. It was stunning, not just because of how unheard-of it was for a second-year talent to pick up and leave. There was also the fact that the Warriors had dealt four first-round picks—the No. 3 choice, Memphis State star Penny Hardaway, and three future selections—to the Magic for the rights to Webber, the No. 1 overall pick in the 1993 draft.
But with Nelson, someone they’d only been with for a few weeks, that camaraderie wasn’t yet built. And really, how could it be? A substitute-teacher vibe persisted.
“I loved this opportunity. Ernie and Dave were first class all the way. I loved the city of New York. I loved everything except the team,” Nelson said in his farewell press conference, getting in one final dig on his way out.
But it was also Nelson’s inability and unwillingness to communicate his vision to an old-school group that doomed his chances.
in May 1991, had been temporarily assigned to handle administrative tasks for Grunfeld—a role that bored him, as it was too far removed from coaching.
Riley quickly grew to like the 29-year-old. Much like Stu Jackson, Riley learned quickly that no one would beat Van Gundy into the office each morning.
more than anything, Riley appreciated the 5-foot-9 Van Gundy—who hadn’t played at the pro level—and his lack of hesitation when it came to engaging the players during workouts.
Every day, Van Gundy would be on the court two hours before practices to rebound for young, developing players. And he constantly threw himself into dr...
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“One of the few things I could offer was to run around and work up a sweat each day,” Van Gundy recalls. “I didn’t see myself as qualified to talk with someone like ...
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And because they’d seen firsthand how much time Van Gundy was willing to invest, the Knicks had immense respect for him.
Riley told him not to be sheepish about the fact he hadn’t been an NBA player.
“These guys only care about you having four qualities: that you’re competent, sincere, reliable, and trustworthy,” Riley told him. “If you are those four things, you can accomplish anything in this league.”
That's good!!
(A trust was also formed when a compassionate Riley told Van Gundy he was fine to take the time he needed to be with his wife, Kim, following a miscarriage.)
didn’t need to get butterflies out. He never had any to begin with. “Jermaine was 17 going on 18, and Kobe was 17 going on 30,” Tapscott recalls. “Kobe didn’t need to ease into anything, because he was already so self-possessed. And frankly, his workout was one of the best I’d ever seen. He finished, and [the scouts] looked at each other and said, ‘He ain’t falling to us.’ ”
