Shoot Out the Lights: The Amazing , Improbable, Exhilarating Saga of the 1969-70 New York Knicks
by By Spitz, Bob
Category: Sports & Recreation , Basketball

Willis Reed ... Bill Bradley ... Walt Frazier ... Dave DeBusschere ... Dick Barnett. Even after a quarter of a century, the names still resonate. The team is a basketball legend.The year was 1969, and a nation in the throes of political and cultural upheaval turned its attention from the streets to the arenas in search of new heroes. In New York, a team cobbled together by general manager Eddie Donovan and molded by coach Red Holzman showed early on how it intended to bring the city its first NBA title ever. After a third of the season the Knicks' record was a remarkable 25-2, including an eighteen-game winning streak. They would win going away.But the play-offs were another story: the Knicks had to overcome a feisty Baltimore Bullets team, a Milwaukee Bucks squad led by rookie sensation Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), and the tough, tough Los Angeles Lakers, with Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, and Jerry West. They did it - in seven agonizing games, with Willis Reed playing twenty-seven minutes of the finale virtually on one leg and in tremendous pain.