New York Knicks 1969–70
By: Leon Wolf
Tags: Basketball, New York City, New York, New York Knicks, Spike Lee

New York Knicks 1969–70

This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

Worse than when my mother didn’t let thirteen-year old me go to the most famous NBA game ever played: game seven of the Knicks-Lakers 1970 Finals. Along with the Bobby Thompson home run that propelled the Giants into the 1951 World Series, it was the most dramatic and iconic New York City sports moment of the 20th century. I was the consummate Knicks fan. I had a ticket. Why no game for me?

My credentials as the supreme Knicks fan were solid. I maintained a list — on paper, how corny is that — of the results of all Knicks games, including the opponent, location, and score, starting with game one of the season: a 126–101 demolishing of the Seattle SuperSonics. I’m positive I started the “Dee-Fense” cheer in the fourth quarter of the first of many games I attended, early in the season. It spread like wildfire throughout the Garden.

I sat in the cheap blue seats with Lawrence the Real L, and a rotating cast. Both of our fathers, my cousins Ron and Gene, our friend Jordan from the block and his father, and other friends became Knicks fans that season. Ron and I loved to circle the Garden at halftime and check out the girls in hot pants, the latest fashion.

L’s father Stu was wounded in World War II, on D-Day; shot through the knee while still in the water. He limped ever after. His knee hurt and made it difficult to walk and get up from a chair. On one occasion at a Knicks game, Stu had so much knee pain he didn’t stand for the playing of the national anthem.

Protest against the Vietnam War peaked in 1969–1970. For most people, not standing for the national anthem demonstrated your disapproval of U.S. policy. By sitting, you took a stand against the war. Stu was giving his aching knee a rest.

When the anthem ended a loudmouth behind us commented, “Jeez, it’s not just the kids now, but people old enough to know better. Maybe he’s a commie.” Bad knee and all, Stu got up in the guy’s face fast. He taught all the kids in the section a new way to use language by saying, “You’re old enough to fucking know better, but you’re a stupid fucking idiot and you don’t know shit. I got shot in the war you fucking jackass.”

The entire section turned around to see the man look like a boy who wanted to cry. He mumbled an apology and sat down.

Around the time the Knicks’ record hit the gaudy mark of twenty-three and one after winning an NBA-record eighteen games in a row, Stu’s Wall Street brokerage firm, along with the rest of New York, discovered basketball. The company bought four tickets in the orange seats to every game for the rest of the season. The orange section was much lower, close to the action. The view was vastly superior to the one we were used to up in the blue section. We had the good fortune of sitting in these seats when there were no wealthy investors to please. The change in color from blue to orange was simply mahvelous.

I took a couple of punches for the Knicks early in the season. The Real L, Jordan and I got off the LL train at E. 105th Street. We opted for the ten-minute walk home through the projects, notorious for mugging. It would have been prudent to go one more stop to Rockaway Parkway, and a safe twenty-minute walk. Trouble came, in the form of twenty teenagers’ eager to improve their lives by taking our money.

Why didn’t I run at the first sign of trouble, like Jordan did? I was faster than Jordan. Why didn’t I have five dollars in singles to hand out, like the Real L? Why was I driving a cab when I had a Bachelor of Sciences in biology? Why was I never a lifeguard in Hawaii? Wasn’t California nice year-round, unlike New York? Why didn’t I kiss Galit Lamdani? Different questions, but the same answer: I’m not too smart.

Two hard punches to the nose. My bloody nose the price of not letting the gang search my pockets for money after declaring, in traditional Brooklyn thug style, “All I find I keep?” There were too many of them to fight. Why take the punches when I didn’t have much money to lose? I didn’t want them to find and take the Knicks tickets I had purchased in the city, nestled in my left front pants pocket.

When it was playoff time, I convinced my “school is the most important thing” parents to allow me to miss a day. Stu took Lawrence, Jordan and me on his hair-raising early morning commute. He dropped us off downtown, and after our subway ride to 34th Street we waited in line outside the Garden to buy tickets.

We wanted to buy our own playoff tickets in the blue section. The company orange seats were too hit-or-miss and would be in high demand for the playoffs. I attended games in every series, including the classic round one double overtime victory over the Baltimore Bullets. In game two of the second round against the Milwaukee Bucks, I joined the mean-spirited-but-fun “Goodbye Louis” chant, when the great Lew Alcindor missed clutch free throws to allow the Knicks to eke out a crucial one-point victory. Sorry Kareem — this was before he changed from Lou Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — but you seemed unbeatable to basketball fans. When it was clear the Knicks had won, we freaked out. Our childish jeer was the equivalent of a mass nervous giggle to relieve pressure.

After all that, why no game seven of the finals, the ultimate basketball game, for me? Even though Stu had managed to get me a coveted ticket — in the orange section no less — for the game? Jordan’s bar mitzvah. I’m not referring to the Saturday morning service. I knew I couldn’t miss Jordan’s Haftorah: the massive boondoggle memorized for months by suffering Jewish boys everywhere. But the NBA didn’t schedule finals games Saturday morning, presumably in case a fan had a bar mitzvah to attend. Friday night, however, when it’s the unimportant part of the weekend festivities? Sure, that’s a fine time for a game.

Willis Reed, Clyde Frazier, Dave DeBusschere, team trainer Danny Whalen and I tried to get me there, but no budging Mom. During 98 percent of the service I, along with most of the other boys, huddled in the coat room listening to the game on a transistor radio.

The boys were happy listening to the game instead of the service. Not me. It pissed me off to be huddled in a coat room and not cheering from the orange seats, savoring the occasional burp after devouring my traditional Knick’s game Blimpie’s Best. The BB was powerful. A foot-long hero with ham, salami, capicola, prosciutto, provolone, mustard, mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, salt, and pepper, with vinegar, olive oil, and a sprinkling of oregano.

This sandwich did create a thirst, one that could only be quenched by drinking icy cold Madison Square Garden black cherry soda while watching beautiful girls walk by in hot pants. And all that would be before the game, as the players warmed up.

I knew the Garden would be rocking like never before, even topping the immense excitement we felt earlier in the season when the Knicks, down by eighteen to Milwaukee, scored the last nineteen points to pull out the miracle comeback.

The immortal game seven. Willis Reed limped onto the court late, near the end of warm-ups. The Lakers, curious, watched Willis come out, neglecting their accustomed pre-game routine. Game began, and Willis hit a jumper. And another one. Four points was all Willis would score, but his presence stunned the Lakers and buoyed the Knicks.

Willis provided the inspirational spark, and Clyde took it from there. Walt “Clyde” Frazier took over with the game of his life, one of the all-time clutch performances of any athlete’s career. Clyde played with fire and desire. He was dishing and swishing, moving and grooving, shaking and baking, driving and mesmerizing, slicing and dicing everybody, even the usually superior Jerry West. Add the acclaimed Knicks teamwork defense, and the Knicks were NBA champions for the first time in the history of the world. The boys in the coat room — including grumpy me — exploded with excitement.