by Earl Monroe
But as the year went on I started catching on and up and that was rewarding, exhilarating even. I had to kind of put myself in the backseat of a car and try to learn to drive from back there, where the view was so different. Sitting on the bench, though very frustrating and hard, taught me how to look at the game in another way; it also taught me humility. It made me cognizant of what all the other players who had been sitting on the bench behind me had gone through, what had been running through their minds. Sitting there on the bench and observing made me focus even more on the intricacies and nuances of pro basketball, and doing that made me an even better student of the game. It helped me adapt to a whole different style.
I knew that after a while I’d be able to play the up-tempo game I was used to. But first I had to learn how to play the more controlled type of game, which was Clyde’s game, his rhythm and cadence. So I learned to really bob and weave my way into that tempo and make myself successful over time. A lot of the players on the Knicks empathized with me because they saw the struggles I was going through every day. They understood what it was, said to themselves, Now here’s a star player coming in here, humbling himself to sit on the bench and be a part of this team, as opposed to coming and trying to impose his own style and influence on the team and the game itself. They really appreciated me for the attitude I took coming in, because it was a team-first attitude.
In the first meeting in the locker room the night of my first game as a Knick, November 11 (I used to always say that I came to the Knicks two days before Felix Unger, from The Odd Couple, was thrown out of his house by his wife, on November 13th), all the players came up to greet and welcome me to the team, one by one. It was great the way they made me feel right at home. DeBusschere was the first who came up to me. He hugged me and said, “Welcome to the team. It’s going to be great!”
Then Bill Bradley, whom I had had a history with at the Baker League, came up and welcomed me with a hug. Then Willis came up, the captain, you know, and he expressed his happiness that I was there. I guess I was waiting for Clyde to come up, because we had always been fierce competitors with each other. I felt as though it was imperative that we hit it off in a way that would let him know I wasn’t coming in to threaten his position or leadership or anything like that. I wanted him to know I was here to win and to try and make things better for everybody. But despite his stylish wardrobe, Clyde was kind of a shy person, a lot like me off the court, and a lot like me on it. But he came up and hugged me and I could tell everything was cool. Then Dick Barnett came up and I was relieved that he was cool, because he was the guy who could have been most threatened by my joining the team. When he came up and greeted me warmly, that made everything much easier for me. Then Jerry Lucas and Phil Jackson approached with the same kind of welcome. And, finally, Dean Meminger came up and we hit it off right away. So I felt relaxed going into that first game. Still, it would take a while for all the tension that been built up over the past few seasons of playing so fiercely against each other to fully melt away, and I understood that. But Dean and I became very close because he was new to the team also and we sat next to each other during that first game on the bench. (After that night we always sat by each other, watching the action from there and growing closer with every passing game until he became my best friend on the team.)
The Garden was buzzing that first night. We were playing the Warriors and the fans were screaming my name, even during warm-ups, but not in a nasty way like when I was with the Bullets. Even some of the Warriors players came over before the game started and wished me luck. So when Coach Holzman called my name to go into the game in the second quarter, you know, the crowd gave me a rousing standing ovation. That was really something. Now, I had been used to ovations, but this was one that I will always savor because I could see that the people appreciated the fact that I was in New York, you know what I mean? And that was special! See, I thought the fans here would always view me as a Bullet because of the kind of hard-fought games we always played against the Knicks and the series we had just had the season before where we finally beat them in the Eastern Conference Finals. So I just never expected that the fans would embrace me like that. But they did, and that was truly satisfying. I realized that night that the majority of the fans were there to embrace me and were happy for me, and that helped erase some of the doubts I was wrestling with initially.
We lost the first game I played with the Knicks 112–103, in front of 19,500 fans. I scored only 9 points that evening, but the fans cheered and screamed for every one of the four shots I made from the floor and even for one of the two free throws I made. But mostly I passed the ball that night. I threw behind the back, no-look passes that led to scores, and the crowd just loved it. Clyde scored 30 points that night to lead the Knicks, but Jeff Mullins scored 31 for the Warriors. After the game was over everyone went back to the locker room and looked at stat sheets (they had even looked at them at halftime, which was something they didn’t do in Baltimore). The Knicks’ locker room was very relaxed, but professional. And after Coach Holzman discussed the game, everyone mostly went their separate ways. We only hooked again at practices, which were very organized.
Being in the Knicks’ locker room and understanding how these guys operated—understanding the importance of winning and how to win from their perspective—was a lot different from how we did things in Baltimore. See, the Knicks were just a more disciplined type of team than the Bullets were, even though we had a great team while I was down there. I felt the Bullets had great team chemistry, which really helped us move ahead. And we had a good core of veterans. But many of them had been on teams that lost a lot and when that happens you kind of settle for losing. So in order to move ahead as a team we had to embrace the culture of learning to win together, and that could really turn us around and make us into a different type of team.
Conversely, though, the Knicks had already learned to have a winning culture earlier than we had in Baltimore and were more calculated in their approach to winning games. I mean, I had already noticed when I was with the Bullets that when you looked at the Knicks’ box scores you always saw certain guys with the same amount of points all the time. Other players had a certain number of assists all the time, and it seemed like it was all coordinated in a way to keep everything structured. Like, there was hardly ever any player scoring a lot of points all the time, you know, like 30 points a game, then the next guy having 15. No. Most times the scoring was spread out more evenly, with one guy scoring like 20 points and the next players chipping in 19 and 18, you know, a nice balance. So the Knicks’ balance in scoring and assists and everything else was much different from what we’d had in Baltimore, even though we’d had a balance, too. Like, I would be getting 25 points a game—sometimes scoring 40—and the next guy might have 20 or 25 and on down the scale like that.
With the Knicks it was more about spreading the scoring across everyone in the starting lineup and on down through the reserves. This had something to do with Red Holzman’s philosophy and approach to the game, which stressed ball movement and finding the open man, whereas Gene Shue, a great coach, just kind of cut us loose to play in a run-and-gun style that he loved to see played. When Gene thought we needed to be reeled in, he’d just call a time-out, settle us down, and draw up plays for us to run. But I found out that Red had everyone’s statistics in his head, knew how many shots a player had taken, how many assists he had had, how many rebounds he’d grabbed, and how many turnovers he had committed. And if you took too many shots, or turned the ball over too many times, he would pull you out of the game. So he kept everyone pretty much in tow (he also had Frankie Blauschild, the team’s publicity director, keeping personal stats for him). Like I said, we were given stat sheets at halftime with the Knicks, and they only gave those to us at the end of the game in Baltimore.
So guys with the Knicks always understood where they were and what they were doing. Red Holzman was a general while Gene was less militaristic in his approach, pro
bably because he was an ex-player who had just retired from playing in 1964. It was a protocol with the Knicks, going from General Holzman down to Captain Willis Reed, then in his seventh NBA season. So that was the difference that I noticed immediately when I got there. I mean, hey, Gene was still practicing and playing against the players a lot of the time. He coached from a player’s perspective, and that style influenced the Bullets’ teams. Red Holzman, on the other hand, had been a player also, but that had been a long time ago. Now he was a general running things, so his approach was different from Gene Shue’s.
I spent my first few weeks in New York living at the New Yorker Hotel, and then the Knicks’ front-office people asked me where I wanted to stay. So I thought about it for a minute and told them maybe Greenwich Village, in downtown Manhattan, because I always thought I would like to live down there. So they arranged for me to visit some places. The first place I visited was a nice loft down on Grove Street in the West Village. So I asked them if it was available and they said it was. Then I asked how much the loft was going to cost and if I could make a down payment and whatnot. But then, in the end, somehow the place wasn’t available and it just seemed the people—who were white—didn’t want me living down there. See, the Knicks had arranged the visit, so they’d known I was coming. That’s why the place was available until it wasn’t when they saw I was black. The Knicks hadn’t told them that. Now this was late November 1971. Racial attitudes were different back then, even in New York. So when this tall black man showed up they probably freaked out, even though they were smiling the whole time.
Then I found an apartment on 64th and Broadway, in a brand-new building across from Lincoln Center called 1 Lincoln Plaza, or The Ascap Building. It was a spacious, three-bedroom apartment on the 23rd floor. Nina Simone, the great singer, lived next door but I was afraid to speak to her. She had a no-nonsense, “don’t bother me” attitude, so I just kept my distance, though I really loved her music. She was a very private person but she had a lot of guests dropping in, especially some beautiful women who I tried to get to come to my apartment. Nina’s husband, Andy Stroud, had been in the music business for a long time and we used to talk about that. But I never had any conversations with Nina because I respected her privacy. I think I told her one time while we were waiting at the elevator how much I loved her music and she just nodded and that was that. I was very humbled by the fact that I was living next door to her. Her song “Young, Gifted and Black” was a song we all related to.
Reverend Ike, the most famous black minister and evangelist of his day, also lived in the building and had two apartments next to each other. He had broken down the walls and converted the two units into one very large apartment. He had two Rolls-Royces at the time. A flamboyant type of guy, Ike was always dressed to the nines. Hair done up. Big smile. He wore a lot of diamonds because he said he wanted to show people he was successful, so he lived that type of lifestyle, you know, and he had a chauffeur. After he saw I had a Rolls of my own parked in the garage, we used to talk about our cars, about his churches, what was going on in the world, and how to make money.
One of the most revealing things Reverend Ike said to me was his take on poor people and how to help them. “Earl,” he said to me one day right before he got into one of his Rolls-Royces, “the best way you can help poor people is not to be one of them.” Reverend Ike was something else.
Like I said, my apartment overlooked Lincoln Center and out west into New Jersey. It was cool. So I decorated it with floor-to-ceiling blackout drapes that spanned from wall to wall in each room, so if need be it could always be dark in there—I always slept better when the room was dark. Then I brought some of my stuff up from Baltimore, like my Mylar ceiling decoration—my mirrors over my bed—with the circles in it. But I sold off a lot of my Baltimore furniture and bought new stuff up here. Like, I had an orange sectional sofa in the living room and whatnot, a tan carpet, and dark-orange blackout drapes. I had green, blue, and red rooms because I wanted all of the areas to be different, you know what I mean? And there was a 24-hour doorman downstairs. There were restaurants and shops all around the area. People everywhere in the daytime and at night. I really liked the area.
But I started hanging out in the Village also, going to clubs and whatnot, and I found this little hideaway place on Little West 12th Street called the Needle’s Eye. It was a real funky kind of bar, small, always crowded, upbeat, people not dressed up, long-haired guys and women, mostly white, with that Village look and cool feel. I felt good just being there. Anyway, I’d drive my Silver Shadow down there, and this one time I found a parking space right in front of the big window of the club. So I parked and went inside but forgot to turn off my lights, and they were shining in through that front window. So everybody was looking out and whispering, “Who’s that in that Rolls-Royce?” When I heard that, I realized my lights were on and went out and turned them off. And when I came back in I saw this beautiful black lady bartending in the back. She had honey-brown, smooth skin and a gap between her front teeth that made her look even more sexy. She had a beautiful smile and short brush hair, just like I like it. She was about five seven maybe, with an air of elegance about her. So I was just looking at her, turned on by her beauty and style. So this guy I knew down there named Vernon, my namesake, saw me looking at her and said, “Hey, Earl, you want to meet her?”
“Yeah,” I said.
So he introduced us. She was a hard sell, though, proper in her speech and attitude, and she kind of brushed me off at first. But I was persistent. I came back and tried to get her to go out with me almost every night for a week, but she kept putting me off. Finally, I saw her one night at the club again and asked for her telephone number. She finally gave it to me after hemming and hawing. So I called her from my apartment one night and told her I’d really like to take her out. But she didn’t say anything. So I said, “Tina, when can we do this? You know, go out for dinner or something like that?”
“Maybe sometime next week,” she said.
“Next week? Wow, that’s a long time!”
So she was silent again and when she did speak, she changed the subject. So after we hung up I thought to myself, Maybe I’ll go down there tonight and see if I can talk her into going out with me in person. So I got in my car and drove down to the Needle’s Eye and lo and behold, there was that same parking space out in front. Now I was real nervous about seeing her and asking her to go out with me. So when I got out of my car I forgot to turn my lights off again and they were shining in through the front window again. But this time I didn’t even notice, because I was so preoccupied with seeing her and asking if she’d go out with me. Man, I must have been a wreck. Anyway, I finally noticed my lights were on and I rushed out and turned them off. Then I came back in and I said to her, “Mind if I take you home tonight?”
Now, I could see she was reluctant by the way she was looking all around the club at all the people, because she didn’t want them to see her getting in the car with me. Finally she relented and said, “Well, you can take me home, but that’s it.”
So I said, “Cool.”
Tina got off early that night and when she did I took her out to my Silver Shadow with people in the club watching. Because by then many of them knew who I was, including her. So I opened the door for her like a gentleman and she gave me a sweet, beautiful smile. So I rushed around the car and got in, put my key in the ignition to start it up, but nothing happened; the engine didn’t turn over. I turned the key again—nothing. I turned it once again—still nothing. I didn’t know what the hell was happening because I’d just driven the car here! So after 15 or so minutes of trying to get the car to start (now, I’d turned on my big-ass lights and they were shining in the window of the club and people were looking out, pointing their fingers at me and snickering and shit), I looked at her and she was cool as a cucumber. So I told her that she should go back in the club until I could fix this problem. So she opened the door before I could get out of the ca
r and open it for her, got out, closed the door, and went back inside the club without looking back. Now I was furious. So I went inside the club and called AAA. They told me they’d be there shortly, so I went back out to the car to wait for them and after a while their tow truck drove up and the driver asked, “What’s the problem?”
“The car don’t turn on,” I told him. “I came here and I parked it, went into the club, and now the car won’t start.”
So he got in the car, put the gearshift in park, turned the key, and it started! Now, as dark as I am, I turned bright red! I was embarrassed like a motherfucker! I had left the car in the wrong gear when I’d parked because I was so anxious to see Tina. I was so embarrassed that I just paid the guy and drove away and left Tina in the club. I called her back the next week and explained to her what had happened and she just laughed and laughed. Then we got together and I really liked being with her.
A few weeks after I moved in at 1 Lincoln Plaza, for days or so I had been noticing out my window all these people with movie cameras running around down on 64th Street and Broadway. I thought that was interesting, so I asked my doorman what was going on and he told me they were filming a movie called Taxi Driver with Cybill Shepherd and Robert De Niro. Now, I would never have thought they were making a movie. I had just been watching all these people running around with cameras and shit for weeks and wondered what was going on. That was the first movie I ever saw being filmed, though it wasn’t the last one since New York is one of the filmmaking capitals of the world.