When the Garden Was Eden

by Harvey Araton

  Though he, too, departed Baltimore in the Archie Clark trade, Loughery conceded that for admirers of the Old Knicks, Monroe over time became the ultimate example of putting team values first.

  “It’s been one of the great questions: is Earl remembered as an even greater player because he fit in and won a championship in New York, or did his career suffer because he couldn’t be what he was in Baltimore?” Loughery said. As the man who coached the revered doctor, Julius Erving, with the New York Nets in the ABA, Loughery reached his own biased conclusion.

  “Because of how the league evolved into one that was about entertainment, I think it would have been better for him had he stayed,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t have seen any seasons where he scored 11 points a game. In Baltimore, he was one of the great showmen, maybe the best. The NBA lost that. Earl lost that.”

  Monroe wasn’t one to hide his misgivings, especially when he knew how much it delighted the Baltimore lifers. “I never thought of myself as a real Knick,” he told the Washington Post at Pollin’s Top 50 dinner. “I always felt as though the Bullets and Baltimore was the way I made my name.”

  Did he really believe that he’d cheated himself, given up too much individuality for the sake of being part of a cherished collective? Apparently so; when he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1990, he called Pollin and told him he wanted to go in as a Bullet.

  “We talked about the Hall of Fame thing many times,” Sonny Hill said. “It always came down to: how do you want them to remember you—as a guy who changed, sacrificed, and fit into what the Knicks did, or as Earl the Pearl? He worried that people would see it as being disrespectful to the Knicks. I told him, ‘This is not disrespectful to the Knicks. You have your championship ring.’ ”

  Beyond basketball, New York had delivered benefits he always knew Baltimore could not. In New York, Monroe could chase off-court ambitions, some of which—like the music industry—proved expensive and short-lived. He didn’t get discouraged easily. In his mid-sixties, he was still making a go of it, teaming with the dance-pop singer Ciara Corr to launch Reverse Spin Records, specializing in hip-hop and R&B.

  There were other creative outlets for Monroe that probably would not have opened to him as a lifelong Bullet. Sitting on a shelf above the fireplace in his Harlem apartment was a Peabody Award for the television documentary Black Magic, which he co-produced in 2008 with the filmmaker Dan Klores. The project, tracing the history of blacks in basketball, was thrilling for Monroe because it celebrated so much that the multimillionaire NBA stars knew little or nothing about.

  “That’s what New York’s been about—connections and temptations,” Monroe said furtively, in reference to a fast life of risk and reward, highs and lows. In the seventies, an accountant steered him into tax shelters that much later came to the merciless attention of the Internal Revenue Service. Monroe was eventually tagged with more than $3 million in back payments and interest. He and his longtime companion and later his wife, Marita Green-Monroe, plunged into dire financial straits. They had to leave Manhattan for several years, rent in New Jersey, and seek help from their extended basketball family, including the NBA’s Retired Players Association, led at the time by Dave Bing, which wrote him a check to stave off the debt collectors.

  “There were difficult times,” Green-Monroe said, recalling Red Holzman’s tender calls, asking what he could do to help. Eddie Donovan’s son Sean—a financial broker and consultant who worked with some of his father’s old players, including Reed—spent considerable time with Monroe formulating a plan. But it was a painful struggle, days when that $99,000 question—what if he’d stayed on Pollin’s team?—loomed much larger. Maybe he would have earned less than he had in New York. But perhaps life would have been simpler, more about the things money couldn’t buy.

  For better or worse, Pollin ran his team like a mom-and-pop shop, long after the NBA outgrew its small-family roots. The young builder grew into a man of uncommon depth after having endured the worst of tragedies, losing two children to congenital heart failure. His wife, Irene, became a psychotherapist specializing in grief counseling. Pollin became committed to charitable organizations that helped feed and educate underprivileged children.

  He moved the team, which had relocated from Baltimore to the Maryland suburbs, to the nation’s capital. In 1997, at a time when most multimillionaire owners were still asking for municipal handouts, he built the MCI Center (later the Verizon Center), revitalizing a downtrodden neighborhood. The same year, alarmed by the number of gun-related deaths in the district, he changed the team’s name to the Wizards.

  As the years rolled by, Monroe developed a greater appreciation for the man, understood the impossible situation he had put him in. Pollin had his faults. He was stubborn. He was thrifty. But compared with the hired guns running the Garden in the years after Ned Irish, Pollin was practically a saint.

  On the day of his death—November 24, 2009—Pollin was the most tenured and respected NBA owner, the league’s paternal conscience. And Monroe still grappled with regrets about running away, off into the arms of a corporate sugar daddy that would later cut him loose without so much as a call.

  IN 1980, WHEN SONNY WERBLIN SAT DOWN with me for a season-ending chat, Monroe was the last link to the Knicks’ championship teams, having just finished his 13th. He was a free agent, however, and Werblin matter-of-factly said that the Knicks would not be re-signing him for the following season, and that the team had “given him enough.” The public execution on the back page of the New York Post, under my byline, was crushing for Monroe, and another story that was painful for me to write—in effect the career obituary for another icon of my youth.

  Monroe read the story and couldn’t believe that was how he’d be leaving the game. Maybe he didn’t have a whole lot left. But he had been the Knicks’ sole attraction after the other core players left, the last link to the glory years. And yet there was no notification, no opportunity to say good-bye to the fans, and certainly not the hoped-for job offer within the organization.

  “I guess for the most part I felt that I should have still been a part of it in some capacity,” he said. “Basically because of coming here and having sacrificed to be here, I felt the organization didn’t appreciate that. I just felt, if this is the end of my career, there is something I should be doing with this organization. And when it wasn’t offered to me, I just went away.”

  Through the years, many of them luckless for the Knicks, he became convinced that it was a case of ethical payback. The franchise banished Frazier, fired Reed, cut him loose, and what did that say? “The history of what’s been here: that should be what every organization is about,” he said. “If you don’t honor your history, then how can you plot your future? If your history has been clouded, it sends a bad message. You haven’t won the championship in almost 40 years; karma-wise, that may be the reason why. I mean, how long did it take to retire Dick Barnett’s number?”

  When the Knicks first approached Monroe about raising number 15, he declined, still smarting over his departure from the organization “without signs of humanity or compassion.” The second invitation, in 1985, came from Dave DeBusschere, who had returned as general manager. “When your teammate calls, it’s different,” he said. But by the night of the ceremony, DeBusschere had been fired, leaving Monroe, again, with a bittersweet aftertaste.

  Pollin, he knew, never would have treated one of his guys that way. “Deep down, it bothers Earl that his life could have been very different,” Marita Green-Monroe said. “How could it not, when all he had to do was look down there and see what Abe was doing for Wes?” Wes Unseld, who might have been his career-long companion, Reed to his Frazier, retired from the Bullets in 1981 and immediately began a long run in the organization as a vice president, general manager, and coach.

  Monroe watched other NBA greats carve lucrative administrative careers or get paid the big network bucks. Julius Erving did both, as an executive in Orlando and as a studio a
nalyst. Green-Monroe, a good friend of Erving’s ex-wife, Turquoise, knew why Erving was able to market himself after his glory years: he never had to stop being Dr. J.

  For his part, Monroe said his everlasting regret was rooted less in remuneration and more in the sadness that there remained precious little evidence, scant film footage, of Baltimore’s Black Jesus. “I was always a history buff, and because of history you’re remembered in a certain way, and people down the road won’t remember you sacrificed—they’ll remember your stats,” he said. “People never really get to see what I did on a day-in, day-out basis, the way I was, and what I was capable of doing as an individual.”

  IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1995, I was in Orlando for a story about the NBA’s rookie orientation program, chatting up a group of players who were kicking back in the hallway outside the league’s hotel office: Kevin Garnett, Antonio McDyess, Joe Smith, and a seven-footer from Kansas, Greg Ostertag, alternately talking trash and feeling each other out for information that might be of benefit when they reported to their first training camp.

  Suddenly, from an elevator just down the hall, there came a distinguished figure who could have offered them all pearls of wisdom. Except that, to them, Earl Monroe wasn’t famous or even familiar. Monroe passed by without one of them so much as turning his head. I asked if they had recognized the man. No takers. Earl Monroe, anyone? “I heard the name,” Ostertag said.

  Young people, I thought. At about the same time, Earl and Marita had one in their own home—a teenage daughter, Maya, who would play basketball at Georgia Tech. But when she was just learning the game, her mother wanted her to know about her special gene pool. How could she explain this in plain, simple terms to a child born in 1983? Marita told her, “What Michael Jordan did in the air, your father did on the ground.”

  But where, in the visual age, was the proof? People—sportswriters especially—talk a virtuous game, espouse team values, but in the end glorify the one-name goliaths, reduce their teammates to supporting casts and Jordanaires. Maybe Loughery was right: for Monroe, great as Broadway was, it wasn’t Baltimore.

  The subject would always be a sore one, especially for Green-Monroe, who couldn’t help but launch into an occasional diatribe, after which her husband would invariably tell her, “Move on, Marita. Move on.” When asked how he reconciled his decision, and if he truly did regret becoming a Knick, Monroe smiled and more or less considered it life imitating art, making it up as he went along, of going in whatever direction his creative impulses led.

  “One thing about me: I’ve always been adaptable,” he said. “I don’t make a big deal about myself. It’s what happens, the course of life. Some guys get the better road, some guys don’t. You still have to live your life, and that’s kind of how I’ve always taken all of this. Going from Baltimore to New York was the road I was taking. It’s like when you think about the most successful guys, whether they know it or not, are out in front, seeing the game before it happens. You see where everybody is, and you see in your head where they are going to be. And that’s the way I’ve tried to live my life: looking ahead. The way I always felt in the end about leaving the Bullets for the Knicks. I knew what it was going to be like, and I wasn’t surprised.”

  He went to New York, found himself an apartment in an old brownstone on a quiet Manhattan street near Central Park West. He bought himself a silver Rolls-Royce (same model as Frazier’s), to which he later affixed the black-gloved clenched-fist sticker. Later, when he finally stepped into the Knicks’ starting lineup, the Pearl-and-Clyde partnership would be known in some quarters as the Rolls-Royce backcourt.

  “The best of all time,” Monroe said.

  Just not necessarily the best time for him.

  13

  DECONSTRUCTING CLYDE

  WALT FRAZIER LIVED IN AN OFF-CAMPUS TRAILER AT SOUTHERN ILLINOIS, with his wife and their baby son, Walt III. He kept to himself. The man who would be Clyde hadn’t yet developed an affinity for expensive clothes, fast cars, overhead bedroom mirrors, or after-hours parties. “He was the quietest guy on the team,” said Clarence Smith, Frazier’s college teammate. “You weren’t going to see him at fraternity parties or even in the student union.” Incubating beneath Frazier’s reserved exterior was someone else entirely, a character—or some would say caricature—known as Clyde. According to Frazier, the trainer Danny Whelan gave him the nickname after seeing Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde. During his rookie year, when minutes were hard to come by but the money wasn’t, Frazier would occupy himself sartorially. “I wasn’t playing well, and in order to pacify myself I’d go buy clothes,” he said.

  A short man with a long needle, Whelan was unsparing in his ridicule when Frazier walked into the locker room one night with a brown velour hat. “Get a load of Clyde,” he cracked. Everyone laughed, but Frazier was, as usual, unruffled. He was sure he looked good. He had never been one to fear standing apart. “I was never afraid of being an individual,” he said. “Even if it meant I was going to be ostracized for it.”

  Clyde was more suited to the constant scrutiny and adulation of big-city sports fans than Walt; he was a mask that alleviated the off-court performance anxiety and allowed Frazier to quiet the part of him that preferred being alone. In the intimidating limelight of Manhattan celebrity, he could be someone he wasn’t—even his old teammates from the Midwest didn’t recognize him. “We could never figure the whole Clyde thing out,” Smith said, noting that when Frazier returned to Southern Illinois for a team or school reunion, he was the same old Walt, pulling vitamins out of his pocket and excusing himself early to go get some sleep. Then he would return to New York and Clyde would take over. The development of the persona and the nickname were one thing. The branding of Clyde was another. Here Frazier needed some help.

  “Walt used to come into my office all the time,” said the Garden photographer George Kalinsky, fondly recalling a time when the Knicks’ administrative offices had open doors for everyone, even reporters. “So he comes in one day and he’s wearing a green suit, green vest, green hat, and matching green alligator shoes. I look at the outfit and I say, ‘Let’s go take a photo.’ ” Kalinsky posed Frazier outside the Garden, near a lamppost, and loved the result so much that he submitted it to Newsweek. “It gets into the magazine and we get about 200 letters from women wanting a copy,” he said. Frazier later autographed the photo—“Thanks for making me Clyde”—and sent it to Kalinsky. The Frazier endorsement was all the validation he needed. “I didn’t create the nickname,” Kalinsky said. “But I felt I created the aura.”

  The rest of the Clyde legend remains shrouded in ambiguity, largely recounted in impressionistic sound bites that only heighten the historical mystique.

  “I think a lot of the Clyde stuff was for the public, but it wasn’t who the real person was,” said Dick Garrett. “He was a more subdued guy, not a heavy partier. How could he be? He cared more about his body than anything. He would never abuse himself. I think the legend of Clyde started in the media and he just played along.”

  Whatever the time frame from origin to sensation, Clyde Frazier needed time to cultivate his cool, erase the misperception of himself as detached and indifferent. For that to happen, though, he had to become something special on the court. The trade of Butch Komives to Detroit in the DeBusschere deal opened the door to more minutes. And with the increased time, Frazier drew ever closer to Red Holzman, who would often make him sit next to him on the bench and fill his young guard’s head with ongoing observation and, of course, criticism.

  Relaxing on the terrace of one of his St. Croix houses, Frazier could laugh about the latter part and throw in a punch line. “There were times Red made me so mad I was tempted to do a Sprewell,” he said, referring to the 1997 incident in which the Golden State guard, first name Latrell, attacked and choked his coach, P. J. Carlesimo (which brought him eternal infamy and a trade to the Knicks the following season).

  With Holzman giving him more and more freedom, Frazier’s
game picked up fast and the statistics reflected his progress. From averaging about 21 minutes, 9 points, and 4 assists as a rookie, he was at almost 40 minutes, 20.9 points, and 8.2 assists during the championship season two years later. Like the Old Knicks, Frazier had been a work in progress, unlike the city’s other master of suave, Joe Willie Namath.

  Namath had hit New York with a massive contract and was immediately considered the savior of an upstart league. Even when Frazier’s performance soared, he still had to toil within the Holzman democracy, sharing the ball (and the attention) with a disparate band of emerging media darlings. Namath had no such impediments, given the costumed anonymity of his Jets teammates and most football players. Beyond the dimpled smile, the twinkling blue eyes, and the glorious nickname, Broadway Joe, Namath had the winning personality of a Midtown saloonkeeper. “I used to hang around with Joe and Mickey Mantle a lot,” George Lois said. “Mickey was a nasty guy; everybody knew that, especially when he was drinking. But around Joe he’d be different. Joe would say, ‘Mick, stay and sign a few autographs,’ and, goddammit, Mickey would listen, only for Joe. Frazier was a star, but there was nobody like Joe.”

  Namath was big enough not only to open his own club, Bachelors III, but to push back when Pete Rozelle ordered him to divest his interest because the club was attracting what the NFL commissioner determined to be the wrong clientele. Instead, Namath called a press conference and tearfully announced he was quitting football. Cooler heads prevailed, but Namath was bigger than ever: James Dean in white football cleats. Even Frazier was impressed. “Joe was such a nice guy, nothing like his image,” he said, having run into the quarterback at other East Side haunts. Frazier wore mink, like Namath, but he had a different, less gregarious personality. Even as Clyde, he tended to hang back, coolly observant. But being a Knicks star on a championship team was often all the introduction he needed.