The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

  This was a team enterprise as the Knicks finally claimed the first title in their 24-year history.

  Knicks Legends Welcome Ewing To Their Ranks

  By LIZ ROBBINS | March 1, 2003

  THE QUESTION WAS RAISED BEFORE THE jersey was, a cocktail-hour debate before the party.

  On a night of tributes for Patrick Ewing, a number of Knicks players, coaches, opponents, friends and fans from across the years came to celebrate his legacy last night and put his place in the Madison Square Garden rafters into perspective.

  Is No. 33 the greatest Knick ever?

  The answers in the unofficial poll were split. No one scored more points, grabbed more rebounds, blocked more shots or played more minutes. No Knick had more All-Star appearances (11) than Ewing. But he does not have what all but one other in his company of retired numbers have, a championship ring.

  Ewing was overwhelmed by the Hall of Famers around him, and he deferred to them. “I don’t think I’m the greatest Knick when I see all these guys sitting here,” Ewing said during the halftime ceremony in which his number was retired.

  Walt Frazier, who led the Knicks to two championships, had agreed with Ewing before the game. “Patrick, I always say he’s second to Willis and I put myself third,” Frazier said. “I always say Willis Reed first because mostly what I learned about the game, I learned from him.’’

  Dave DeBusschere saw all sides of the debate. “It’s all eras—in 1950, someone was the greatest, in 1960, in the 70’s, 80’s, there’s always going to be somebody,” he said.

  That was Jeff Van Gundy’s point when he defended Ewing as the greatest player to wear a Knick uniform.

  “If you look in those jerseys up there, they had each other,” Van Gundy, Ewing’s cherished coach, said. “He had some great teammates, but he was never surrounded by that one other Hall-of-Fame-type player. He really carried a team for a long time just with his will to win.”

  The Knicks’ Crying Game: Disappointment Reigns

  By CLIFTON BROWN | June 24, 1994

  THE PAIN RUNS DEEP FOR THE KNICKS, THE kind of pain that will not subside quickly.

  Fewer teams seemed to work harder this season to win a championship. Fewer teams seemed to want it more. No team is more disappointed.

  The Houston Rockets earned their first championship the hard way, beating the Knicks, 90-84, in Game 7 of the National Basketball Association finals. While the Rockets spent yesterday celebrating their triumph in a city that rejoiced in its first professional sports championship, the Knicks somberly boarded a plane and went home, unable to find comfort or satisfaction in their effort or their achievements.

  The Knicks had a special season, winning the Eastern Conference, winning the Atlantic Division and surviving two seven-game playoff series against the Chicago Bulls and the Indiana Pacers.

  But the Knicks have been building toward winning a championship ever since Pat Riley became their coach three seasons ago. They felt it would happen this season. Guard Hubert Davis wept openly in the Knicks’ locker room when Game 7 ended. Other players hurt too much to cry.

  It was a particularly dreadful ending for center Patrick Ewing, whose nine-year quest for a championship in New York remained unfulfilled, and for guard John Starks, whose terrible Game 7 performance featured 2-for-18 shooting and just 8 points.

  Ewing had vowed that this would be the Knicks’ season to win their first N.B.A. championship since 1972-73. Ewing kept his emotions in check during the post-game interviews, but a look of remorse was etched on his face.

  “I thought we gave it 110 percent,” he said, “and unfortunately it wasn’t enough.”

  As the Knicks Wilt, New York Feels Yet Another Loss

  By CHARLIE LEDUFF | March 14, 2002

  ALLAN HOUSTON PROBABLY DID NOT SEE HIM sitting up there in Section 413, Row B, Seat 9.

  There, Paul Kincaid, the little big man, dreams of the shooting guard’s job. Paul is 11 years old and a sixth grader at P.S. 33 in Chelsea and considers himself something of an expert on, among other things, King Tut and the Knicks. He came to Madison Square Garden Tuesday night with his Y.M.C.A. team. Despite the Knicks’ miserable play this season, Paul is sure they will make the playoffs.

  “I was born a Knicks fan and I always have to hope,” he said as he fiddled with his sneakers.

  To some, the Knickerbockers are more than a team and basketball is more than a game. They can be the tether and the language between father and son. Paul and his pop used to watch a lot of Knicks together.

  Dad moved out not long ago, and Paul is left to watch the games by himself on the weekdays. On this night, he was alone with his team as the Knicks were booed off the court, having blown a 20-point lead to the Philadelphia 76ers, one more low-water mark in a truly awful season.

  Every home game starts the same. Latrell Sprewell leads the Knicks out of the locker room and bounces a soft pass to Spike Lee, who is standing in front of his $1,600 courtside seat with his hands out and his No. 8 Sprewell jersey hanging limply on his narrow shoulders.

  Some people associate Spike Lee with the Knicks as much as they do Patrick Ewing or Clyde Frazier. And now, in this season of losing, people out on the streets feel free to take their shots.

  “What happened to your Knicks, Spike?” a cabdriver yells. “Where’d your boys go, Spike? You paid too much.’’

  “Every day it happens,” he says. “People come to me like I know what’s going on, like I’m in the room when the decisions are being made. I’m just a fan with a good seat.’’

  And so Spike Lee goes to home games, sits in his outrageously priced seat, eats outrageously priced food and by halftime against Philadelphia, the Knicks were up 15 points and he was bouncing around the court feeling good.

  But, true to form, the Knicks folded like a cheap card table, and near the end of the game, with another loss certain, Spike Lee was slumped in his chair, picking his beard, curling his lip and dreaming about the Knicks’ draft pick this summer.

  Rangers Take Stanley Cup Title

  By SEABURY LAWRENCE | April 15, 1928

  THE NEW YORK RANGERS WON THE STANLEY Cup and the world’s championship in hockey by defeating the Montreal Maroons by a 2-1 score before 14,000 frenzied fans at the Forum.

  It was a savage and bitter battle all the way, with the Maroons going down fighting, but conquered by a team whose spirit and pluck in desperate circumstances finally won over all obstacles in the fifth and final game of this hard-fought series.

  It was a savage and bitter battle all the way … conquered by a team whose spirit and pluck in desperate circumstances finally won over all obstacles.

  All of the Rangers played the most courageous and spirited kind of hockey, but three figures stood out in this battle of heroes: Frank Boucher, who scored both Ranger goals on thrilling individual plays; Joe Miller, who gave a wonderful exhibition of goal tending with his right eye badly injured; and Ching Johnson, who, with leg, eye and nose injuries, kept on body checking the heavy Maroons to a standstill.

  The game had hardly started when a flying disk from Hooley Smith struck Miller in the right eye and he fell to the ice. Miller returned to the fray after 10 minutes with the eye almost closed but saved scores time and again by cool, deft plays.

  After the injury the odds turned heavily against the Rangers. But the Maroon fans had not figured on Frank Boucher as a situation saver, scoring a second Ranger goal at 15:15 after another brilliant individual play.

  Phillips scored the only Maroon goal at 17:50 on a pass from Siebert. Bill Cook got a major penalty for stick-ending Stewart. The Rangers were down to five men as the game ended, but the Maroons could not crash through for another one.

  It was a rough as well as a swift game, with 21 penalties handed out by the referees. Ching Johnson went off four times for penalties and three times for injuries and came back smiling every time.

  Miller made several good stops before the game was two minutes old. Boucher kept poke-checking the di
sk away from the Maroon forwards as they skated down and twice got through with Bill Cook, only to have Benedict turn the shots aside.

  Champs Again After 54 years

  By ROBERT MCG. THOMAS JR. | June 15, 1994

  THE STANLEY CUP JINX IS DEAD, AND THE New York Rangers are the champions of the National Hockey League.

  The Rangers won their fourth championship last night at Madison Square Garden, and the fact that it had been 54 years since the last one made the 3-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks that much sweeter.

  And when Brian Leetch became the first American-born player to be named the playoffs’ most valuable player, it was just icing on the cup.

  When time ran out on Game 7 of the seven-game series, a city that had lived through several wars and social revolutions since its previous Stanley Cup victory in 1940 erupted into a celebration half a century in the making.

  The jinx that had seemed to dog the Rangers through three previous Stanley Cup finals didn’t die easily.

  The jinx that had seemed to dog the Rangers through three previous Stanley Cup finals didn’t die easily. After jumping to a 2-0 lead in the first period and holding on at 3-1 through the second, the Rangers sa w their lead cut to 1 at the beginning of the third, and suddenly old fears surged to the surface.

  But this is 1994, not 1940.

  Rangers Top Leafs in Overtime, 3-2, Winning Stanley Cup

  By JOSEPH C. NICHOLS | April 14, 1940

  THE RANGERS WON THE STANLEY CUP AND the hockey championship of the world by subduing the stubborn Maple Leafs tonight, 3-2. Two goals behind with only 12 minutes left, the Blue Shirts squared matters and sent the battle into overtime. After 2 minutes 7 seconds of extra play, Bryan Hextall, New York right wing, fired the puck past Turk Broda for the score that decided the series, 4 games to 2.

  Hextall’s climactic drive brought disappointment to the crowd of 14,894, mostly home-team sympathizers. They had been led to expect a decisive triumph by the ease with which the Toronto skaters flashed into the lead by two goals before the game was half over. They almost refused to believe their eyes when the winning goal flew home.

  The Rangers finally broke Broda down at 8:08 in the third period when Neil Colville beat him and then scored a second time in 10:01, when Alfie Pike drilled a shot into the cords.

  These fast goals, important in giving the Ranger skaters new life, also earned for them a psychological advantage. When the game went into overtime the Rangers, helped by a rest of 20 minutes, massed themselv es about the Leaf goal and, though the home skaters sent two fast “breakaway” rushes into New York ice, the Blue Shirts maintained the edge.

  In all, the Rangers were able to put 23 shots on Broda’s stick, while the Leafs reached Kerr 24 times.

  TENNIS AND BOXING

  Billie Jean King Defeats Miss Evert

  By NEIL AMDUR | September 11, 1971

  THE ENDLESS SUMMER CAME TO A HALT FOR Chris Evert yesterday, before the brilliance of Billie Jean King.

  Reaffirming her status as one of the sport’s most versatile players, the top-seeded Mrs. King rushed past the unseeded 16-year-old Cinderella girl of the United States Open tennis championships, 6-3, 6-2.

  Mrs. King, who needs less than $25,000 to become the first women professional to top $100,000 in a single year, will play a familiar face, Rosemary Casals, tomorrow for the $5,000 first prize.

  The second-seeded Miss Casals played her best match of the tournament, beating Kerry Melville, 6-4, 6-3, in the first of the women’s semifinal matches. But she will have to play even better in the final to handle an inspired, eager Mrs. King, who has lost only one of their 10 meetings this year.

  Miss Evert, a high school student from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had not lost a singles match since last February—a string of 46 consecutive victories—and one of her victims had been Mrs. King, who was forced to default a match in St. Petersburg because of cramps.

  Mrs. King, who watched last year’s tournament as a frustrated spectator after knee surgery, lost the opportunity for the opening-game break. Miss Evert scored five straight points, but the Californian squandered few other chances, twice scrambling back from love-30 on service and never allowed Miss Evert a break-point on her serve.

  “I didn’t hit out as much as I wanted,” Mrs. King said. “But I wanted to hit the ball short on my approach instead of deep so the ball would bounce lower and make it more difficult for her to return.”

  McEnroe Captures Tumultuous Match

  By NEIL AMDUR | August 31, 1979

  IT BEGAN AS A TENNIS MATCH AND ENDED as a tragic soap opera. In the middle, John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase exchanged roles as heroes and villains. There were cheers, boos, point penalties, game penalties, police on the court, a switch in umpires and even some brilliant shot making.

  When it was over, the third-seeded McEnroe had defeated the 33-year-old Nastase, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, in a tumultuous three-hour match that was almost as trying for the 10,549 spectators at the National Tennis Center as it was for the players, officials and Frank Hammond, the umpire.

  The third day of the United States Open championships began with the hottest weather of the week and wound up at 12:36 a.m. after Mike Blanchard, the tournament referee, had replaced Hammond in the umpire’s chair and restored order to a match that had been forecast as stormy and was delayed 17 minutes at one point.

  The chaos erupted in the fourth set after Hammond had capped a series of warnings and penalized Nastase a full game for stalling with McEnroe serving at 2-1, 15-0. Earlier in the match, with McEnroe serving at 2-2, 40-0, Hammond had awarded a point penalty and the game to the left-hander.

  The game penalty produced loud booing. When Hammond was unable to silence the crowd or induce Nastase to serve the next game, he finally said, “Game, set, match, McEnroe,” over the public-address system after a final 30-second warning to the Romanian. This disqualification set off an even louder disturbance from the spectators, some of whom ran onto the court.

  With the match now totally out of control, Blanchard asked Hammond to leave the chair for the first time in his 32-year umpiring career, a decision that Hammond later called “ludicrous.”

  The tumult began after McEnroe broke for 2-all in the third set with a running forehand pass down the line. Nastase lingered in the backcourt, and Hammond began his warnings. After the point penalty, Nastase kicked over a cup of water and got into a heated argument with Hammond.

  “I protected you as much as I can,” Hammond said to Nastase, audible from the microphone in the umpire’s chair. “You play tennis like everyone else.”

  A Message To All, A Duel for the Ages

  By HARVEY ARATON | September 6, 2001

  Pete Sampras hugs Andre Agassi after winning the U.S. Open Men’s Singles championship in 2001.

  THE STADIUM WAS FULL AND THE STARS WERE out but the new kids with the blustery serves and the windmill forehands who grew up watching Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi were awake late in their hotel rooms, watching the masters at work. On a cool and vintage United States Open night in New York, Sampras versus Agassi in the quarterfinals would become that rarest of tennis events, turning phenoms to fans.

  “I’m probably going to get a late hit in,” Andy Roddick had said before Sampras defeated Agassi 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (5) last night, staging a show for the ages. “I doubt I’ll hang out there. But I’ll definitely watch it. My two biggest influences—I’m still a huge fan.” Still, and after last night, undoubtedly bigger than ever.

  Eleven years ago, when Sampras announced himself here as a legend-in-the-making, Roddick was an 8-year-old struggling to return his older brother’s serve. Lleyton Hewitt, Roddick’s opponent tonight in a kid stuff quarterfinal, was a 9-year-old kid in Australia. Marat Safin, next up for Sampras in Saturday’s semis, was on an American tennis tour with a bunch of Russian prodigies.

  They all watched Sampras win the Open that summer, thumping Agassi in a straight-sets final, riveted by the emergence of new bloo
d. “These are the two guys I idolized growing up,” Hewitt said after beating Tommy Haas yesterday. “Love watching those guys play, Grand Slam finals and stuff like that over so many years.”

  “Classical,” said Safin, anticipating the event, without knowing how right he’d be.

  Agassi had tortured himself running Las Vegas hills and whipped himself into the best shape of his life. Agassi would admit he was no beacon of dedication for a bunch of those years and nobody’s role model either. His long road to the Arthur Ashe Stadium was as different from Sampras’s as their respective playing styles—the aggressive baseliner against the hammer of serve-and-volley—which they would cling to so brilliantly all night.

  In their private over-30 division, the oldest men of the Open had to inspire the young ones.

  Louis Defeats Schmeling with First Round Knockout

  By JAMES P. DAWSON | June 23, 1938

  Louis, right, and Schmeling, left, became very good friends outside the ring.

  THE EXPLODING FISTS OF JOE LOUIS CRUSHED Max Schmeling in the ring at the Yankee Stadium and kept sacred that time-worn legend of boxing that no former heavyweight champion has ever regained the title.

  The Brown Bomber from Detroit, with the most furious early assault he has ever exhibited here, knocked out Schmeling in the first round of what was to have been a 15-round battle to retain the title he won last year from James J. Braddock. He has now defended it successfully four times.

  In exactly two minutes and four seconds of fighting Louis polished off the Black Uhlan from the Rhine, but though the battle was short, it was furious and savage while it lasted, packed with thrills that held three knockdowns of the ambitious ex-champion, every moment tense for a crowd of about 80,000, one of the largest in boxing’s history.