Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  • The new MSG opened twenty-five months before the “And here comes Willis!” game in February 1968. Bernard broke the building’s scoring record on Christmas Day, 1984, dropping 60 in a CBS loss to the Nets, each point coming in the flow of the game. The mark outlasted MJ, ’Nique, Wade, Shaq, Robinson, Bird, you name it. Knicks fans became attached to it. This would be the one way Bernard lived on. Well, until February 2009, when Kobe exploded for 61 against a run-and-gun Knicks team that didn’t have a conventional two-guard on its roster, breaking the MSG record in garbage time of a blowout Lakers victory. I watched the second half rooting against it; something seemed unsettling about Bernard’s record falling only because Kobe was having a field day against the likes of Wilson Chandler and Jared Jeffries. I wasn’t alone. The real Knicks fans were furious at New York’s sloppy defensive performance and lack of gumption to protect Bernard’s 60, as well as all the loud Laker fans who somehow snuck into the building and chanted “MVP!” William Goldman emailed me, “It was the worst night of maybe my life at the Garden,” and he’s owned season tickets since the Walt Bellamy days. One Knicks buddy emailed me the next day, “I literally didn’t sleep last night.” With the Boston Garden and Chicago Stadium gone, can you think of any other player/building combinations that would have endured like that in the NBA? Me neither.

  • Bernard was a notable semicasualty of a tumultuous era, battling substance abuse issues in the late seventies and early eighties, getting traded twice (once for Wayne Cooper and a second-round pick) before turning his career around after signing with the Knicks, then tragically blowing out his knee in 198514 while averaging 35 points a game. Had King came along twenty years later during the “just say no” and Dr. James Andrews eras, he would have become one of the thirty greatest players ever. It’s not even up for discussion. 15

  • With the possible exception of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell, no athlete and announcer were matched more perfectly than King and Marv Albert. Even the way Marv said his name was perfect: “Here’s King from the left side … yesssss! Forty … five points for … Bah-nard King!” His game resonated with New Yorkers to the degree that it’s impossible to imagine a better Bernard home base than MSG. Going to school in Connecticut during that stretch, I went out of my way to watch Bernard even though I hated the Knicks. He was that good.

  • If you were a kid in the early eighties, you had a Nerf hoop in your room, you loved basketball and you didn’t pretend to be Bernard on those running two-handed slams …

  well, I say you’re lying. That was one of the two identifiable traits that were unique to him—his fingerprint, if you will—along with the peculiar way he jogged up-court with his chest puffed out. And yes, everyone tried to imitate that barrel-chested gait as well.

  • You know how certain uniforms just look right on some guys? As good as Bernard looked in New York’s blue road uniform, I gotta say, remember the ’82-’83 season when the Knicks wore those wacky jerseys with the player’s number sitting on top of the team’s name? For whatever reason, that uniform gave Bernard superpowers; it was like how Dr. J

  could jump a foot higher when he had his ’fro. Hell, I would have bought that throwback by now if it didn’t say “New York” on it.

  • If that’s not enough, Bernard starred in one of my favorite movies, Fast Break, 16 the only sports flick that can’t be remade because it’s so unbelievably inappropriate: there’s gay-bashing, a car ride where the players eat a pound of marijuana, a coach who encourages a white player to drop an n- bomb so it would trigger a bench-clearing brawl, a transvestite shooting guard, the glorification of players who have no business going to college and everything else. It’s one of those movies where you see the players toking up and know they used real grass for the scene. King plays Hustler, a pot-smoking pool shark 17 who carries Cadwallader College to an undefeated season, and I mention this only because it’s the most entertaining performance by an NBA player in a movie—better than Doc in The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, better than Malik Sealy and Rick Fox in Eddie, better than Kareem in Airplane, even better than Ray Allen as Jesus. I will never figure out two things about Bernard’s career: why the NBA left him off 50 at 50, and why he didn’t win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1979 over the little schmuck from Kramer vs. Kramer.

  The good news? Bernard gets to live on in this book. And ESPN Classic. And my office, where I have a framed poster of Fast Break.

  57. TOMMY HEINSOHN

  Resume: 9 years, 8 quality, 6 All-Stars … ’57 Rookie of the Year … top 10 (’61, ’62, ’63, ’64)

  … 4-year peak: 22–10–2 … ’63 Playoffs: 25–9 (11 G) … started for 8 champs (’50s, ’60s Celtics) … Playoffs: 20–10, 40% FG (104 G)

  56. PAUL ARIZIN

  Resume: 10 years, 10 quality, 10 All-Stars … ’56 MVP runner-up … top 5 (’52, ’56, ’57), top 10 (’59) … 4-year peak: 24–8–2 … best player on 1 champ (’56 Warriors), averaged a 28–9

  (12 G) … season leader: scoring (2x), minutes (2x), FG% (1x) … missed 2 years (war service)

  Did you know Arizin was the first NBA player to employ something called the jump shot? That he was the best player and crunch-time guy for the last pre-Russell champion (the ’56 Warriors)? That he became the first player to average 20-plus points in nine straight seasons? That they called him

  “Pitching Paul”? That he struggled with a chronic sinus problem that left him wheezing and grunting as he ran up and down the court? That he made first-team All-NBA in his second season (’52) and missed the next two seasons because the Marines pulled him away for the Korean War?

  That he returned in ’54 without missing a beat and tossed up a 21–9? That he retired from the NBA after averaging a 23–7 in 12 playoff games for a Philly squad that nearly beat the ’62 Celtics, then played another three years in the Eastern Basketball League and averaged a 25–7 for Camden? 18

  Give him back those two Korean War years, pad his career totals by keeping him in the NBA through 1965, and suddenly we’re talking about one of the best careers by any forward.

  If Arizin’s prime was cut short by his time in Korea, then Heinsohn’s prime was cut short by the countries of Nicotinea and Boozea. If you wanted to party with someone from the Russell era, really, it had to be either Heinsohn or Johnny “Red” Kerr. Heinsohn’s regular-season stats weren’t that overwhelming, although he was probably the best all-around forward other than Pettit and Baylor from ’57 to ’64, someone who defended bigger guys and provided a little muscle during a hockeylike era where everyone threw down. He also served a crucial chemistry role for those early Russell teams, not just because he was such a fun-loving jokester and prankster, 19 but also because he served as a lightning rod for the press (who criticized him for shooting too much and called him

  “Tommy Gunn”) and Auerbach (who yelled at him constantly as a way to take out his frustrations about the entire team) and inadvertently directed negative attention away from everyone else. 20

  What really stood out was Tommy’s Playoffs record. For one thing, he played for nine years and won eight titles as either the third-or fourth-best player on those teams. (Find me a better title-per-seasons-played ratio. You won’t.) His Playoffs stats (20–9) were slightly better than his regular-season stats (19–9), and he carried the Celtics offensively in Cousy’s final playoff run with a sparkling effort (25–9, 46 percent shooting). During Game 7 of the ’57 Finals against St. Louis, as Cousy and Sharman stumbled to a combined 5-for-40 from the field, Heinsohn played one of the greatest games by a rookie: battling Pettit, he notched a startling 37 points and 23 rebounds as the Celtics prevailed in double OT. In 1980, Magic played a similarly memorable Finals clincher and everyone placed the game on a pedestal. Tommy? People only remember him sobbing into a towel after fouling out.

  So why give Arizin the nod over Heinsohn? Because the NBA convened a panel in 1971 to figure out its Silver Anniversary Team, and here are the players they picked:21 Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, Bob Davi
es, Sam Jones (guards); Bill Russell, George Mikan (centers); Bob Pettit, Joe Fulks, Dolph Schayes, Paul Arizin (forwards). Since Arizin made the cut over Heinsohn, obviously, he should make the cut over Heinsohn in the Pyramid, right?

  (Note: I can’t believe I’m boning over a Holy Cross grad like this. Let’s just move on.)22

  55. DOMINIQUE WILKINS

  Resume: 15 years, 11 quality seasons, 9 All-Stars … ’86 MVP runner-up … top 5 (’86), top 10 (’87, ’88, ’91, ’93) … leader: scoring (1x) … 3-year peak: 30–7–3 … 3-year Playoffs peak: 29–7–3 (30 G) … eight 2K-point seasons … career: points (10th)

  If you made a Slipped Through the Cracks of History All-Star Team, ’Nique makes the starting five along with Westphal, Moses, Kemp, Gus Williams and sixth man Andrew Toney. Nobody ever mentions these guys anymore. It’s mystifying. Just remember these eight things about our man ’Nique.

  1. His best teammates were Doc Rivers, Kevin Willis, Antoine Carr, John Battle, Spud Webb, a not-quite-there-yet Mookie Blaylock and a just-about-washed-up Moses. During ’Nique’s prime (’85 to ’94), only one teammate cracked an All-NBA team (Kevin Willis, a third-teamer in ’92) and just four made an All-Star team (Rivers in ’88, Moses in ’89, Willis in ’92 and Mookie in ’94). Of everyone in my top sixty with one exception (Bernard), ’Nique had the least help. It’s just a fact.

  2. The Hawks won 50 games or more for three straight years (’86 through ’88) during the league’s strongest period, when there were only twenty-three teams, the Bird/Magic/Moses/Isiah generation was still thriving and the MJ/Hakeem/Malone generation was coming into its own. During that time, ’Nique averaged 30.0 points per game and doubled as his team’s only bona fide All-Star during a time when most contenders had two, three or even four All-Star-caliber guys. Quite a feat. 3. ’Nique averaged somewhere between 26 and 31 points for a solid decade (’85 through

  ’94). The list of noncenters who can say that: Jordan, Iverson, West, ’Nique … and that’s the list.

  4. MJ was better at controlling his body in the air and creating impossible shots, but

  ’Nique was the best in-game dunker of his generation. Nobody dunked on people as consistently and violently; he made it an art form and sought out victims. His single most identifiable dunk was the one where he jumped in traffic off two feet, brought the ball up like he was going to dunk it right away, brought it down again to buy himself an extra split second as the defender fell back to earth, then ripped it through the hoop. He did this over and over and over. Nobody blocked a ’Nique dunk. It just didn’t happen. 23

  5. Along those same lines, nobody fired up a home crowd more than ’Nique … and that lame Atlanta crowd in the eighties and nineties certainly needed the help. As former Hawks president Stan Kasten said once, “Dominique is a showman. People denigrate that, but it’s important. In the old ABA, coaches used to call a time-out whenever the Doc dunked. Don’t let the crowd get fired up. Coaches do the same thing against

  ’Nique.” There’s something to be said for that: only a few players could send their crowd into a near-frenzy, and ’Nique was one.

  6. I know this has nothing to do with anything, but if you’re discussing his competitive spirit, it has to be mentioned that ’Nique gave MJ everything he could handle in the ’87

  and ’88 Slam Dunk Contests and was absolutely robbed (that’s right, italics) in ’87 for reasons that remain unclear. That was the Dunk Contest equivalent of the ’06 Finals. 24

  7. ’Nique had the single hippest poster of the entire 1980s: one where he casually finished off a reverse dunk in a just-about-empty Meadow-lands arena with empty seats cluttering the background behind him. It’s hard to properly explain how mesmerizing this was, so I’ll only say this: My basement was littered with every sports poster you can imagine. I practically had a sports poster fetish. Name any good one from the eighties and I guarantee it was hanging somewhere in that basement. The ’Nique poster was given the coveted spot right between the Ping-Pong table and pool table on the wall directly over my stereo. And that’s where it remained for the entire decade. Everyone who ever went down there loved it, commented on it and stared at it. In retrospect, the poster personified that era from ’81 to ’84 perfectly—the league was becoming cool, only the fans hadn’t caught on yet. 25

  8. Of the 600-plus NBA games I have attended, ’Nique made the single most spectacular play I’ve ever seen: During the ’88 playoffs, he bricked a jumper from the top of the key, jumped from one step in front of the foul line and rammed home the rebound over Boston’s entire front line. I can’t even properly describe it; everyone in the Garden made this low-pitched “oooooooh” noise when it happened, almost like a

  “swoooooosh.” We didn’t know what to do. He pulled a Bob Beamon. It seemed like he jumped 30 feet. This was a superhuman act and I will never forget it for as long as I live.

  So why didn’t Wilkins get selected for the NBA’s 50 at 50? He never played in a Conference Finals, which hurt his cause unless you remember that his prime coincided with three Eastern juggernauts (the mid-eighties Celtics, late-eighties Pistons and early-nineties Bulls). He battled the stigma of being a “me first” guy throughout his career, someone who cared about getting his numbers, dunking on a few guys and that’s it.26 Doc Rivers once joked that you could stand in the huddle with Wilkins during the final 30 seconds of a one-point playoff game and ask him, “’Nique, how many points do you have?” and Wilkins would respond without missing a beat,

  “Thirty-seven, and I’d have 39 if they called that foul back in the second quarter.” Doesn’t sound like someone with a firm grasp of The Secret. And he never displayed the all-around brilliance of many contemporaries, always making for a better foil than anything. It’s fitting that his career highlights happened in the Dunk Contest and an eventual Game 7 loss (the famous duel with Bird). And he was a self-absorbed scorer who rarely moved without the ball and always seemed to be holding his right hand up in the “I’m open!” stance. I hated playing with those guys. But to claim that Wilkins wasn’t one of the best fifty NBA players ever in 1996 … that’s just absurd.

  54. PAUL PIERCE

  Resume: 11 years, 9 quality, 7 All-Stars … Finals MVP (’08) … top 10 (’09), top 15 (’02, ’03,

  ’08) … 3-year peak: 26–7–4 … 2-year Playoffs peak: 26–9–5 (26 G) … ’08 Playoffs: 20–5–5

  (26 G) … leader: FTs (1x) … career: 23–6–4

  The resume for Pierce: Out-dueled LeBron in Game 7 of the 2008 Cavs-Celts series, then outplayed Kobe in the Finals (major points there) … repeatedly raised his level of play in big games (dating back to the ’02 Playoffs) … finished the Double Zeros as the best small forward not named LeBron … exhibited remarkable durability over the past ten years, missing an extended stretch of games only once (during the ’07 season, when the Celtics shelved him while tanking for Oden or Durant) … a memorably tough competitor who didn’t miss a single 2000 preseason game after getting nearly stabbed to death two weeks earlier.27

  Maybe I’m a little too close to it—after all, I probably watched 80 percent of his games, attended most of the home games for his first four years and spent an inordinate amount of time wondering about dopey things like, “Shit, why do I have a terrible feeling he was smoking dope with Ricky Davis until 5:45 a.m. this morning?” But after watching Pierce evolve from “guy with franchise potential” to “guy who led a championship team,” I realized his career was a microcosm of the modern NBA fan experience. After some early stumbles during the discouraging Pitino era,28

  Pierce emerged as a potential stud, signed a six-year extension for $71 million, then led the Celtics to the 2002 Eastern Finals and submitted a heroic performance in Game 3 (a comeback win from 25 down) before Boston ultimately fell short. After that happened, he probably thought, “All right, I’m here. I made it. I knew this would happen. I’m one of the greats!” Then he started acting like a complete ass. 29 He played on the ’02 World Championships team
that disgraced itself, then returned with a petulant attitude (the scowling, chest-pounding, whining, and ref-baiting were insufferable), acting like a prima donna behind the scenes and partying way too much for anyone’s liking. And this just kept going on and going on, without anyone truly calling him on it—you know, because this was the post-Y2K NBA and guys could act like jerks with few or no repercussions—until everything crested in the ’05 playoffs when Pierce committed a boneheaded foul that got him ejected and nearly blew the Indiana series.

  Boston fans found themselves in an all-too-frequent position for NBA diehards in the past two decades: we were tired of Pierce’s act, thought he needed a fresh start somewhere else and wondered if he was a lost cause, but we knew our team couldn’t possibly get equal value for him. So what do you do? Do you just keep crossing your fingers and hoping that a talented star who’s already made more money than he’ll ever need will suddenly realize, “You know, I’m wasting my potential, maybe I should straighten myself out”? Or do you admit he’s a falling stock and cash out? There’s no right answer. Teams that owned Baron Davis, Charles Barkley, T-Mac, Allen and C-Webber cashed out and eventually regretted it. Teams that owned Kenny Anderson, Stephon Marbury, Derrick Coleman, Larry Johnson and Kemp cashed out and never regretted it. And then there’s Boston and Indiana, who found themselves in similar predicaments with underachieving franchise guys—Pierce and Jermaine O’Neal—only both teams crossed their fingers and rode it out over trading them for 60–70 cents on the dollar, a decision that worked out spectacularly for Boston and unbearably for Indiana. You never know with this stuff. You really don’t.