When the Garden Was Eden (21 page)

Holzman didn’t burden his teams with an abundance of half-court sets, and his players couldn’t recall him ever diagramming a play, but that didn’t mean his offense was shallow or predictable. Every play had multiple options, to which Holzman would dedicate entire preseason games in order to make sure his players could execute each and every one in their sleep. As the team grew better, and tighter, often there was no play called at all, just fundamental screen-and-roll movement. The players would communicate with their eyes and body language, five men linked to the central nervous system of the coach, who believed in their basketball IQ and allowed them freedom as long as they followed the scripture:
Make the extra pass, find the open man
.

So Bradley didn’t have to twist Holzman’s arm, exactly, to rewrite the Game 5 plan. He was never much interested in taking credit for figuring out how the Knicks would approach the second half without their center and most important player. Reed remembered it as essentially a zone offense. Others called it a 3-2 or 1-3-1, but whatever it was, Reed dismissed Bradley’s revisionist spin that it was a consensus scheme.

“It was Bradley’s idea all the way,” he said. In summary, it called for spreading the floor with five players who could all shoot or drive and force Chamberlain to guard someone. Instead of Bowman or Hosket, he would have to pay close attention to the jump-shooting DeBusschere or the athletic Dave Stallworth.

His teammates—and especially Dave DeBusschere—promised that they would somehow make it a game. Years later, in fact, Frazier would contend that if the Lakers had gone on a minor run to start the quarter, the Knicks would likely have psychologically collapsed and surrendered the game, the series, and probably their place in history. But it was the Knicks who came out fast. The team that took the court was no bigger than an average-size college team, but their defensive pressure bothered the Lakers; it unhinged them, really. When they weren’t throwing the ball away or having it stolen amid the full-court press, they tried to force-feed Chamberlain, who was swarmed asunder. More shocking, West disappeared along with the big man. The Lakers maintained a lead throughout the quarter, but the Knicks chipped away.

With less than two minutes remaining, Frazier stripped West at midcourt and cruised in for a layup. The lead was just six, 78–72. As if slipped a massive dose of mood-altering medication, the crowd awoke from its nightlong melancholia.

The Knicks tied the game at 87 on a 20-foot jumper by Bradley and took the lead on the Oxford man’s next shot. DeBusschere was in foul trouble, having accumulated five by wrestling with Chamberlain in the low post. Holzman replaced him with Stallworth, who presented a different problem for the tiring giant. At 6'7", Stallworth was longer and more athletic than DeBusschere. Plus he was fresh. He stepped in front of Chamberlain and tapped the rebound of a missed West shot to Frazier, who returned the favor by finding Stallworth on the right side for a driving banker and a 95–91 lead.

There was bedlam in the Garden, an air of insurgency and defiance. Continuing to make good on his vow to redeem himself in the eyes of the Captain, Russell scored the Knicks’ next three baskets—including one at the rim, over a flat-footed Chamberlain—as they extended the lead to 101–94. On this signature night for the Minutemen, Russell had 20 points off the bench and Stallworth added 17. But there was one basket by Stallworth that, more than any other, would provide the lasting memory of Game 5 for those who witnessed it live or through the illustrative, auditory magic of Marv Albert.

Russell gave him the ball on the right side, about 17 feet away, with Chamberlain holding his position just outside the lane. Given room, Stallworth had already knocked down two jumpers in the period. The Lakers were desperate for a defensive stop. Chamberlain had no choice but to lug his big body to the last place he wanted to be. Stallworth gave an up fake and put the ball on the floor, already by Chamberlain’s hip. One dribble … a second … and he was in the air, under the backboard, with Chamberlain’s left hand up and West dropping down to help. Levitating to the far side of the rim, gripping the ball in his right hand, Stallworth turned in midair and banked in the layup, falling away.

As the years passed and his health waned, Stallworth wouldn’t remember much about the shot, or give a damn that he didn’t. He just came to believe it was all part of God’s plan for him to be back in basketball and with the ball when Chamberlain came out to challenge. After seeing it for the first time, Reed, smiling like a man who had just opened up a vault of treasure, emphatically called it “the shot of Stallworth’s life.”

And after Stallworth’s basket killed the Lakers’ hopes of turning the game back around on the way to a 107–100 victory, Reed dressed in the jubilant Knicks locker room and then hobbled into the team’s administrative offices to pick up his mail. While there, he tossed his Game 5 sneakers into the trash. “These weren’t very lucky, were they?” he said to the secretary, Gwynne Bloomfield. But she had the good sense to retrieve one of the shoes, place it on her desk, and use it as a plant holder for the rest of her days at the Garden. She took it with her when she left, and Reed signed it for her 25 years later, her lasting souvenir.

Given the benefit of 40 years of reflection and his first Game 5 viewing, Reed had to admit that the night was worthy of keepsakes. He raved about the Knicks’ team defense, marveled at how they held Chamberlain to three field goals in the second half and West to 4 points after 16 in the first. He was amazed by how they’d forced 19 turnovers in one half (and 30 for the game) against a team as formidable as the Lakers. Reed was so energized by the ancient video that he had to call Bradley to congratulate him on the effort, as if the game had been played the previous night.

“Senator,” he said, “I’m here watching Game 5, 1970, on an old tape. You know what, you guys did a hell of a job that night without me.”

He waited as Bradley figured out what the hell he was talking about—it took a few seconds—and had a good laugh.

What it all proved, he said, was that Holzman had been absolutely right to harp all season long on his team to play hard every night, because who knew when that extra home game was going to mean the difference between ecstasy and misery?

“If we hadn’t, and I had gotten injured in Game 5 on the road, there is no way we come back to win this game without the Garden fans,” he said.

Weeks later, he returned the DVD by mail and sent along a note.

“Thanks for Game 5—our greatest victory,” Reed wrote, man enough to acknowledge that what was arguably the most thrilling game—if not the most climactic—in Knicks history was achieved, by and large, without him.

ON THE MORNING OF GAME 6 IN LOS ANGELES
, Reed awoke and deluded himself for a few minutes into thinking that a medical miracle had occurred. After getting out of bed and taking a few relatively pain-free steps, he became excited, anticipating that he might be able to play after all. He stood between his bed and John Warren’s.

“Hey, Rook, I think I can go tonight,” he said.

A groggy Warren, head on the pillow, opened his eyes.

“Really, Cap?”

“Yeah,” Reed said. “Watch this.”

He jumped up and touched the ceiling, landing with the force of his 240 pounds on his right side. That’s when the pain hit him like a comet out of the sky. He fell back onto his bed, grimacing as he had when he first took the Game 5 fall, almost to the point of tears. Warren didn’t know which was worse for Reed: the physical distress or the psychic pain of knowing he wouldn’t join the team that night.

With Reed still stretched out in agony, the rookie was suddenly the mentor in the room.

“No, you can’t play tonight, Cap. You just can’t,” Warren told him. “Save what you have for Game 7.”

ALL DAY LONG, NEW YORK HELD ITS BREATH, WAITING FOR WORD
. There was no 24-hour sports television or talk radio to consult. No Facebook or Twitter to leak the news. On Friday, May 8, the Garden switchboard was jammed by fans clamoring for medical updates.
O captain, our captain
. At Reed’s Rego Park apartment, his high school coach, Lendon Stone, checked in. Fred Hobdy called from Grambling, imploring Reed to give it a try, just as he’d prodded him years earlier to attend the Olympic trials in New York. Again history beckoned.

Reed had flown back to New York with the team’s orthopedic surgeon, Dr. James Parkes, after the Knicks took a beating in Game 6. The rookie Dick Garrett took seven shots in the first quarter and made them all, embarrassing his old Salukis teammate Frazier and helping stake the Lakers to a 20-point lead. West had a brilliant night with 33 points, and Chamberlain the best of all of them: 45 points and 27 rebounds. The Knicks didn’t play a lick of defense; at the end of the game, their 113 points—robust by twenty-first-century standards—were still 22 short of the Lakers’ 135. All the while, Reed rested.

“Doc,” Reed told Parkes on the long ride east, “you’ve got to get me out there. This is the pinnacle of my life.”

On Friday, Reed arrived at the Garden at around two o’clock to meet the trainer, Danny Whelan, for 90 minutes of heat treatment. They had lunch in the Garden’s Penn Plaza Club, and then Reed called home and told his mother not to worry. He was feeling better and would probably play. He returned to the locker room, which Holzman—fearing a mob—had cordoned off strictly for players and coaches. Reporters gathered on a bench outside and remained for most of the pregame period. George Kalinsky, loitering nearby with his camera, tried peeking into the Knicks’ locker room, hoping for a glimpse of Reed. Instead he kept bumping into Chamberlain, lurking around corners. “I knew Wilt well,” Kalinsky said. “He saw me standing out there waiting and kept coming over to ask, ‘Is Willis playing?’ ” It took Jerry West, exasperated, to come and lead Chamberlain away.

Nearing six o’clock, Reed decided to move around a bit, hoist a few shots. Don May was already dressed and agreed to fetch rebounds. Reed walked past reporters, divulging nothing. The reporters—not quite the mob that would have hounded him in the New Media age—gave Reed his space. On the court, he worked cautiously around the perimeter, May feeding him the ball. While under the basket, May noticed an interested observer, a head towering above a row of empty seats. Once again, it was Chamberlain. He stood there, inexplicably, and watched until Reed was finished. Even Reed found the behavior strange, and revealing. On his way back into the locker room, he walked right past Chamberlain and complained lamely to his opponent: “I can’t go to my right that well.” The truth was, he never could.

By the time he was out of sight, a knowing grin flickered past the pain on Reed’s face. The mind game was on, if not already won. “I’ll crawl out there if I have to,” he told PR man Jimmy Wergeles.

There was still a long way to go to Game 7, and Reed would be spending all of it in the trainer’s room. Now it was his teammates who moved in and out of the cramped quarters, inquiring about his condition. Soon Holzman had seen and heard enough. He shut the door, growling that the Knicks had a game to play, Reed or no Reed. Order restored, the team prepared to take the floor while Reed braced himself for three injections of Carbocaine, a powerful derivative of novocaine, administered by Dr. Parkes.

As a child, Reed had hated the sight of a needle, and this one looked like it could do more damage than good. He sat up and put his hands on the back of the training table. He bit his lip. He grimaced but did not howl.

While this was happening, Reed’s idled teammate Phil Jackson—working that night as a photographer for a book he would later co-publish with George Kalinsky—had the insider position that even Kalinsky, a Garden employee, didn’t have. From just beyond the bare soles of Reed’s feet, Jackson snapped a portrait of the injection that has been kept secret ever since. Years later, Spike Lee would offer Jackson thousands of dollars for the negatives. But at Holzman’s request—the coach cited Reed’s privacy, and he didn’t think it was fair that Jackson had access denied the regular shooters—the photo would remain buried among Jackson’s treasured possessions.

Reed sat for a moment to let the drug take effect. After a while he swung his legs to the floor, took a deep breath, and tentatively put weight on his leg. He was hurting, there was no doubt about that. But it was just past 7:30 on May 6, minutes from tip-off. Game 7 awaited him, along with his teammates. He stood up and said, “Let’s go.”

REPORTING TO MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
on a cold winter afternoon in early 2010, a broadcaster named Walt Frazier wore an olive green suit, a pink tie, and a look of Caribbean nonchalance to match his apparent indifference to the occasion for which he’d been summoned. As the person who had requested he report for duty an hour and a half early, I felt slightly embarrassed asking him to review a piece of four-decade-old history, even though Frazier proved the star in what we were about to watch. Game 7.
The
game.

Based on that night alone, my younger version would have been holding out a pad and pen to the Hall of Fame guard, hoping for an autograph. As the longtime New York newspaper basketball commentator, I had found the Garden’s legend-in-residence to be gracious and friendly, though often difficult to read. The serpentine Clyde, still with a magnificent mask of cool. In 13 NBA seasons, the man never so much as incurred a technical foul. A financial conservative, it never made pecuniary sense to him to endure a fine for the briefest of outbursts. When the more emotive Phil Jackson wondered how he could have an Imelda Marcos—size budget for footwear, Frazier asked him how he justified the standard cost for unloading on a ref. “At least when I open my closet, I can see where my money went,” he replied.