“The Running Jumper”: (’99 Knicks, Part 2)

The orange sphere danced around the cylinder, clanging violently against the metal, yelling for silence from the massive Miami-Dade crowd.

We hated them, and they hated us. It was simpler that way.

It was before the years of intense AAU basketball, the unspoken meeting ground of future NBA superstars who meet time and time again in tournaments designed to bolster their draft stock. It was well before the Ron Artest melee, a black mark on the league's rep that forced Stern to eliminate even a pretense of anger between rivals. And it was right after the "end" of MJ, an uncomfortable time for fans and players alike that would shape the league over the next ten years.

It was back during the golden age of the NBA rivalry, when players despised their opponent right down to the uniform colors, when guys would refuse to sign with the city rival in free agency, and when guys would decline dinner dates with each other before intense playoff games. Or so we believed.

We didn't need to feign anger. They stole our coach, a guy who sculpted the Showtime Lakers into perennial champions and promised our naïve bunch a return to the glory days. He promised to make Ewing into Kareem, to make our jumbled backcourt (Harper, Starks) into Magic, and almost delivered. We were so close to the NBA crown that we could taste it.

Then Starks happened. The amount of shots he missed is still a confused algorithm. Then the fight for front office hegemony happened. And now, our Dean Smith sat comfortably on the rival bench, intent on snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in another titanic battle.

It was a fierce rivalry, with Riley as the lynchpin. The big men stood underneath the basket, all bent on securing supreme post position. Sweat dripped from uniforms and accessories alike, as bodies leaned, clawed, and pressed underneath the rim to secure as much unoccupied parquet as possible. Familiar foes with similar histories, these players were taught by the same man to unleash as much physical damage on their opponent as possible, akin to heavyweight fighters letting loose tremendous body blows.

Our shooting guard, who caught, drove and released the ball in what seemed to be one fluid motion, now glided towards the basket, his momentum sweeping him into the painted area below.

And we all waited.

Around the city, elder Knick patrons held heads in hands, anticipating another letdown. Kids squirmed down in couch cushions, hoping to witness a brief glimpse of success. Mommies and Daddies with matching "FRAZIER #10" jerseys sat hand-in-hand, hoping to transfer that final shroud of the glory days to their kin.

And then, the unexpected happened. The shot went in.

Utter joy. Unfamiliar chaos. Crash Bandicoot dancing in the streets.

It was an ugly victory. We hated them and they hated us. But this time, we got the best of them.

Knicks 78. Heat 77.

The Audacity to Hope: The Story of the ’99 Knicks (Part 1)

We had no business being there.

It was a season to forget for most, one miscast among a decade of supremacy and legitimacy for a league that had once feared expulsion. Money rained down from sponsors, consumers, and television networks into the hands of the league's glowering tyrant, a media maven whose sanguine expression hid a more sinister disposition. This sport, once dismissed by Madison Avenue because of its inability to take root in the national myth was now being embraced by these same white collar types, men eager to market a new American hero in the image of their watershed creation, one Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

This team was an ugly team, one riddled with eccentric personalities and wayward castoffs. For years they had played villain to the hero, the archetypal Legion of Doom to the championed Justice League (Bulls). The de facto leader (mostly due to tenure) was a much maligned center, a man whose career was unfortunately tethered to the success of this team, his team. Over the previous summer, he was at the center (no pun intended) of the league's one unsightly blemish of the decade, a work stoppage that pit he and other talented (mostly black) players against the league's dominant (and mostly white) oligarchy of officials and executives. Standing in proxy for the league's interests was the phantom menace, Mr. David Stern, an evil genius with a bevy of resources and tactical devices at his disposal. Stern quickly asserted his dominance and dismissed the disorganized collective of million dollar slaves, crushing the ill-timed revolt.

But there were many onlookers angered by the proceedings carried on by these men paid to play the game that they loved and those select few capitalists that owned their rights. They wanted to see the game of basketball, unrestricted by litigation and manufactured "good ole boy" loyalties, captured in an effervescent array of grandeur by standard definition cameras, and (if necessary) presented neatly to them by the network synonymous with Seinfeld, Friends, and the widely popular "Roundball Rock". They wanted fewer distractions. They wanted to see the next Jordan. But our center and his NBAPA cronies represented gratuitous chaos. And they hated him for it.

No doubt the smell of defeat singed his nostrils. But he was too proud to show it. His former coach fled the Big Apple for sunnier skies, and a younger, meeker – less experienced – teacher replaced him. Younger centers, more agile and spry than he, fought constantly for their share of his reputation. Older centers, those of his generation, had owned him for his entire professional career. And after more than a decade of carrying the hopes of a city on his shoulders, Ewing's knees finally began to give way.

The coach of this ragtag bunch was a young professional, a guy seeking to elude the shadow of his former boss and to shake the notion that he was a mere B-O-Y coaching a man's game. He carried with him a pure shooter, a Christian in word and deed that sank jumpers and guarded perimeter superstars with aplomb. The other wing boasted a real hothead, suspended by the league only a year prior for choking his head coach following an intense practice. He wore decorative braids (a hairstyle unknown to most NBA spectators and worn only by he and a young guard from Philadelphia) and seemed to always sport a scowl, almost relishing in his reputation as a crazy man. An undersized big controlled the low block. Once a man known for his great leaping ability, it seemed as if this pudgy forward's newfound wealth sucked the athleticism right out of his game. A Heisman recipient and a waiver wire castoff shared duties at the point, and a young, wiry understudy (the new sort that frustrated Ewing) patrolled the paint and spelled the franchise center for increasingly longer stretches of game time.

Ewing, Houston, Sprewell, Johnson, Ward, Childs, Camby. Van Gundy.

We had no business being there. But we...were...there.