So Willis Reed has been up at West Point hanging with the current Knicks this week. They were reporting that the other night, the coaches showed a film of Willis as a Knick to the team, I'm pretty sure it was the one where he beat up the entire Laker team. That he did that was probably the reason the Lakers went out and got Wilt. But it's an amazing piece of tape if you can find it. Beyond that, they might have shown all those highlights from his MVP season, as well as the two titles, which should have been 4, but Willis was hurt a bunch, and Mike Riordan stepped on the out of bounds line on his game winning drive against Baltimore in the playoffs one year. Just an incredible Knick and his was still and easily the greatest of all Knick teams. If you saw them, you can understand why these last 4 decades have been so ponderously suboptimal.
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I can remember being a kid and watching an interview with Willis after the Game 7 win in 1970. He said he was so thrilled to win a championship because he didn't know if he woukd ever win another one. And my youthful mine though: how is that possible, this team is so good, they keep winning for years. Yeah right.
I remember as kid, standing at the bus stop on the morning I found out we got Earl Monroe thinking it would be unfair to the rest of the league.
And they should have won some more titles.
I lost a bet because I didn't believe someone in my class when he told me about the Monroe trade, so bet him that it was bs.
Monroe had killed us in the past, then totally sublimated his game to share the ball.
I can recall going to a Sunday afternoon playoff game with my dad on a snowy April day (I was shocked that he was willing to drive in that weather); it was either '71 or '72. The Knicks beat the then Bullets to take a 2-0 edge in the series. Monroe was hobbling around the court and I foolishly though the series was over. Nope.
That taught me to never count a team out, no matter what, until the series is over.
That was the series we lost because Riordan stepped out of bounds.
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