We’re in the home stretch, folks.
September brings a bunch of things. School for many young people (it was personally August for me up in State College), the start of all forms of football, the stretch run of the MLB season, and the end of a hot summer.
For us here at P&T, all it means is that a new basketball season is right around the corner. Before you know it, training camp will commence in a matter of days, and the Knicks will take the floor for the first time as defending champs in the preseason on October 5.
It’s been an offseason of celebration, but also one of reflection. A reflection on the long journey to get here.
53 years is an extremely long time. As we count down the final weeks to the season opener on October 20, we begin a five-part series chronicling some of the dumbest games, moments, and decisions of the past 53 years that slowly made us all think this day would never come… until it did.
Part I will focus on the downfall of the 1970s dynasty that served as the organization’s standard-bearer, while poor front office decisions and injuries derailed any chance at a soft landing through the late 1980s. We’ll then gradually go through the 1990s in Part II, the dreadful 2000s in Part III, the turbulent 2010s in Part IV, and cap it off with the Leon Rose era in Part V.
With that, let’s begin.
The Downfall of the Golden Era Knicks (1974-80)
Every single championship-caliber operation has to disassemble. It’s a fact of life. Championship windows do not last forever, and teams will have to eventually say goodbye to players who shaped an entire generation.
Time and time again, teams are presented with the reality of either retaining these aging pieces into their sunsets and risking a prolonged stint at the bottom or making the difficult decisions to trade them as they exit their primes at the risk of angering everyone. This is going to happen to the very Knicks we love so much; it’s inevitable.
The reverberations of the highly successful early 1970s Knicks began not too long after that second championship.
Willis Reed, the captain and two-time Finals MVP, played just 19 games after the 1973 NBA Finals. He was only 31 years old, but a body that had slowly deteriorated over the last several years finally gave out. He played 15 of the first 22 games in 1973-74 before missing the next 56 games. The big man returned for the final four regular-season games and the postseason, but was a shell of himself due to a debilitating knee injury.
He’d refuse to undergo another procedure that June, calling it quits on his career. He’s one of many guys whose bodies failed him, and you often wonder what would’ve happened if he’d played in an era when athletes are healthier than ever because of advances in sports science.
Also retiring that offseason were Dave DeBusschere and Jerry Lucas. The former was still an All-Star and All-Defense recipient, but he hung them up ahead of his 34th birthday. Lucas was already diminished after his brilliant 1972 season and slowly fizzled out of the franchise’s plans by the end of the 1973-74 season.
Without Reed, DeBusschere, and Lucas, the Knicks finished 40-42 in 1974-75 and were swept in the first round by the Houston Rockets. They fell even further in the following seasons, failing to make the playoffs in consecutive seasons until the great Red Holzman was next out the door, stepping down in 1977.
Reed would replace him as head coach and lead the Knicks back to the playoffs in 1978, but soon into the following season, we learned why it’s never a good idea to hire franchise legends into leadership posts. The Captain was fired 14 games into the 1978-79 season and replaced with Holzman again, who’d serve another few seasons as the rest of the guard fizzled out.
A week before that 1977-78 season, Clyde Frazier was shipped to Cleveland for Jim Cleamons. A franchise icon was shipped out as his career faded for a journeyman, a move that still irks Clyde to this day. The final remnant of the Golden Era faded away in 1980, when Earl “The Pearl” Monroe retired at age 36 due to persistent knee injuries. One era of Knicks basketball was dead, but maybe it didn’t have to end that way.
Declining An Opportunity To Purchase Julius Erving’s Contract (1976)
You may recall this already being mentioned in my piece on the worst trades in Knicks history. This, of course, wasn’t a trade, but should’ve been. It’s hands-down the worst decision in franchise history.
When the Nets were among the teams chosen to join the NBA after the ABA merger in 1976, the Knicks demanded that they pay a fee of $4.8 million over 10 years for encroaching on their territorial rights, a request that was sustained by the NBA alongside their $3.2 million fee for joining the league. In total, the Nets had to come up with $8 million just to exist. That’s over $46 million combined in 2026 dollars.
That’s a lot of money for an NBA team in the 1970s, when franchises were commonly worth just seven figures, so the Nets were looking for any reason to not pay some of that cash, prompting them to make an extremely tough decision.
Dr. J made $350,000 during this time, but wanted a renegotiation. As such, the Nets were willing to offload his salary and offered him to the Knicks, then owned by the Graham Paige Corporation and ran by Eddie Donovan in the front office.
The Knicks said no. They chose a few million over a future Hall of Famer.
Philadelphia purchased Erving for $3 million, and the rest is history. The Knicks let a rival get the best incoming ABA talent available and watched him lead the Sixers to a championship in 1983 while spending over a decade as a top-five player in the game. That playoff appearance in 1978? Ended by Erving’s Sixers. As was the one in 1983.
If the Knicks make this move and look past the dollar signs, they’d suddenly pair the aging Frazier and Monroe with one of the greatest small forwards to ever play the game. They were gifted the soft landing that no aging dynasty gets, and just declined it for money.
Trading Maurice Lucas for Truck Robinson (1982)
Another one from the worst trades article, the Knicks traded the prime years of a pretty damn good player for an aging, regressing player at the same position in a one-for-one deal.
The New Jersey Nets sent them a 28-year-old Maurice Lucas as a form of compensation for signing Ray Williams in free agency in 1981. In his one year in New York, Lucas averaged 15.8 points and 11.3 rebounds while shooting 50.3% from the field. It was his best overall season since he was in Portland, but the Knicks never saw him as a long-term option, shipping him to Phoenix for Robinson one year later.
The deal made sense at the time, as he was even more productive than Lucas the season prior, but he hit a hard regression in his age-31 season in 1982-83 and only lasted two seasons in New York, flaming out by age 33. He would hear it from the fans, being nicknamed “Dump Truck” for his startling fall-off.
Meanwhile, Lucas made his fifth All-Star team in his first year in Phoenix as part of a second prime that slowly dissipated a few years later. While Lucas would only have 2-3 years of All-Star-level talent post-trade, it was a helluva lot better than Robinson.
Trading Away The Right To Pick Mark Price (1984)
This was actually something I had no idea about before researching this article, and it might be a bit nitpicky, but the Knicks missed out on a perfect point guard companion for Ewing to sign a role player in 1984.
The NBA was still in the free agent compensation era, so the Knicks had to pony up assets to sign Pat Cummings on June 27, 1984. Ultimately, it wasn’t much: just a 1985 third-round pick and a 1986 second-round pick. The way we view picks nowadays, it’s no biggie.
Except… they could’ve used one of those picks. The Knicks were bad in both of these seasons, but especially so in 1986, which handed the Mavericks the No. 25 pick in the 1986 NBA Draft, the top pick of the second round. They used that pick to select future four-time All-Star point guard Mark Price.
Price would ultimately be flipped for a 1989 2nd, which allowed him to spend the next decade as a big-time foe in the Eastern Conference with the Cavs. He had four top-10 MVP finishes, was an early 3-point innovator, and consistently dished out eight assists a game for his entire prime. Imagine if the Knicks had him at point guard alongside prime Ewing.
Cummings was no slouch for the Knicks, having his best season in New York with a young Ewing underneath him in 1984-85, but injuries cost him 80 total games over the next two seasons as he dwindled into a backup behind the franchise’s next star. Woof.
The Rise and Fall of Bernard King (1985)
Who’s the best Knick ever? I still lean toward Clyde Frazier for the two championships and the personality that he still radiates to this day, but there’s a case to be made for a few people. Patrick Ewing, Jalen Brunson, Willis Reed, etc. One name that’s mentioned as a great Knick, but never in GOAT convos, is Bernard King. What he does have a case for, however, is having the greatest peak in Knicks history.
Acquired for a damn good player in his own right (Micheal Ray Richardson), King got down-ballot MVP votes in 1983 while leading the Knicks to the playoffs in the first year under Hubie Brown. He leveled up his game in 1983-84, finishing runner-up in MVP voting to Larry Bird while single-handedly dragging the Knicks to Game 7 against the powerhouse Celtics in the second round. In 12 postseason games that year, he averaged 34.8 points per game.
He was, pound for pound, the best player in the world the following season. He’d have a few multi-week absences with minor injuries, but he entered late March 1985 averaging over 32 points a night, a mark that would lead the NBA and all of Knicks history. He was well on his way to competing for the first MVP award in franchise history, but it all came to a screeching halt when he blew out his knee against the Kansas City Kings on March 23.
Torn ACL. Torn meniscus. Thigh bone fracture. It was a gruesome injury, one that few (if any) players had ever come back from. Doctors thought his career was over, despite being in his athletic prime.
It was a gut punch for the Knicks, who were already in a horrible season with a 24-47 record when King got injured. It would result in the team drafting Ewing, the next great franchise star, but there was absolutely a world where Ewing would get to play with King, as the even lottery system likely sealed the Knicks’ fate the moment they missed the playoffs.
Bernard King was poised to be the Tommy John of ACL surgeries; however. He eventually returned two seasons later, but he didn’t look the same in six games to finish the 1986-87 season, prompting the Knicks to release him after the season. That was probably shortsighted, as he put together four really great years for the Washington Bullets immediately after.
What could’ve been…
The 1987 NBA Draft Fiasco (1986-87)
When I called Mark Price a big-time foe, it was at least partially facetious. He played on a good Cavs team for a long time, but the Knicks lagged behind the Cavs with their Ewing revival, and the two teams only squared off in the playoffs once: a Knicks sweep in 1995, as Price’s career wound down.
Scottie Pippen is an all-time Knicks foe. He might not be on the Mount Rushmore with Michael Jordan, Reggie Miller, and whatever other flavor of Knick killer you like (my picks are Haliburton and Alonzo Mourning), but he’s a Hall of Famer who routinely beat the Knicks’ butt. His lone playoff series as the lead option went New York’s way in 1994, but he served as the perfect wingman to MJ’s dominance across the 90s.
He could’ve been a Knick, you know.
On November 12, 1986, the Knicks swapped their first-round picks in 1987 with the Seattle SuperSonics to get Gerald Henderson, a former Celtic and father of the best player on the worst team in NBA history. A rebuilding Knicks team appreciated his consistency over 60 games through the rest of the season, but he was waived six games into the following season, exactly 367 days later.
That pick swap was pretty ill-advised considering the team had been among the NBA’s worst for a few years now, but they believed in their young star to help make tangible progress in 1987 along with a smattering of veterans, which included Jawann Oldham, who was acquired for a 1987 Denver first-round pick just two weeks earlier.
As you might’ve guessed, the Knicks sucked again in 1987, losing 58 games and receiving the No. 5 pick in the still-young lottery format. The Denver pick they traded? No. 8. They traded two top-10 picks for Gerald Henderson and Jawann Oldham, who combined to play six games for the team after that season. Great stuff from Gordon Stirling.
Pippen was selected by the SuperSonics at No. 5 overall, but was traded on draft night to the Bulls… for the 8th pick, a 1988 2nd, and a 1989 pick swap. In a cruel fate of irony, the two teams that got their top-10 picks from the Knicks in lopsided deals for crummy veterans engineered an all-time draft night swap, even if one side feels quite resentful about only getting Olden Polynice out of it. If the Knicks had just simply passed on Oldham, they could’ve been the Bulls in this situation.
If they had kept both picks? Maybe instead of Polynice, they drafted Horace Grant (No. 10) or even… Reggie Miller (No. 11). Imagine that. You either could’ve taken the legs out of a future dynasty by taking Grant and Pippen from the Bulls or rewritten the 90s in a different way by taking Reggie.
Silver lining, they at least made a good pick with Mark Jackson at No. 18, but he was out the door by 1992.
Johnny Newman Can’t Force Game 7 (1989 Second Round)
A heartbreaking end to a game against the Bulls in the playoffs? If I had a nickel…
The Knicks won fewer than 30 games in three consecutive seasons from 1985-87, but broke through by sneaking into the postseason at 39-43 in 1988, even if it meant losing in four games to Larry Bird and the Celtics. The following year, the team leveled up even more as Ewing ascended to become one of the best players in basketball, finishing fourth in MVP voting. The Knicks won 52 games and rolled past the Charles Barkley Sixers in the first round to get their first crack at the new look Bulls.
A team they’d be very familiar with over the next decade, Chicago was still a few years off from the otherworldly dominance that made them all-time legends, but their success against the Knicks really began here. Jordan scored 34 in Game 1 to steal it at MSG, and while a big game from Ewing evened it at one game a piece, the Bulls took both at home to push the Knicks to the brink. After winning Game 5, one objective remained. Steal Game 6 in Chicago and get a chance to close it out at the Mecca.
It was dead even in the first half, but Chicago had opened up a seven-point lead after three quarters. Into the final minute, it seemed firmly in their grasp. Leading by four with nine seconds left, the Bulls just needed to play smart on defense, make free throws, and they’d win it. That didn’t go to plan, as the Knicks got a gift from the heavens when Trent Tucker buried a three with six seconds left and was fouled, tying the game on a four-point play.
On the other end, Jordan drew a foul on a mid-range jumper with four seconds left, sinking both free throws and ending his day with 40 points. On the ensuing inbound, some atrocious full-court defense from the Bulls gave Johnny Newman, a 33.8% shooter from distance (a solid mark at the time), a wide-open three in transition to win the game and force Game 7.
He missed it. Bulls win. The season is over.
As many of us know, this would only be the start of the heartbreak that the GOAT and his Bulls would inflict on the orange and blue.
Rick Pitino’s Resignation (1989)
A decade that began with the final light fading from the Golden Age of Knicks basketball ended with a light at the end of the tunnel. Ewing, Jackson, and Charles Oakley were at the forefront of the next era of basketball in New York.
And they had done it with a 37-year-old born-and-bred New Yorker at the helm. Rick Pitino made the NCAA Tournament with Boston University in the early-80s, spent two years under Hubie Brown on the Knicks’ coaching staff, and led an upstart Providence bunch to the Final Four in 1987 before landing his dream job: head coach of the New York Knicks.
His first two years represented progress and the burgeoning of a new force in the Eastern Conference. He was young, the team was young, what could go wrong?
What went wrong is that Pitino handed in his letter of resignation on May 30, 1989, just 11 days after the season ended in Chicago, to return to the college game and coach Kentucky.
A season of optimism to end a turbulent decade ended with a big question: why would Coach Pitino leave? Especially for a college team in Kentucky’s situation. Once a collegiate powerhouse, the program was in utter shambles after receiving NCAA sanctions impermissable payment to recruits and entrance exam fraud. They weren’t even postseason eligible for the next two seasons! Any rebuild would take way longer; who would sign up for this with a great NBA job?
As has unfortunately been the case all too often in franchise history, it was a case of dysfunction.
Pitino and Knicks general manager Al Bianchi hated each other. When Pitino flirted with the Kentucky job that May, something that would admittedly irk any executive, Bianchi showed no intent to keep him. Pitino would later say that the relationship had reached a boiling point, and that he would end up taking the Kentucky job because he couldn’t coexist with Bianchi.
In a twist of fate, Bianchi would be canned just two years later by Hollywood producer and new president of Paramount (who oversaw the Knicks), Stanley Jaffe, who allegedly tried to talk Pitino out of visiting Kentucky in 1989 on behalf of ownership (then Gulf and Western) by telling him, “You need to trust me”. Pitino would later say that, had he known Jaffe would be taking over the franchise shortly, he wouldn’t have taken the Kentucky job.
The delay in said move caused the disastrous tenure of Stu Jackson over the next two seasons that saw the franchise move backwards. When the house was cleaned in 1991, the Knicks ultimately came out on top by getting Pat Riley to elevate them to the next level.
But, as we’ve come to know over these past 53 years, stupid moments like having your head coach on a 52-win team go back to college for a program that got sanctioned to hell is just the tip of the iceberg.
