The Knicks Get Their Moment in "The Last Dance"
Ask any Knicks fan about "The Dunk," and even those that weren't a fan (or alive) at the time of John Starks' famous slam "over" Michael Jordan in the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals usually have at least a passing familiarity with that moment.
So how hilarious — and quite frankly, Knicks-y — was it that, in the sixth episode of ESPN's Jordan documentary "The Last Dance" on Sunday night, one of the greatest moments in Knicks lore was briefly shown before a commercial break, not even having any mention of it as "The Dunk" during the program?
That's pretty much the life of a Knicks fan, and especially of the 1990s Knicks, whose primary purpose was (as noted in the documentary) to beat the everliving hell out of Jordan every time they met him (without actually winning on the scoreboard), emulating the late-80s Bad Boy Pistons teams that were Jordan's final hump to get over on the way to his first title of his first three-peat. In fact, the words from former Knicks coach Pat Riley in the documentary could have just as easily come from former Bad Boys coach Chuck Daly's mouth:
"When I was coaching the Knicks I told the team, 'You can't let him dunk on you,'" Riley said. "You gotta knock him down. If we don't meet him at the rim, he's going to embarrass you."
Patrick Ewing even took it a step further, remarking, "We hated each other. It was extremely physical. It wasn't really a foul until you drew blood."
Perhaps the '90s Knicks, more than ever with the release of this documentary, can serve as an inspiration to the current team, top-to-bottom. How great would it be to hear David Aldridge remark about the current team the same way he did in the doc when he said, "without question, it was this incredibly tough, motivated, and well-coached Knicks team"? Even without a championship, a Knicks team can still be beloved beyond measure just for working hard and playing sensible basketball.
But back in the general NBA world, highlights for contemporary Knicks fans — "The Dunk," Allan Houston's runner, Larry Johnson's 4-point play, the 1994 and 1999 Finals runs, the 2012-13 season, Linsanity — are mere footnotes in some other team's NBA story. Still, though, they're important and special nonetheless to the fans that, for whatever reason, just can't get enough of the team that has never really been able to get over the hump since their last title in 1973.
Hell, even the forgettable and horrible moments give Knicks fans sort of a sick pleasure in reliving years later. All the more reason to carry decades-long grudges towards certain teams and players. There's perhaps no better example than Charles Smith's repeated attempts to score one bucket on the Bulls and give the Knicks the win in Game 5 of the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals, also displayed prominently for the world to see in "The Last Dance."
Moments like that make it pretty hard to contest one of Jordan's money statements about the Knicks in the doc: "Mentally, they were a hard-working team, but I firmly believe that when we were playing at our best and they were playing at their best, we were a much better team."
But even with the Knicks getting the treatment that most of Jordan's felled foes have gotten in the documentary — a polite eulogy after their failures to unseat the GOAT were unearthed for the world to see all over again — the doc took a special turn to highlight Jordan's would-be final regular season stop at Madison Square Garden in March 1998 at the beginning of the fifth episode.
"Knowing, 'This is the last dance, unless something actually changes,'" Jordan said. "I went into Madison Square Garden, this is the last time I'm going to be playing here. And that was my favorite place to play. I went back and grabbed an old pair of Jordan 1s — it was the first shoe I wore in the Garden, so this was gonna be the last shoe, being that this was gonna be the last time I played in the Garden."
This was the only time in Jordan's "Last Dance" that he gave that treatment to an opposing team and arena — not just for love of the Knicks and their fans, either, but also due to the fact that the technology of the Jordan 1s was just a bit off from the Jordan 13s that MJ wore during his final Bulls season.
"By halftime my feet are bleeding, but I'm having a good game, I don't want to take them off." Forty-two points later, Jordan and his bloody feet would bury the Knicks, 102-89, in Chicago's 45th win of the 1997-98 campaign on the way to their second three-peat; just another memorable Knicks footnote in the tale of the greatest to ever play the game.
