Quote of the Day (The Knicks’ Mike Brown, on Being ‘Linus’ to Jalen Brunson’s ‘Blanket’)

“What's the dude's name on Snoopy? Linus? He’s got a blanket. I'm Linus, and Jalen [Brunson] is my blanket. He helps me relax throughout the course of a game. That’s what great players do. They keep you poised, they make the game easier for everyone else and they help you get through a stretch.”—New York Knicks coach Mike Brown, on star guard and team sparkplug Jalen Brunson, quoted by James L. Edwards III, “With Brunson Leading the Knicks, The Good Old Days Are Here Now,” The New York Times, May 12, 2026

No less an authority than Walt Frazier has called Jalen Brunson “sagacious” and “tenacious,” even likening him to teammate and fellow Basketball Hall of Famer Willis Reed in his team-first orientation and heart.

Frazier and sportscaster Stephen A. Smith have even gone on record as saying that, if Brunson leads his team to the NBA Championship that has eluded the New York Knicks for a half century, he will rank among the all-time great franchise players.

If you’re like me, you groan when you read statements like this. First, let’s get through these final two rounds of the playoffs (which have become so long that they should be called “tournaments” instead), where potential obstacles loom in the form of injuries (will OG Anunoby be himself again after that right hamstring strain?) and the eventual champion of the NBA West.

Even so, long-suffering fans can applaud what Brunson has done to date: a thoroughgoing demolition of the Philadelphia 76ers (not just a sweep, some wags had it, but a “deep clean”), and long term, making Madison Square Garden a place of relevance and electricity again after years in the doldrums.

Edwards cites important numbers to put it all in perspective:

“Since Brunson came to New York, the Knicks have won at least 45 games every season, including 50-plus wins the last three campaigns. The Knicks won 45 games in a season just one time between 2002 and Brunson’s arrival. New York has reached the second round of the playoffs every year since Brunson donned the blue-and-orange. The Knicks made it out of the first round just once between 2001 and 2022.”

Brunson creates space with his movement off the ball, makes few mistakes, and is positively deadly in the clutch. Moreover, he’s done all of this while standing a mere 6 ft. 2 inches—undersize among the NBA’s behemoths, but a beacon of hope for us normal-size people.

(The image of Jalen Brunson accompanying this post was taken on Apr. 26, 2023 by Erik Drost.)

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, on How He’s Using His Time Not Watching the 76ers in the Playoffs)

“The time I haven't wasted watching the NBA has allowed me to start taking piano lessons and to polish off the first volume of Shelby Foote’s epic ‘The Civil War.’ I am already up to Antietam and pretty much in control of the A major chord. I know that Robert E. Lee wasn’t much of a strategist, that McClellan was a little old scaredy-cat and that everybody persistently underestimated Honest Abe. What’s more, I can now play ‘Shall We Gather by the River?’"—Humor columnist Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: The Joy of My Team Missing the NBA Playoffs,” The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 26-27, 2025

Houston Rocket fans will undoubtedly want to employ the same strategy—and, unless a huge upset is pulled off in this coming round against the Boston Celtics, so will the Knick faithful like myself.

Quote of the Day (Dr. J, on the Origin of His Flying Dunks)

“There's a sensation associated with flying. For me it started as a kid, in the park, jumping out of swings. Right next to my housing projects we had swings, and they were in a huge sandbox. It was white sand. So when you came home dirty, you had sand on you. There was ultimately a fence out there, and I always worried if I went too far I'd hit the fence. I always found a way to land. In the early days, when I was six, seven, eight, it was like a tuck-and-roll. I got to the point where I could jump out of the swing, land and nail it, like in the Olympics, when they do the vault. Height never bothered me. It was early training, and I didn't even know it.”—NBA Hall of Famer Julius Erving, quoted in Mark Bechtel, “Doctor, Reveal Thyself,” Sports Illustrated, June 17, 2013

At 75 years old—the age he attained yesterday—Julius Erving is a long way from that little kid on the swings. 

But, for those of us lucky enough to behold and gasp at his greatness in the Seventies and Eighties, he remains the prototype for so many electrifying players to follow, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Isaiah Thomas, and Dominique Wilkins.

Call him what you like—artist, acrobat, magician—but to see him once with the ball in his hand, torqueing his body midair on the way to the basket, means never forgetting what he meant to so many of us in our youth.

(For a fine summary in different moments in the career of the great small forward who so influenced pro basketball, see this 2008 post from David Friedman’s “20 Second Timeout” blog on “Great Julius Erving Stories.”)

Quote of the Day (Larry Bird, on His Drive for Perfection)

“I don't know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody—somewhere—was practicing more than me.”—NBA Hall of Famer Larry Bird with Bob Ryan, Drive: The Story of My Life (1990)

The image accompanying this post, of the Boston Celtics’ Larry Bird in the 1985 NBA Playoffs Game 2 vs. the Detroit Pistons, was taken by Steve Lipofsky www.Basketballphoto.com.

Quote of the Day (Molly McCloskey, on How the Detroit Pistons Became ‘The Bad Boys’)

“The moniker [“The Bad Boys”] had gained traction after CBS used it during a 1988 halftime feature about the [Detroit] Pistons and it got picked up by the league for its end-of-the-season video on the team. The players embraced it. Detroiters loved the Bad Boys with a crazy love, but just about everywhere else they were reviled. I still meet men who, when they learn of my connection, hiss, ‘I hated that team.’ The Bad Boys were extremely physical—some say dirty, not averse to provoking hard fouls or provoking brawls—and were viewed by many as undeserving upstarts who brought something ugly to the sport. It wasn't just the will to win but the way the won, the emphasis on grind over dazzle….My father’s [Pistons general manager Jack McCloskey] truculence and competitiveness clearly set a tone. Years earlier, when Pat Riley accidentally broke the coach Stan Albeck’s nose during a casual three-on-three game in L.A., my father had wanted to fight him over it. At sixty-two, my father went one-on-one with [Pistons power forward Rick] Mahorn, to see if Mahorn was ready to come back after an injury. ‘I was like, this old m-r? I’ kicked his ass,’ Mahorn told me recently, laughing. ‘But he was out there playing hard.’”—Novelist, short-story writer, and memoirist Molly McCloskey, “My Father’s Court,” The New Yorker, June 3, 2024

Thirty-five years ago today, hampered by injuries to Magic Johnson and Byron Scott and with 42-year-old center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar playing what proved to be his final game, the “Showtime” era, for all intents and purposes, came to an end, as the Los Angeles Lakers were swept in the NBA finals.

The upstarts who dethroned them, the Detroit Pistons, were genuinely talented, with stars like Isaiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, and Dennis Rodman displaying enough skill to end up in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, Molly McCloskey insists in her short New Yorker memoir of her father, Jack McCloskey. 

But I admit that I am among the tribe who would have told the author, “I hated that team,” for its on-court mayhem.

I had no idea of the role played by “Trader Jack” McCloskey (he got the nickname through 30 transactions in 13 years that built the team’s nucleus) in creating the two-time champions until I read his daughter’s article. I had even less idea of the cost to his and her personal lives—a sense of distance and ambivalence surely shared by other children of sports legends whose attention is continually diverted from their homes.

Mark Kreidler of ESPN.com has estimated that the divorce rate among professional athletes ranges from 60 to 80 percent. I imagine that it’s similarly high for sports executives, many of whom are, like Jack McCloskey, former pro athletes themselves.

Extensive time away from families and infidelity loom as major dangers in these marriages. Children end up collateral damage in these situations.

Jack McCloskey (who died seven years ago, at age 91, of Alzheimer’s Disease) was an absentee father during, and especially after, his divorce, Molly makes plain. On the infrequent occasions when he did appear in her life post-divorce, what he told her tended to be more gruff exhortations to fix her own basketball game than expressions of love.

Understandably, then, Molly was bewildered by, even resented, the tight bond that her father developed with the players he built into champions. The online version of this article states that the Pistons were Jack’s “Second Family,” but I couldn’t help feeling that they were his substitute family.

Only after Jack left professional sports, and as he gradually descended into the mental darkness of Alzheimer’s, did he and Molly draw closer.

With her clear-eyed, unsentimental reminiscence, the daughter shows that she is as expert in assembling the pieces of a complicated relationship into a fascinating whole as her father was in putting together disparate athletes like Thomas, Dumars, Rodman, Mahorn, and Bill Laimbeer into a rough-and-tumble band of brothers.

Quote of the Day (Scott Cacciola, on Steph Curry, 3-Point Ninja Warrior)

“[Golden State Warriors guard Steph] Curry does not merely shoot 3-pointers. No, he makes them with three defenders draped all over him like a cheap tablecloth. He beats buzzers and crushes hope. He drains 3s on the run and from the general vicinity of the food court. He smiles and dances and points and preens, turning each field-goal attempt into a telenovela.”— Sports and entertainment reporter Scott Cacciola, “When Curry Gets Going, Great Things Come in 3s,” The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2021

For a long time, I’ve felt that Steph Curry has had a Babe Ruth-like effect on how his game is played, taking a long-range weapon available for years but using it in a uniquely powerful way.

Curry breezed past Ray Allen’s prior career record for three-point shots made back in 2021, and since then his total has reached 3,642. The closest current active players who trail him are James Harden (2,890) and Damian Lillard (2,535), and, at 34 and 33 years old, respectively, they are not much younger than the 35-year-old Curry and likely won’t have enough time to surpass his him.

Then, on Wednesday night, Curry managed to top even himself, becoming the first player in NBA history to convert seven or more 3-pointers in four consecutive games.

Just before the Warriors game against the Los Angeles Clippers, their All-Star guard left the crowd gasping in even more disbelief than usual when, with one hand, he hit a shot over 100 feet. From the opposite tunnel.

The Warriors have needed every one of Curry’s long-range buckets: Even with their win last night over the Utah Jazz, they are tenth in the Western Conference at 27-26, a far cry from their pace (including four NBA championships) under Steve Kerr this past decade.

With Klay Thompson playing inconsistently enough to be benched for the first time in a decade, with Draymond Green often unable to control himself at critical junctures, and with Chris Paul sidelined with a hand injury until after the All-Star break, Curry has had perhaps more obstacles to overcome this year than ever before.

The fact that the team remains competitive night to night is all the more tribute to this true ninja Warrior.

(For a comical take on how Curry makes non-Warriors fans feel, I recommend this post from Boston Celtics diehard “Greenie” on the blog “Barstool Sports,” with a headline that says it all: “Steph Curry Will Not Stop Ruining My Life.”)

Flashback, May 1973: Knicks Reach Peak of Greatness—and Start a Half-Century of Frustration

Fifty years ago this week, the New York Knicks defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 102-93, taking their NBA championship series four games to one—their second title in four years.

I wrote about the squad in a prior post from a decade ago. But I find that with the passage of time, additional poignancy accrues to this achievement, and more can be written about the larger meaning of it.

The victory secured the Hall of Fame credentials of coach Red Holzman, as well as several starters from that squad: Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere, Willis Reed, and Jerry Lucas.

Ecstatic fans like me couldn’t imagine at the time that this was a summit the team would not reach again for 50 years and counting, as I write this.

We were reminded of it, brutally, this week, as the Knicks were beaten in the second round of the playoffs by the Miami Heat. (One consolation: thank God it didn’t happen at Madison Square Garden, on Wednesday, the 50^th anniversary of that earlier victory, with Frazier himself in the stands, doing his best to cast whatever residual magic he had left on Jalen Brunson, Julius Randle and Co.)

Particularly over the last two decades, the teams have been so woebegone that longtime fans were just grateful for the team to be competitive, let alone that it would have a championship run.

It was all so different back in the early Seventies.

For the Knicks players, their success in ’73 meant that their title in 1970 was no fluke; that they had avenged their loss to the Lakers in the 1972 Championship Series; and that they deserved to be considered not just among the best of their time, but eminently worthy of emulation through their team-oriented style.

For Holzman, it meant the vindication of his trade the prior year for Earl Monroe, who, many observers wondered would be able to blend his style with backcourt partner Frazier, as well as sweet revenge in the Conference Finals against nemesis Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics president and GM given to off-court gamesmanship to rattle foes (like changing the Knicks locker room when they were visiting for games in the Boston Garden). Holzman savored the fact that the Knicks became the first team to win an elimination game in the Celtics’ home court.

For New York fans, the Knicks’ triumph was something far greater, analogous to what Pittsburgh Steelers championships were about to accomplish: boosting the spirits of a Rust Belt metropolis badly in need of it.

In the early Seventies, New York City often seemed nothing like the “Fun City” that Mayor John Lindsay proclaimed it, with crime, population lost to the suburbs, graffiti-strewn subways, and strained finances that would plunge the city toward financial crisis in the middle of the decade. And that was on top of other strains that New Yorkers experienced like other Americans in those years: the Vietnam War and Watergate.

In contrast, the Knicks gave New Yorkers something that not only distracted them from the outside world, but that even united them in pride for a team that sacrificed individual goals for the good of the whole. Fans paid attention not just to the more celebrated ones, like the Rhodes scholar Bradley, the indomitable Reed, and the too-cool-for-school Frazier, but even role players.

(Several weeks ago, I astounded a close relative when I mentioned one of these from the 1973 squad, Harthorne Wingo. My relative insisted that I must be making the name up. Nope!)

Back then, it really was like the title of a book and documentary about the team from several years ago: “When the Garden Was Eden.”

They’d never won a championship before hiring Holzman as head coach. They haven’t won one since he left the sidelines, either.

In reading about the aftermath of the Knicks’ second title, I couldn’t help but wonder if I were seeing something similar this week in the case of the squad that, perhaps more than any other over the last decade, reminds me of them on their emphasis on defense and hitting the open man: the Golden State Warriors.

With the Warriors’ loss to the Los Angeles Lakers only a few hours after the Miami Heat ushered this year’s Knicks squad out of the playoffs, the resemblance to Holzman’s team suddenly hitting its twilight years seems hard to miss.

Just as Holzman had to deal with the sudden departures of injured and aging veterans Reed, DeBusschere, and Lucas after the ’73-’74 season, Warriors coach Steve Kerr must now contend with 38-year-old Draymond Green, 35-year-old Steph Curry, and 33-year-old and injury-plagued Klay Thompson in the last stretch of their career.

And, just as Holzman found in the late ‘70s that highly touted young players like Ray Williams and Micheal Ray Richardson couldn’t really take the place of his former Knick core, Kerr must be wondering after his team’s second-round exit when Jordan Poole, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kuminga are ready to take the baton from Curry, Thompson, and Green.

I could not conclude this post without words of praise for Red Holzman. The numbers of six of his players, now retired, hang from the rafters of MSG. So does a number associated with their coach: 613, the number of wins he notched in leading the team.

The Knicks coach was glad to see the success of one of his former players, Phil Jackson, as head coach of the Chicago Bulls. But Jackson’s self-created “Zen Master” image was nothing like the modest style of Holzman.

Holzman started by effecting an attitudinal shift when he took over the Knicks. As Frazier put it four decades later: “He cut out all the shenanigans.”

A typical quote of his, in Mort Zachter’s 2019 biography, Red Holzman: The Life and Legacy of a Hall of Fame Basketball Coach, is, “A good team doesn't have any superstars. They fit together, make sacrifices and do things necessary to win."

According to Holzman, there were five essential factors for winning: emotional maturity, the will to win, good fellowship, leadership and alertness.

Ultimately, he focused the team’s attention on fundamentals: Ball movement, teamwork, and spontaneity, culminating in the two “D’s”: Discipline and defense.

Indeed, it’s not so much an image from those years that comes to mind but a sound, a mighty roar from the Garden faithful that came through loud and clear as I listened to games on the radio: “DEEE-fense, DEEE-fense!”

TV Quote of the Day (Carmen Electra, on Dating Dennis Rodman)

“It was definitely an occupational hazard to be Dennis's girlfriend.”—Celebrity Carmen Electra, on her time dating Chicago Bulls power forward Dennis Rodman, featured in the ESPN documentary The Last Dance, Episode 4, original air date Apr. 26, 2020

When it comes to depicting Michael Jordan and the group he famously called “my supporting cast” are concerned, only one writer could depict them in all their complexity: William Shakespeare. And The Bard would have to look beyond the conventional tragedies and comedies he is generally known for, to the “problem plays” of his late period.

The Tempest comes to mind in thinking of the storms threatening to capsize the Chicago Bulls in their 1997-98 season. Jordan is easy to imagine as Prospero, a ruler brimming with old hurts and resentments, who dominates his carefully preserved realm against outside usurpers through an iron will and magical abilities.

But Shakespeare would have to fashion the rudiments of Dennis Rodman from another character: Falstaff, another lord of misrule and virtual law unto himself. Rodman might be more notable for length than girth, but he was as bent on revelry as Prince Hal’s roguish pal, his immense skills leading coach Phil Jackson and the team to barely tolerate his antics. 

I missed the first 2½ hours of The Last Dance, but came in on what may well end up being the comic highlight of the series: Dennis Rodman’s “vacation” in Las Vegas, in the middle of the last season of their legendary championship run, taken when the forward could no longer take being “a model citizen” for the team while Scottie Pippen recuperated from a lengthy injury.

The 48 hours allotted by Jackson to Rodman went longer, as Jordan had correctly predicted. So it fell to His Airness to drag Rodman out of the Sin City hotel room where he was holed up with Ms. Electra. 

Jordan’s comments on what he discovered are hilarious: “We had to go get his ass out of bed. And I'm not gonna say what's in his bed, or where he was, or blah blah blah." But Ms. Electra—perhaps better known for her visual appeal than for her way with words—was, in the quote above, masterfully succinct.

Yeah, I know—there are six more hours to go in The Last Dance. But right now, I have my money on Ms. Electra delivering the comic sound bite for the entire series.

Quote of the Day (Bill Bradley, on Rival John Havlicek, ‘Unselfish and Loyal’)

“For ten years, John Havlicek was my toughest opponent in the biggest rivalry in the league. Night after night he was the epitome of constant motion. He only needed half a step to beat me, which he usually did. He was the quintessential Celtic—unselfish and loyal—and through the players’ union he helped make the game more just by ending the reserve clause. The only thing he loved more than the game was his family. He’ll always be with them."—Bill Bradley, paying tribute to fellow Basketball Hall of Famer John Havlicek (1940-2019), quoted in Matt Dollinger, “NBA Legends Mourn The Death of John Havlicek,” Sports Illustrated, Apr. 28, 2019

This Day in NBA History (Chamberlain Deal Shifts Balance of Power West)

July 8, 1968—With the dominant player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the last half-dozen years deciding to pull up stakes from his Eastern team, the competitive balance in the league shifted decisively in the direction of the Los Angeles Lakers. 

But check that dateline again. It’s not 2008, but 1968. LeBron James wasn’t even born then. No, it’s Wilt Chamberlain I’m talking about. 

Two blockbuster trades occurred in the league in 1968. The one pulled off by the Knicks in December, bringing Dave DeBusschere over from the Pistons, was one of chemistry, as several players (notably Willis Reed) assumed different positions and roles. 

But the Chamberlain trade, sending him away from the Philadelphia 76ers, was more akin to the one bringing Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors, creating a supernova of talent on a team already blessed with All-Stars--and foreshadowing an era when the game's greatest talents had more of a say in both their futures and the fortunes of the major teams. 

The Lakers hadn’t won the NBA finals since the 1953-54 season, when they had been in Minneapolis rather than the City of Angels. They had come agonizingly close with five finals appearances since their move to the coast in 1961, but, even with the likes of All-Stars like Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, had never made it to the promised land. But the old order was about to change with the arrival of Wilt the Stilt.

How he hated that nickname! It was as if it referred only to his athleticism, he claimed, while discounting his court sense. And while he was at it, when were people going to start crediting him as a team player?

By rights, that latter recognition should have come at the end of the 1966-67 season, when—agreeing to focus less on the scoring that had made his reputation and more on rebounding and defense—Chamberlain led the Philadelphia 76ers to an NBA championship, with a thrilling victory in the Eastern Division finals that ended the Boston Celtics’ skein of eight straight championships. 

Chamberlain had enjoyed great rapport with coach Alex Hannum, who, as he had done while with the San Francisco Warriors, convinced “The Big Dipper” to buy into an egalitarian style of offense in which he was used as the passing focal point rather than the principal offensive weapon. 

But the next year, when the 76ers lost to the Celtics in the playoffs, Hannum jumped to the upstart American Basketball Association (ABA), and Chamberlain’s relationship with Philadelphia’s front office deteriorated. 

Years later, General Manager Jack Ramsey recalled that Chamberlain had taken an active interest in Hannum’s replacement when, out of the blue, he tossed his own hat into the ring. The idea of a player-manager was not uncommon in the 1960s (indeed, the last one in the NBA, Dave Cowens, filled the role in 1979 for the Celtics), but this request caught Ramsey and owner Irv Kosloff by surprise.

After he had had a week to consider, Ramsey decided such a move could work, and was ready to talk about it with Chamberlain. But now, the big man told the front office that he had changed his mind. Not only did he not want to be a player-coach, but he did not want to play in Philadelphia anymore. If the front office could not arrange a trade to a West Coast team—Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles—he was ready to jump to the ABA.

Ramsey and Kosloff might have been angry, but they could hardly have been surprised. In 1965, after his trade to the Warriors, Sports Illustrated’s Frank DeFord had noted that this was the fifth time that Chamberlain had used a threat to quit as a bargaining chip. In this pre-free agent era, that—and now, the presence of the ABA—represented the only available bargaining chips for a player.

But Chamberlain wasn’t really “a player.” In 1960s basketball, he was an outsized figure who, like baseball’s Babe Ruth, wrought, like Babe Ruth, a revolution in how his sport was played. In 1962, he had not only scored 100 points against the unfortunate New York Knicks but also averaged more than 50 points per game for the entire season. With no nagging injuries at this point, he was not beyond going on a similar scoring binge again. 

Rather than simply lose their most valuable player to the ABA with nothing to show for it, Ramsey and Kosloff decided to try to obtain as much value in return as they could. The deal they worked out—three players (in this case, Jerry Chambers, Archie Clark and Darrall Imhoff) for Chamberlain--resembled the magnitude of the transaction that brought The Big Dipper to Philly in the first place. 

AJ Neuharth-Keusch of USA Today, in an article two years ago, listed it among the most lopsided trades in NBA history. Metaphorically, one can liken the trade’s impact on the Western Division to an earthquake. But you begin to run out of adequate descriptions for this event when you recall that this was the first time that the reigning league Most Valuable Player—the winner of that honor for the fourth time, no less—had ended up getting traded.

Philadelphia would not win an NBA championship again until Julius Erving and Moses Malone ended the heartache in 1983. The Lakers, while experiencing initial growing pains involving Chamberlain (the Big Dipper was far less jovial than new teammate Elgin Baylor, and disagreed with the game plans of coach Butch van Breda Kolff), still had a quicker payoff: four finals appearances in five seasons, including a title in 1972 season, when he was named most valuable player of the finals.