This Day in NBA History (DeBusschere Landed in Knick of Time)

Dec. 19, 1968—With Christmas only days away, New York Knick General Manager Eddie Donovan gave Coach Red Holzman an early present for the holidays: the player who would form the missing piece of the puzzle he needed to secure two league championships. 

The team, even with several fine players, had inexplicably started to sputter when Donovan traded center Walt Bellamy and point guard Howard Komives in exchange for a player much-coveted by much of the rest of the league: rugged forward Dave DeBusschere. 

Standing 6 feet, 6 inches and weighing 225 pounds, DeBusschere had already made his mark in his early twenties by playing two professional sports (the second was baseball, in his time as a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox) and serving as player-coach for the Pistons. 

His years with the Knicks would, surprisingly enough, only constitute half of his dozen years in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Yet New York was where he secured the reputation that would lead to his uniform being retired by the Knicks and with DeBusschere himself enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

No other trade in Knick history would have such a long-lasting, positive influence on the team. Since 1963, Donovan had acquired a raft of talented young players in Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier, Cazzie Russell and Phil Jackson. But until DeBusschere came along, a team that should have contended was consistently out of sync. 

Holzman's offensive credo was simple to state but harder to apply without the right players: "See the ball, hit the open man." Komives had not only proven inadequate to that task, but had annoyed Russell by often overlooking him on court, even when he was wide open, according to Bill Gutman's Tales from the 1969-1970 New York Knicks.

As for Bellamy, there was no doubting the skill of this former Rookie of the Year, but he was three years older than another natural center then playing out of position—Reed—and without the latter’s passing ability or leadership skills. 

While these factors made Bellamy and Komives expendable, DeBusschere brought a number of assets—some immediately visible, others only observable over the long term. He was already demonstrating that he could be an essential cog in the pressing defensive alignment that Holzman hoped to put into action. 

Invariably, he would be designated the player who would shadow and stop the opposing team’s offensive star. DeBusschere, Phoenix Suns dazzler Connie Hawkins once observed, "took away my first, second, third, and fourth offensive move." 

But he could also pass well—a prerequisite for “hitting the open man”—sneak behind picks for shots, and inspire teammates with his durability and fearless, all-stops-out physical style.

Had it simply involved acquiring a talented player, the swap’s impact would have been limited. After all, obtaining Bob McAdoo and Carmelo Anthony—among the most prolific scorers of their eras—did nothing to improve the Knicks’ standing.

Instead, the trade—while bringing aboard a tenacious rebounder and defender who could, when the occasion warranted, sink a well-timed jumper from the corner—was so important for the way it allowed other players to assume other, more natural roles, as detailed by sports journalist Pete Axthelm in The City Game:

*Willis Reed, a bit slow at power forward to stop fast smaller players, could use his bulk at his natural position—center—while using his feathery outside shot to lure the opposing center away from the basket.

*Bill Bradley, who had been shuttling unsuccessfully between guard and forward, settled at small forward, where Madison Square Garden fans could see the deft shooting touch and court awareness that made him a star at Princeton.

*Walt Frazier, knowing that Reed and DeBusschere could cover for his mistakes, took more frequent gambles in stealing the ball, becoming one of the leading defensive stars of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

*Cazzie Russell learned how to make an instant impact as an offensive sparkplug.

*Dick Barnett, at shooting guard, found new life in his post-30 legs.

In short, DeBusschere changed the alchemy of the team. He would also exemplify its consistency and cohesiveness, as he himself put it after his retirement: "The key to our team was the willingness to sacrifice without expecting anything in return. Period.”

The forward’s impact was immediate: Not only did the team halt their losing streak, but it would go on to to the Eastern Division finals, which they lost to the Boston Celtics in six games. 

The following year, when I began to avidly follow them over the radio, was their season of glory, when they won their first NBA championship. DeBusschere would be essential to that success, averaging 16.1 points per game in the team’s 19 total playoff contests. He would prove equally essential in the team’s 1973 championship run.

Following his retirement in 1974, DeBusschere would become one of only two men to serve as general manager of two New York professional teams (George Weiss, with the Yankees and Mets, was the other executive); engineer the merger of the NBA with the American Basketball Association (in which he acted as the last commissioner of the league); and, in his four seasons as Knicks GM in the 1980s, lay the cornerstone for contention in the 1990s by drafting Georgetown All-American center Patrick Ewing as the overall #1 pick in the league.

DeBusschere’s indomitability on the court made his 2003 death by heart attack at age 62 all the more shocking and sad to fans like me. Few of us could identify with Frazier’s off-court flash, Bradley’s mixture of court smarts and intellectual brilliance, or Jackson’s counter-cultural instincts. 

But DeBusschere was the lunch-bucket hero, the guy who would shrug off a sharp elbow, a blow to the face, or an aching knee to get his work done, night after night, only to smile afterward with a beer in hand over a job well done.

(Accompanying photo of Dave DeBusschere taken from 1974 New York Knicks program.)

This Day in Sports History (Reed-Inspired Knicks Win Championship)

May 8, 1970—In retrospect, it seems clear now, the Los Angeles Lakers lost the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship even before the opening jump ball of the seventh and deciding game. They were flattened by the gimpy but heroic captain of the New York Knicks, Willis Reed (pictured), who sent the capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden into ecstasy as he walked gingerly from the locker room onto the court—then brought everyone to their feet by sinking the first two jumpers of the game.

The Knicks won going away, 113-99, for their first NBA title.

If my experience is any indication, the allegiance formed with a team in youth is tenacious enough to endure the worst setbacks. So it has proven with the Knicks, who have not won a championship in 40 years and, more often than not under current owner James Dolan, have been embarrassing.

But the particular magic of the Knicks’ 1970 run lingers with me still. In some ways, the ’73 team, with the addition of Jerry Lucas and Earl Monroe, was better. (See my account of that later squad.)

But the earlier version reversed years of being doormats; they had a compelling storyline, in the form of Reed, in a battle against the odds; and—no small matter—I had to create the scene occurring in the Garden in my own head, since the game was not being shown in real time on network TV.

That’s right, for any youngsters reading this post. In that pre-Magic, pre-Bird, pre-Showbiz era, the NBA looked to maximize every dollar, which meant that, on the channels then generally extant in the New York market, the game was tape-delayed. Without cable (and nobody I knew had it at the time), you were out of luck.

Except that you weren’t if you were listening to radio. There you had the young Marv Albert, toward the start of his career as “The Voice of the Knicks,” catching the aural equivalent of a wave, his voice rising with astonishment to match the roar of the crowd at the preposterous sight before them at shortly after 7:30 pm: “Here comes Willis!”

I was 10 years old that spring. The sports team my family had long rooted for, the New York Yankees, was in the middle of a seemingly endless interregnum between dynasties/ I had formed no significant other franchise attachments until I became enthralled with the team that had reeled off 18 consecutive wins over the winter.

And now, listening to Albert, I might as well have been in the Garden with that crowd as Reed, hoisting up a left-handed jump shot that had already devastated the Lakers when he had been healthy in games 1 through 4, raised the roof in the arena as the ball sank through the net. Then he proceeded to do it again.

I hung on every word of Albert’s as the night wore on, thrusting my fist in the air every time I heard the short word he turned from an affirmation to an exultation: “YES!!!!”

With three future Hall of Famers in the starting five (Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor) and with Reed out for Game 6, the Lakers had looked ready to take the series. But after the Knicks—who hadn’t even known if Reed would even be able to play—whirled around to see their center, captain and emotional heart, they were a team transformed. "When Willis Reed stepped onto the court, it gave us a 10-foot lift just to have him," recalled Bill Bradley.

Another Knick starter who pointed to the presence of Reed as the deciding factor in Game 7 was Walt Frazier. He was already the coolest cat in town with his fashion flair, but now the Knick guard had the game of his life, with 36 points and 19 assists.

Two other figures, neither of whom donned a uniform in the series—and one of whom had left the team that winter— should be mentioned in connection with the Knicks’ first championship. 

The man no longer with the organization was general manager Eddie Donovan, who, in order to be closer to his family, had left the team just a few months before to take on a similar role with the expansion Buffalo Braves. But, in his six years as Knicks GM, Donovan had surely assembled a championship-caliber squad through drafts (Reed, Frazier, Bradley, reserve Phil Jackson) and trades (Dick Barnett and, most significant, power forward Dave DeBusschere, whose presence enabled Reed to move back to his natural position: center).

The other significant figure was coach Red Holzman. It was he who stressed the necessity of moving without the ball, of “hitting the open man,” and, above all else, of the word that would be chanted by the crowd in critical moments: “DE-FENSE!” Holzman emphasized that playing cohesively as a unit would bring success to the Knicks as individuals. Forty years later, after Holzman’s election to the Basketball Hall of Fame, his retirement and death,  he remains a standard-bearer for a particular style of coaching, as evidenced by this Huffington Post article on “5 Tips for Building a High Performance Work Team.”

Flashback, May 1973: Knicks Win Second NBA Title

The New York Knickerbockers exacted sweet revenge for their loss to the Los Angeles Lakers the prior year by defeating their opponents,102-93, in the fifth and deciding game for the National Basketball Association on May 10, 1973. The championship, New York’s second in four years, was the exact reverse of the results in 1972, when the injury-plagued Knicks lost by four games to one in the finals to the Lakers.

The Knicks’ 1970 title—especially the decisive Game 7, when a gimpy Willis Reed ignited the Madison Square Garden crowd and his teammates to triumph—made me (and, I suspect, more than a few others) fans for life of Coach Red Holzman’s squad. But the 1973 team may have been better balanced, and its championship run had its own moments of drama.

I am completing this post two days after the Knicks have completed another season without rings—their 40^th  since their last magical year. Oh, the Carmelo Anthony-led crew had their moments of competitiveness and excitement this year (and even last season, in the midst of “Linsanity”).

Indeed, guard Walt “Clyde” Frazier, now an announcer for his old team, said several weeks ago that he saw in the current squad some similarities to the ’73 crew in its resilience in the face of injury. I will not rehash the physical calamities that have beset this year’s group, but in 1972—and through much of 1973—the team suffered critical injuries.

In the 1972 finals against the Lakers, for instance, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe lost much of his effectiveness because of a bone spur. And, while Jerry Lucas, expected only to help Reed rest his knees, performed far beyond expectations when the Knick captain was lost for much of the ’72 season, he still was at a critical height disadvantage against Wilt Chamberlain in the finals. (Incidentally, Lucas was a great player not simply because of his shooting, passing and rebounding skills, but because of his considerable intelligence. He had memorized the plays of every team in the league. As you might expect, after his playing days were over, he enjoyed additional business success as a memory maven.)

Players continued to spend long spells on the disabled list in the 1972-73 season, and the team’s undistinguished 6-7 run as the regular season concluded left many feeling that their time in the playoffs would be limited. That feeling hardened into certainty in the semi-finals, when the Knicks, having blown Game 6, were forced to travel to Boston for the deciding contest. Even history seemed to be against the Knicks, as the Celtics had never lost a Game 7 on their home turf.

What the critics forgot, though, was their league-best 98.2 points-per-game allowed per opponent and burning desire for their first championship of Lucas and Monroe. (In the case of the defense, the grit was supplied by Dave DeBusschere, who frustrated Celtic center and league MVP Dave Cowens—a repeat of his similarly tenacious performance in Game 5 of the ’70 championship series, when he helped contain Chamberlain.)

Despite that gutty performance, many observers still gave the Knicks little chance of winning it all. The Lakers were the reigning NBA champs, after all. These naysayers were out in full force when the Knicks lost the first game. But the Lakers lost the home-court advantage in the second game, and by the end of the fourth they stood on the brink of elimination.

And now, off the court, the Knicks faced drama as significant in its way as Game 7 three years before. It involved Monroe, and, had matters turned out differently, the Knicks would have had not simply a major distraction but a tragedy on their hands.

Having forced a trade from the Baltimore Bullets when they would not yield to his salary demands, Monroe had worked hard and well to show critics that he could subordinate his one-on-one style by working in conjunction with Frazier. But after the Knicks’ Game 4 heroics, three unregenerate white racists showed they were beyond persuasion.

Monroe related what happened next in his recently published memoir, Earl the Pearl: My Story. As the guard and his girlfriend walked toward his Rolls-Royce, one white man pushed him and called him the “n” word. After the Knick reached his car, he dug out the gun he had left there and went looking for his tormenters.

We know, from what happened to the New York Giants’ Plaxico Burress a few years ago, how a team can lose its way when a key player carries a gun around with him, and ends up in an accident or outright killing. Fortunately, a firearm-bearing Monroe never caught up with his tormenters.

Instead, the shaken Knick guard channeled his anger toward the Lakers. In Game 5, he torched the defending champs for a team-high 23 points, including eight points in the fourth quarter, as the Knicks gradually put distance between themselves and their opponents.

Who would have thought after the game that the two teams would experience such varying fortunes in the 40 years since? That was Chamberlain’s last contest, and Jerry West—who had strained both hamstrings in the finals—would only play one more year. Yet, in the four decades that have elapsed since the Knicks’ glorious Game 5, they have won no NBA championship, while the Lakers have won 10.

Right now, I’m afraid, Knick fans are in a position analogous to New York Ranger fans in the barren years between 1940 and 1994. I never thought there’d be such a long interval between championships when Pat Riley towered courtside. Who knew that, because of a horrid John Starks shooting streak, we’d be looking at nearly another 20 years of nothing?

Indeed, that last game in L.A., six Knicks would make the Basketball Hall of Fame as players: Reed, Frazier, Monroe, DeBusschere, Lucas and Bill Bradley. A reserve, Phil Jackson, entered the Hall because of his accomplishments as coach rather than player.

Jackson’s counterpart on the L.A. bench was Riley. Two decades later, in the few years when he brought his style and authority as a winning coach to the Knicks, he recalled, during an appearance at one of my company’s meetings, the time when, during a close game in his playing days, finding himself open, he launched a jumper from outside and missed. As soon as possible, his teammate Chamberlain confronted him. “What did you do that for?” the center asked. “I was open,” Riley protested. “Did you ever stop to think that there might be a reason for that???” Chamberlain asked indignantly, with impeccable logic.

I’ve thought of the exchange more than once this last week or so, as I recalled the current Knicks hoisting up one airball after another beyond the three-point arc. Plenty of Knicks ended up with nobody around them, at one point or another, in the magical season of ’73. But the overwhelming majority of the ’73 squad who bought into Holtzman’s mantra—“Hit the open man”—took high-percentage shots, with the assurance that some rugged rebounder or another—either DeBusschere or “Willis Lucas”—would box their man out and secure the carom.