As a player on the barnstorming Original Celtics of the 1920s, Joe Lapchick was one of basketball’s early stars. The team was so good, at one point the American Basketball League ordered them to disband.
As a coach, Lapchik found a lot of success, too. After leading the basketball program at St. John’s to a 180-55 record over 11 years (including two consecutive NIT championships), he joined the Knicks in 1947, becoming the team’s second head coach.
By the beginning of the 1950s, the Knicks, led by future Hall of Famers Harry Gallatin, Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton and Dick McGuire, were competing with championship-calibre teams. In 1951, the team reached the NBA Finals for the first of what would be three consecutive seasons. Down 3-0 to the Rochester Royals, the Knicks won the next three games to tie the series. But in the deciding game they couldn’t overcome Rochester’s dominance on their home court – the team was 92-16 over three seasons at home. Though they led late, the tenacious Knicks ultimately lost, 79-75. (One of the players celebrating on the Royals’ side: future Knicks coach Red Holzman.) The thrilling seven-game series, the first Finals round to go the distance in the new basketball league, has been credited as a key turning point in legitimizing the fledgling NBA in the eyes of sports fans across the country.
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