Knicks big man Willis Reed truly came into his own during the 1969-70 season. At midseason, he was named MVP of the All-Star game; after the regular season, he was rewarded as the league’s Most Valuable Player.
But it was what he did to earn the distinction as MVP of the finals -- becoming the first player to earn MVP awards in all three categories in a single season -- that really confirmed his legend. With the Knicks’s seesaw Finals series against the Los Angeles Lakers tied at two games apiece, Reed went down with a painful torn leg muscle late in the first quarter of Game Five, and the dejected Knicks took a 13-point deficit into the locker room at halftime.
In the center’s absence, Red Holzman and Bill Bradley came up with a plan to deal with the Lakers’ dominant force, Wilt Chamberlain: They would play a 3-2 zone offense, forcing WIlt to come out from under the basket, and on defense they would pressure the ball and force the Lakers -- who would be desperate to take advantage of the mismatch -- into mistakes. By the end of the game, Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Cazzie Russell and the rest of the Knicks had forced the Lakers into 30 turnovers, and they’d held Chamberlain to just four points in the second half. Debusschere later called it “one of the greatest basketball games ever played.”
But the biggest highlight was yet to come. The Lakers rolled in Game Six behind Chamberlain’s 45 points and 27 rebounds, setting up a deciding Game Seven in the Garden. Before the jump, Knicks players begged Reed to give them at least half a game on his one good leg.
The painkilling injection he took, Reed would recall, was nearly as bad as the injury itself. “It was a big needle,” he said. “I saw that needle and I said, ‘Holy cow.’ And I just held on. I think I suffered more from the needle than the injury.”
When Reed hobbled onto the court for the opening tip, the roar from the Garden crowd was deafening. “The scene is indelibly etched in my mind,” as Walt Frazier would recall. “Because if that did not happen, I know we would not have won the game.”
Reed scored the Knicks’ first two baskets, sustaining the crowd’s delirious cheers in the process. More importantly, he harassed Chamberlain into a 2-for-9 shooting performance. By the time Reed came out of the game at halftime, the Knicks were running away with it, 61-37. The Lakers tried to rally, but the final score was 113-99, Knicks. For the first time in franchise history, led by the everlasting example of their wounded warrior, the New York Knicks were NBA champions.
Stay tuned to Knicks.com for more as we deliver 70 moments in 70 days leading up to the season opener.
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