“ATTENTION K-MART DOUBTERS” and “MINNEAPOLIS MASTERPIECE”
#778/#777
778. NEW YORK KNICKS VS NEW JERSEY NETS
EASTERN CONFERENCE QUARTERFINALS
GAME FOUR
APRIL 25, 2004
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.06
DRAMA—6.47
STAR POWER—7.63
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.55
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.88
LOCAL IMPACT—8.38
TOTAL: 43.97
“ATTENTION K-MART DOUBTERS”
“Fugazy” is a street term meaning a fake, a phony (not to be confused with Fugazi, the legendary punk band). Calling someone fugazy, in a basketball context, is basically calling him soft-ass punk who folds when the chips are down, or when confronted physically.
So when a Knicks forward named Tim Thomas dissed New Jersey’s power forward Kenyon Martin by calling him “fugazy,” it gave a little juice to a blah playoff series between two local teams that shoulda and coulda, but never have been, rivals.
In 2004 the Nets were at the far end of their brief moment of relevancy, having represented the East in the previous two NBA Finals. In a ridiculous case of “but what have you done for me lately?” the Nets cast aside head coach Byron Scott after a 22-20 start, replacing him with Lawrence Frank. It had some effect, to be fair, as New Jersey won 14 straight behind Martin and star point guard Jason Kidd, winning the division and capturing the #2 seed.
The result was a date with the prom kings from the Big City in the first round. This was the beginning of the Isiah Thomas Error, um, Era, in the GM suite, and he made a flurry of moves to announce his presence with authority. Local legend Stephon Marbury and Penny Hardaway were acquired by trade, and the Knicks likewise canned their coach midseason, dumping Don Chaney for Lenny Wilkens, one-time prep star at Boys High in Bed-Stuy (Do or Die). They scraped out 39 wins but that was good enough for the seventh seed in a crappy Eastern Conference. Kidd took in the situation across the river and with a jaundiced eye pronounced the Knicks “Fool’s gold.”
In a far smaller move, Zeke Thomas also dealt Keith Van Horn (a former Net) to Milwaukee, getting back Tim Thomas (no relation) in return. Tim was ironically enough a Jersey Boy, from Paterson, were he starred at Paterson Catholic. After a year at Villanova (more irony, given the current Knicks roster), Thomas was drafted by his hometown Nets—then immediately dealt to Philly. This betrayal seemed to push Thomas off of his star trajectory, and he never really made much impact either with the Sixers or Bucks, save for a moment when he and Martin had scuffled briefly in the 2003 playoffs while Thomas was in Milwaukee.
His raw talent still enamored scouts, and perhaps Isiah wanted someone with his surname on the Knicks, so he was brought to New York in February. It was something of a revenge opportunity for Double-T therefore to tangle with the Nets, the team that sent him packing, in the first round.
Alas, in Game One, a Nets rout at the Meadowlands, Thomas drove the hoop late and was flagrantly fouled by New Jersey’s Jason Collins, landing in a heap and causing a back injury severe enough for Thomas to be hospitalized. Out for the rest of the series, Thomas vented his frustration to the media, saying he wanted to hit someone when he returned to action. The New York writers, sensing some red meat, asked Thomas if that included Martin, and what he thought about the Nets big man.
That’s when Thomas called K-Mart “fugazy” and “phony tough.”
It remains unclear exactly why Thomas singled Martin out, when it had been Collins who whacked him out of the air. Maybe it was the shovefest from the previous season, or perhaps the hard fall had scrambled his memory of the incident. Whatever the case, what seemed a perfunctory Nets rout now had some sizzle.
The NYC media did what you might expect. “Injured Knick Tim Thomas,” wrote one columnist, “displaying the IQ of an ice cube and the common sense of cole slaw, insisted he wanted back in the Knicks-Nets series so he could “hit somebody.”
“It’s hilarious. I feel privileged he’s spending time thinking about me,” Martin said. “The question to me is how I’m not a tough guy. Take a poll around the league, I’m pretty sure if you ask people who they want on their team, they’re not going to say Tim Thomas.” Martin also repurposed a line from the great X-Man, Xavier McDaniel, saying, “Lock me and [Thomas] in a room together and see who’s going to come out.”
The Knicks, considerably worse than the Nets and playing without injured Allan Houston, already were behind the eight-ball in this series. Now they had no shot. Martin had 22 and 18 in Game Two, another Nets clubbing. Back at MSG, Martin had 19 and 15 in a tight Nets win. That put the Bockers on the brink in Game Four, held on Sunday afternoon, April 25, 2004.
It turned out to be the best game of the series, with momentum swinging back and forth. Marbury, who would finish with 31 points, led an early-fourth quarter rally that put the home team up by six. But Starbury put up an airball with a chance to extend the lead, and then Martin took over. He powered down the lane time and again, showing off his non-fugazyness, en route to a 36 point barrage, to go with 13 rebounds. A late 15-4 run put the Nets ahead for good, in what became a 100-94 victory and a 4-0 sweep.
“I just tried to be the force we needed,” said Martin.
Thomas, for once, could not be reached for comment.
AFTERMATH:
Though not to the level of Geraldo Rivera vs Frank Stallone or other ridiculous feuds, the Thomas-Martin dispute managed to drag on over the years. In 2017, Thomas rehashed the feud on an episode of the “Scoop B Radio Podcast.” Thomas told the host, Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson, that he'd like to settle up with Martin once and for all with a boxing match. The proceeds would go to the charity of their choice.
“I know you got some charities you can send the money to,” said Thomas. “I’ve got plenty of kids to help out, plenty of organizations. We could give it to charity. Or we can get some boxing promoters. I can call Floyd [Mayweather] and we can get this off my chest once and for all. And the world will see what type of individual he is all at one time.”
Martin wisely declined.
Thomas, when not sparring, to his credit, is true to his roots—he currently serves as head coach of Paramus Catholic High School, not far from the mall.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“Don’t be part of the circus, dog. You know what they say if you entertain clowns, right? If you entertain clowns, you become part of the circus. I’m a 39-year-old grown-ass man, dog. If that was going to happen, I would have took care of it seven years ago. I moved on. I got kids at home. I don’t got time for that. It’s childish. It’s just people reaching for something to talk about. I’m not gonna entertain that.”
—Kenyon Martin on the idea of boxing Tim Thomas
FURTHER READING:
A History of the Nets From Teaneck to Brooklyn by Rick Laughland
VIDEO:
777. NEW YORK KNICKS VS MINNEAPOLIS LAKERS
NBA FINALS
GAME 5
APRIL 10, 1953
69TH REGIMENT ARMORY
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.83
DRAMA—7.32
STAR POWER—7.25
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.75
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—9.05
LOCAL IMPACT—5.78
TOTAL: 43.98
“MINNEAPOLIS MASTERPIECE”
The marquee at the 69th Regiment Armory said it all, with frank pithiness:
“GEO MIKAN VS THE KNICKS”
Indeed, George “Geo” Mikan, the dominating big man of the NBA champion Minneapolis Lakers, was essentially an army of one. The consensus first NBA superstar, Big George was the linchpin of the unstoppable Lakers attack while controlling the paint on both ends. But ironically, in this 1953 NBA Finals, it was Mikan’s supporting cast, especially some little-known reserves, who made the critical difference.
As we’ve seen on multiple occasions on this list, the 69th Regiment Armory served as a fill-in for Madison Square Garden in the Pleistocene Era of the NBA, when the Garden was booked by the far more profitable circus. But the Armory had a far richer history than backup hardwood. In 1953 the Armory was celebrating the 40th anniversary of perhaps the most important and seminal art exhibition ever mounted in New York, the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art. It was the sensational New World debut of Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Gaughin, Cezanne, all brought to the Armory to be seen for the first time. The phrase avant-garde was heard for the first time to describe these wonders of modernism, the use of unusual and outrageous colors and shapes and styles. It was a breakthrough moment in art, a reordering of the accepted rules and motifs not seen since the Renaissance.
Marcel Duchamp's Cubist-inspired Nude Descending a Staircase, famously described by one critic as "an explosion in a shingle factory,” was the George Mikan of the show—the most talked-about and paradigm-shattering work in the Armory. Unlike big George, however, the painting at the time was mostly reviled, considered the effort of a provocateur rather than a true artiste.
Duchamp was paid $240 for the work (about $5,500 in todays cash).
Mikan, by contrast, was the highest-paid player in the NBA in 1953, as he had been for the last five seasons. He pulled down $20,000 for pulling down 14 rebounds per game, to go with 21 points, down from his heights upon first entering the league but nevertheless plenty to be considered the NBA’s first superstar (the MVP Award wasn’t given out until 1955-56, else Mikan would have a bushelful).
Mikan’s Minneapolis, coached by John Kundla, had won three of the last four titles, including the 1952 championship, taking out the Knicks in seven hotly contested games. Their only loss in that stretch came after Mikan broke his ankle late in the 1951 season, allowing Rochester to slip in and win one.
Still, after the heartbreak of ’52 the Knicks thought they had the answer to stopping Big George and winning their first championship. The ‘Bockers won the Eastern Conference regular season title, swept past Baltimore in the first playoff round, then took out Boston and its young star guard Bob Cousy in four games to advance to the championship. Minneapolis won the west as expected, but was pushed to five game by a plucky Fort Wayne Pistons group in the conference finals.
So the rematch began at the Minneapolis Auditorium, where the Lakers had lost just twice all season. The Knicks surprised Mikan’s club with a Game One win. But the westerners reeled off the next three, including two at the Armory. Game Four was an excruciating two-point defeat.
So to keep the series alive the Knicks would be forced to win three in a row, starting with Game Five, held at the Armory on Friday night, April 10, 1953. A sellout crowd of 5,200 (about 1,200 more than the opening night’s attendance at the Modern Art show in 1913) turned out to see the local cagers one last time.
Minny reserves like Lew Hitch and Whitey Skoog had been the big difference in the previous couple of games, and with the score tied in the second period, another bench player made a key contribution. A forward with a buzzcut named Jim Holstein rattled off four jumpers in under three minutes to boost the Lakers to a 15-6 run and a 10-point halftime lead. The lead swelled to 20 in the third period, in this pre-shot clock era virtually an insurmountable deficit.
But the brave, shorthanded Knicks made a run, led by Ernie Vandeweghe (Kiki’s father and future resident of Rye) and the tight defense played by a rookie named Dick Surhoff (B.J.’s father and future resident of Rye). Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton threw in some buckets, and Jerry Fleishman, a balding castoff from Philadelphia just signed to the squad as an injury replacement two days earlier, scored nine points as the crowd roared on this improbable comeback. When Dick Maguire drove for a weaving layup it was 85-84 Lakers, with just over a minute left. “The fans were screaming madly now, awaiting a court miracle,” wrote Hy Turkin in the Daily News.
But the incredible rally fell just short. Clifton fouled out, and Vern Mikkelson hit a free throw to make it 86-84. Then with 10 seconds left Mikan converted a three-point play to ice the game and yet another championship.
The final was 91-86, Lakers, who won their second straight title and fourth in five years, 4-1. Mikan finished with a modest 15 points and 10 rebounds, once more highly satisfied with the help he got from the rest of the Mikanettes. Carl Braun led the Knicks with 19, Clifton 17.
AFTERMATH:
Minneapolis would win it all once again the following year, pulling off the three-peat that cemented their place in early-NBA history. New York crashed out early in the 1954 playoffs. Mikan went to the Hall of Fame. The Surhoffs became Rye athletic legends.
And Duchamp, Van Gogh, Picasso et al would do all right for themselves as well.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“The Knicks wind up with a ‘G’ for Gallantry, but for the second straight year its the Lakers who wind up with the championship. Outplaying the spunky locals in just about every department, the tall timbers from the mid-west emerged in triumph.”
—Hy Turkin, New York Daily News
FURTHER READING:
Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews by Calvin Tompkins
VIDEO: