“GARTNERING ATTENTION” and “FOOTHILLS TAKES MANHATTAN”
#904/#903
904. NEW YORK RANGERS VS NEW YORK ISLANDERS
STANLEY CUP QUARTERFINALS
GAME FIVE
APRIL 13, 1990
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.59
DRAMA—7.74
STAR POWER—6.65
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—6.55
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.26
LOCAL IMPACT—7.92
TOTAL: 42.71
“GARTNERING ATTENTION”
The 1990 Expressway Series was a particularly nasty edition in the annals of Rangers-Islanders playoff encounters (see #923 on the list, “Cheap Shots and Slap Shots”). But competitively, it was mostly a Blueshirt show. The Rangers won the first two games at the Garden, and fell in double overtime in Game Three. They bounced back with a 6-1 stomping in Game Four, and returned to Broadway for what they hoped would be the clincher on a windy and cool Friday night, April 13, 1990.
Friday the Thirteenth, appropriately enough…
For all the contretemps in the previous games, with several Islanders getting knocked out by cheap shots, and coach Al Arbour responding by having his goon squad beat up as many Rangers as possible, Game Five was free of extracurriculars. Instead, the sellout crowd was treated to an up and down, free-skating game with plenty of action.
Rangers forward Mike Gartner had the reputation of being a playoff underachiever during his career, but this night was an exception. He banged in a power-play goal not three minutes in to give the home team an early lead. The Isles countered with Pat LaFontaine setting up Jeff Norton—two players who had been knocked unconscious on hits from behind earlier in the series—for the tying goal, and took the lead thirty seconds later with a Rob Dimaio goal. The Rangers tied it on another power play to make it 2-2 after an entertaining 20 minutes.
The turning point was a 5-on-3 advantage for the Isles, which turned out to be one for the Rangers. They killed the 40 seconds of two-men shorthandedness, and as Paul Broten stepped out of the penalty box he stole the puck from Norton, blew in deep, and fed Normand Rochefort for the go-ahead goal, which “sent the worried Garden crowd into hysterics,” per the Daily News.
Worry turned to elation as the Rangers pulled away. Gartner scored again to make it 4-2, and Carey Wilson scored to make it 5-2 after two. “The Garden was ready to party like it was 1979—the last time Big Brother had beaten Little Brother in a playoff series,” wrote Stan “The Maven” Fischler. But little bro had some irritation and agitation left in him. The Isles scored twice early in the third to close the gap to 5-4 and set the fans on edge again.
“I started to wonder if we were jinxed,” admitted Rangers defenseman James Patrick. “They got those goals and I started to feel like those diehard Rangers fans, like those Boston Red Sox fans [ah the glory days…]. I started shaking on the ice waiting for the faceoff. I never felt so nervous as an NHLer.”
The shakes didn’t last long, thanks to Gartner. Just 26 seconds after the Islanders made it 5-4, he winged a 45-foot bullet past Glenn Healy to restore the two-goal advantage. That gave Gartner a hat trick and ended Healy’s night. Pat Flatley scored to clench up the Rangers collective butts once more. But the Rangers managed to see off the final three minutes without an epic collapse, and won the game 6-5 and the series in five games.
In a show of class, chief Islanders muscle man Ken Baumgartner led the handshake line, and coaches Arbour and Roger Neilson shook hands and let go the bad feelings this combative encounter had produced.
Nevertheless, when Norton of the Islanders was asked later if he thought this would be the year the Rangers finally won the Stanley Cup, his answer summed up the feelings between the two sides.
“I hope not.”
AFTERMATH
Indeed, not. The Rangers lost in the next round to Washington in five games.
WHAT THEY SAID
“We were a worried team in the third period. The consequences of losing in this city to the Islanders when we were the heavy favorites made it tense.”
—Roger Neilson
FURTHER READING:
Rangers Vs. Islanders by Stan Fischler and Zachary Weinstock
VIDEO:
903. NORTH CAROLINA TAR HEELS VS OKLAHOMA A&M AGGIES
NCAA TOURNAMENT FINAL
MARCH 26, 1946
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.74
DRAMA—7.56
STAR POWER—7.93
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.15
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE-—-6.49
LOCAL IMPACT—5.96
TOTAL: 42.72
“FOOTHILLS TAKES MANHATTAN”
The most dominant big man in the nascent era of college basketball was Bob Kurland of Oklahoma A&M (later to become Oklahoma State). He wasn’t quite a seven-footer, stretching the tape to about 6’10”1/2, but in the World War Two era (a war he was too tall to fight), that height made him Goliath. His height, backwoods demeanor, and playing for a school known then as the Aggies combined to earn Kurland the nickname “Foothills.” But he was actually from just outside St. Louis, and as he told the New York Times, “I was no more from the foothills than I was from Cambodia.”
A gregarious ginger-haired galoot, Kurland is widely considered the first player ever to dunk, a shot called a “duffer” in those days. When he first arrived on campus, recruited by the fabled coach Henry Iba, Kurland could barely run, much less play. But he worked extremely hard, and became a terror on defense, helped by the rule at the time that allowed defensive players to swat balls off the rim (the goaltending rule was later enacted because of Foothills Bob). Kansas coach Phog Allen called Kurland a “glandular goon” who wasn’t good for much beyond being humongous, but by 1946, the center was far more than that. He scored an astounding 58 points against St. Louis University and their fantastic freshman, Ed Macauley, in a February game, which helped him average 19.5 points per game in a low-scoring epoch.
Behind Kurland the Ags won the 1945 title, played as the war wound down and patriotic fervor ran through the streets of the City. OK A&M won the Missouri Valley Conference and returned to the tournament in 1946, when Kurland was a senior and, for the third time, an All-American. The West regional was played in Kansas City, and A&M crushed Baylor and Cal to advance to the final, held as usual at Madison Square Garden, in this case on Tuesday night, March 26, 1946.
Things had changed in the country and, thus, in New York. The end of the war was a godsend, but by 1946 the country had grown impatient with the idea that their husbands and sons and brothers were still overseas. Immense political pressure forced President Truman to bring the troops home en masse, a logistical nightmare that would cause mass shortages of goods and services, leave hundreds of thousands homeless, and result in transport and shipping snarls that left the country at a standstill for long stretches (you can read more about that fun era in my book The Victory Season).
For the 18,479 who jammed the Garden, the matchup between the defending champs and the North Carolina Tar Heels was a temporary salve for the problems outside. It was the midst of an era of college basketball in which New York City was king. The old 50th Street Garden had steep, wooden stands “like a cockfighting arena,” in the words of Gerald Eskenazi, a former New York Times sportswriter, and they were filled with cigar-chomping hoops cognoscenti who packed the place for all manner of games, but especially when greats like Kurland came to town. This was Kurland’s tenth appearance on the Garden floor in an Aggies uniform, and he was by now well known in the City—the giant redhead was hard to miss as he towered over the locals while heading out to dinner.
The UNC big man tasked with guarding Foothills was Horace “Bones” McKinney, who had transferred over from NC State after a year in the army. Bones would go on to play in the NBA with Boston, and coach Wake Forest to the Final Four, but as his nickname would attest, he was no match for the towering Aggies pivot. “McKinney, at 6 feet 6 inches, is no midget, but the six inches that Kurland towered over him made the Tarheel appear like a pygmy,” wrote Lou Effrat in the Times.
UNC usually kept a second and third defender at hand to throw at Kurland, which left the likes of guard Weldon Kern open for his sweet set shot. But it also kept the “White Phantoms,” as the Heels were called sometimes in the press (due to their then-white uniforms—Duke was known as the “Blue Imps,” NC State the “Red Terrors,” etc), in the game, helped as well by a stall ball style.
But Kurland made a few passes out of double teams to set up teammates for a run of points near the end of the first twenty minutes, and OK A&M led 23-17 at halftime. Forced into a more open, pressing style, the game got away from Carolina, as Kurland scored six straight and the Aggies built a 13-point lead. “Kurland isn’t a big goof who stands around and drops the ball through the hoop when it’s placed in his hands,” wrote Dick Young in the Daily News. “He’s a good shot…Six of his field goals were earned beyond doubt on nice hooks or one-handed fading pushes. On only three buckets could his height claim complete credit.”
Any real chance the Heels had of an upset was thwarted when McKinney, an “inspiring, tireless worker,” Effrat wrote, fouled out with 14 minutes left. Still, with “an admirable display of hustle,” according to Effrat, they made a last run to close within three points, led by John Dillon’s hook shots. But their hopes were stymied by seven more points from Kurland, who finished with 23 of A&M’s 43 points, his high output at the Garden in his tenth and final appearance there.
“Time was too short and Kurland too tall,” wrote Effrat. Carolina scored a couple of late cosmetic buckets to make the final 43-40, Aggies. A&M was awarded the James W. St. Clair Trophy for being champs, and Foothills Kurland, naturally, was voted tournament MVP for the second straight season.
AFTERMATH
Kurland was offered a very rich (for the time) $11,000 contract to play for the Knicks, but Foothills turned them down to go work in the oilfields, beginning a 40-year career with Phillips Petroleum. He thus ceded the role of the first great NBA big man to George Mikan of DePaul, whom Kurland had outdueled in an NCAA vs NIT champs game to benefit the Red Cross in 1945.
WHAT THEY SAID
“Bob worked hard to become good. I can remember one specific afternoon when he must have tried 600 hooks with his left hand. The first 100 didn’t hit either the rim or the backboard. The next 100 didn’t go in. After that he started to connect.”
—Henry Iba, Oklahoma A&M coach, on Kurland
FURTHER READING:
Bob Kurland Obituary, by Richard Goldstein, The New York Times
VIDEO: