“NO PELE, NO PROBLEM” and “MOTHER’S DAY MUCK”
#930/#929
930. NEW YORK COSMOS VS TAMPA BAY ROWDIES
SOCCER BOWL ‘78
AUGUST 27, 1978
GIANTS STADIUM
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.79
DRAMA—6.71
STAR POWER—8.07
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.95
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.62
LOCAL IMPACT—6.31
TOTAL: 42.45
“NO PELE, NO PROBLEM”
Edson Arentes de Nascimento—aka the late, great Pele—is identified so thoroughly in the U.S. with his time as a football evangelist in New York, playing with the Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, that it is very difficult to recall that NYC’s legendary soccer team won its second consecutive championship, in 1978, the year after Pele retired from the pitch. But it’s true. On the other hand, the ’78 Cosmos did feature Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Giorgio Chinaglia, Werner Roth, and a host of other great players, so the mistake is quite easy to make. The Cosmos were a meteor that streaked across the Gotham landscape in the late-1970s, and in ’78 they proved they could win even without the presence of the sport’s most incandescent talent.
The NASL version of the Super Bowl was charmingly called the Soccer Bowl. The host sites were determined in advance, not by record, so it was happy coincidence that when the Cosmos qualified for the game (by beating Seattle, Minnesota and Portland) it just so happened the 1978 Soccer Bowl was held at Giants Stadium. Even without Pele, the ‘Mos were the best team in the league; indeed, they were the best side in NASL history. The team set records for wins (24) and points (212—the league awarded six points per win, one point for a shootout win, and a point per goal, capped at three in a game). They destroyed the Fort Lauderdale Strikers 7-0 in the opener, and cruised from there.
Chinaglia scored 34 goals to set a new league record as well, though he wasn’t league MVP (Mike Flanagan of the New England Tea Men was). The two international greats, Alberto and Beckenbauer, weren’t the Galacticos they were in their youth, but were still top-flight players, especially relative to the NASL. Roth, who not only was the best American player at the time but would play the captain of the German National Team (despite being Jewish) in the all-time classic soccer movie, Victory, rounded out the formidable defense. English striker Steve Hunt scored the goals Chinaglia did not. Another Brit, Dennis Tueart, came back from injury in great form and proved a dynamic scoring threat as well.
Despite their excellence, the Cosmos almost flamed out in the playoffs. After dispatching Seattle in the two-game conference semifinals, the Minnesota Kicks pulled off one of the shocking results in NASL history, bombarding the Cosmos 9-2, thanks to an amazing five goals by Englishman Alan Willey. But the ‘Mos shutout Minnesota in Game Two, 4-0, resulting in a “minigame,” a 30-minute overtime period to decide the series. No one scored in the half hour, forcing a shootout. Beckenbauer scored on the sixth kick to break the tie and send his team to the conference finals, where they shut out Portland in both games to make the Soccer Bowl.
Their opponent in the big game were the Cosmos’ great rival, the Tampa Bay Rowdies. The Rowdies started slowly, just 5-8, but rebounded behind star striker Rodney Marsh. Marsh (whom the Cosmos loathed and was once a recipient of a nasty tackle from Pele, whose gentlemanly aura disguised a on-field hardman) scored a dramatic overtime goal to win in the conference semis, and his shootout goal put Tampa in the finals. A few minutes earlier, Marsh had been spiked by a Fort Lauderdale player, and though he shook it off for the game-winning kick, it became infected and he was forced to miss the Soccer Bowl.
The news Marsh had to be scratched added to the joyous atmosphere at Giants Stadium, where a monster crowd of 74,901 sold out the place and made a cacophony that could be heard across the river in Manhattan. It was a pleasant late-summer Sunday afternoon in Jersey, August 27, 1978, only 80 degrees and not sticky. Pele was on hand, watching from the Cosmos bench, albeit in street clothes.
Tampa had the best of the early minutes, but in the 30th minute, Hunt launched a cross from 30 yards out by the left touchline. An onrushing Tueart screamed in and volleyed home to the far post for the first goal. In stoppage time of the first half, Hunt set up another one. He launched a shot that was stopped, but Chinaglia popped in the rebound with a diving header, a spectacular goal that made it 2-0 Cosmos at the half. A Tampa defender tried to grab it as it went by, but to no avail.
Tampa made it interesting with a 74th minute goal, but just three minutes later, Roth set up Tueart, who scored from a tight angle, his second of the game, to ice the 3-1 victory.
It was the first (and only) repeat championship in NASL history. The ’78 Cosmos were probably the greatest team in league history, even without the man most associated with their success.
AFTERMATH
The Cosmos won another Soccer Bowl in 1980, but that was their last one. More importantly, it was the last one in the NASL’s television contract with ABC Sports, one that wasn’t renewed. Without Pele (and Beckenbauer, who left after 1980), the league wasn’t as appealing, and without a national TV contract, the NASL was doomed. Soccer was set back for a spell in the U.S., but it has bounced back thanks to Major League Soccer and the modern ease of consuming European leagues on television and the internet.
WHAT THEY SAID
“The Cosmos have all the advantages, the best players and the home crowd. If we lost, we should have been shot.”
—Giorgio Chinaglia
FURTHER READING:
Once In A Lifetime by Gavin Newsham
VIDEO:
929. NEW YORK KNICKS VS MIAMI HEAT
EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS
GAME THREE
MAY 11, 1997
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—5.55
DRAMA—7.21
STAR POWER—6.89
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.95
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.75
LOCAL IMPACT—8.11
TOTAL: 42.46
“MOTHER’S DAY MUCK”
It had to start somewhere. The Knicks rivalry with the Miami Heat in the late-1990s would take on epic scope, if said epic was The Exorcist. The series was grotesque, off-color, and filled with blood and vomit, sometimes literally.
The1997 Eastern Conference semifinals was the first collision of four consecutive in the postseason between these two inartful rivals. Miami was the second seed, New York the three, and after the Knicks swept the Hornets, while Miami slugged out a five-game victory in a Sunshine State Showdown with Orlando, the two teams met in a bricklaying convention that would be remembered as the epitome of ugly 90s hoops.
88 points was all it took to win each of the first two games in Miami, with each team winning one (88-79 Knicks and 88-84 Heat). The series then moved (figuratively) to Broadway, the scene of Phantom and Rent and Miss Saigon. The basketball at Madison Square Garden several blocks south was somewhat less artistic but every bit as dramatic.
Game Three was held on Sunday afternoon, May 11, 1997, smack dab during the matinee performances of the aforementioned musicals. It was Mother’s Day, and midtown was packed with theatergoers who had gifted tickets for a show to mom. But 19,763 eschewed song and dance on the boards for clutching and grabbing under the backboards. They lustily booed Heat coach Pat Riley, the former Knicks coach who had quit New York via fax in favor of South Beach a couple of years earlier.
Miami, the league’s best road team in the regular season, took an 8-point lead into halftime, but the Knicks worked back into the game by shutting down the Heat big men, Alonzo Mourning and P.J. Brown. The Miami backcourt of Voshon Leonard and Tim Hardaway got some shots to go down, but it took 37 attempts for them to muster 39 points between them. Meanwhile the Knicks D, led by the fabulous and ever-ornery power forward Charles Oakley, took Zo and the Heat front court out of the game. At one point, the two players earned a double technical for scuffling under the basket. The Garden crowd, appreciative of Oak’s effort and effect on the game, gave him a standing ovation. “Oak was a man among boys out there,” said Knicks guard John Starks.
“I know I ain’t the ‘man’ here, but I always play good defense, not just today,” said Oakley after the game as he walked swiftly away from a couple of reporters seeking to praise him.
“I don’t get off by being praised,” Oak said as he slipped out the back door. God, how we loved him…
The Knicks owned the third quarter, as they had all season against Miami. Ewing scored ten points in the frame, and Oakley stole the ball three times, and suddenly it was anyone’s game. Neither team could throw it in the ocean (the teams combined to shoot just 38% from the floor), but it was tight, as usual.
Appropriately, the winning points came thanks to a less than cultivated stratagem, though it was worthy of the dramatics playing out over in the Helen Hayes Theater. Starks was the 1997 Sixth Man of the Year, but to that point in the game he had been “Sputtering John,” according to the Daily News, thanks to his 3-9, 8-point effort. But with 2:42 left and the game tied at 73, Starks sprawled dramatically to snag a foul on a three-point attempt. It worked, and the resulting three free throws gave the Knicks the lead for good.
Miami was held scoreless over the final 2:51, but nevertheless had a crack to steal the game in the dying seconds. Down by three, Hardaway got the ball off a screen and looked for the tying shot, but Ewing darted off Mourning, his protege at Georgetown, and got right on top of the Heat guard. Hardaway tried a pump-fake, but Ewing stayed firm, then used his long frame to smother Hardaway’s shot and yanked the ball away to seal the game. The ugly final score was 76-73.
“If it was early in the game I’d have gone around him,” Hardaway said in the locker room. “But we needed a three.”
The 73 points was the lowest the Knicks had allowed in the shot clock era, and while the locals appreciated the win, many fans of aesthetic b-ball wondered if Vince Boryla or Dick McGuire or other old Knicks would fit right to the offense-free proceedings—or even improve upon them.
AFTERMATH
The series would become infamous after it reached the logical end result of all the pushing and shoving and “solid defense.” A Game Five fight between Brown and Knicks guard Charlie Ward resulted in the suspension of multiple key Knicks, including Ewing, Starks and shooting guard Allan Houston, over the final two games of the series. Deprived of a full lineup for either decisive game, the Knicks coughed up a 3-2 lead (they were actually ahead 3-1 before the fisticuffs in Game Five) and the series. As elucidated elsewhere in the NYC1000, there would be ample opportunities for revenge.
WHAT THEY SAID
“The last three minutes were a combination of two things,” said Alonzo Mourning, who traveled while attempting a long jumper with the shot clock winding down and 1:20 left. “They played good defense, and we did not execute well,” he said, with a thoughtful look and a polite tone far from the surly warrior he is on the court.
—George Vecsey, The New York Times
FURTHER READING:
The Last Enforcer by Charles Oakley
VIDEO: