“THE BOUNCE” and “ALI VS RINGO”
#738/#737
738. NEW YORK KNICKS VS MIAMI HEAT
EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS
GAME THREE
MAY 12, 2000
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—5.44
DRAMA—8.32
STAR POWER—6.73
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.95
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.47
LOCAL IMPACT—8.46
TOTAL: 44.37
“THE BOUNCE”
One of the signatures of Pat Riley’s teams has been his ability to continually find and maximize players who have slipped through the cracks. Some were playing in Europe, others the American minor leagues like the CBA. His best-known reclamation project, at least to Knicks fans, was John Starks, who played at four different colleges in Oklahoma, bagged groceries at a Safeway, went undrafted, and only stayed with New York because Patrick Ewing clobbered him in practice and Starks injured his knee, which prevented the team from releasing him. Starks went on to become a key player and near-mythic figure on the 90s Knicks teams.
After moving to Miami, Riley found Anthony Carter, who certainly fit that same “never, ever give up” mold. A kid from the tough Kirkwood neighborhood in southeast Atlanta, he quit his high school team to play for money on the streets, that being the only way he could get food in his belly. As he told the Denver Post, “The dope man would put up the money, and we would play. We used to play for the drug dealers. That's how we were going to make our money. We didn't sell the drugs ... (I used the money) to buy shoes and food. That was the only way we could eat.” During his teenage years, Carter's mother was on drugs, and all seven of his uncles were in prison at one point. Carter was forced into merciless, literal Hunger Games.
“It was like blood out there,” Carter said. “Game point? You ain’t going to get no layup.”
Through the intervention of a youth program, Carter miraculously managed to find his way to Mission Viejo Community College in southern California. From there he transferred to Hawaii and had a strong collegiate career. But no one drafted him. True to form, Carter played in the CBA, where Riley spotted him and appreciated Carter’s lunchpail, all-out effort style. He wasn’t much of an offensive threat, so he fit Miami perfectly.
In 2000 Riley’s Heat battled his old team, the Knicks, in yet another scrum of a playoff series, the fourth in four years, featuring one violent, blood soaked game after another. Miami was the two seed, New York the three, both well behind Indiana and fated for another round in the the heavyweight championship of each other.
Helped by a Latrell Sprewell last-second bucket to win Game Two, the Knicks swept Toronto in three tougher-than-expected games. Miami likewise swept Detroit, so once again, the I-95 series was on. The teams split a pair of rockfights in South Beach, so it was 1-1 when the teams took to the Garden floor on Friday night, May 12, 2000, for Game Three (three years and one day after the Rangers-Devils thriller described in #739).
The Knicks arrived en masse wearing T-shirts reading “Protect Home Court—By Any Means Necessary,” a Malcolm X-inspired call to arms that did little to ratchet down the tensions between the two sides. The ploy seemed to have an early effect, as the Knicks started strong and built a six-point lead, with Patrick Ewing, in the dying gasps of his storied career in NYC, battling fellow Georgetown alum Alonzo Mourning to a standstill for most of the first quarter.
Then the home team scored exactly one basket over the next 12 minutes and change, a full quarter of offense-free hoops. It out-uglied their Game Two effort, when they went 11 minutes with just a single bucket. Incredibly, they still led at halftime, 37-36, as Miami kept pace in the brick department. The Knicks shot 40% for the game, the Heat just 36%.
The defensive effort exerted on both sides was part of the reason—for example, Miami’s Dan Majerle played so all-out guarding Allan Houston he was removed as an offensive piece, and finished with just two points. Meanwhile Houston wouldn’t be denied, scoring 24 in the game to lead the Knicks (Sprewell had 23). But Mourning slowed the Knicks front court, as Ewing, Marcus Camby and Larry Johnson combined for just 18 points on 6-22 shooting.
Even with Zo veering into foul trouble, the Knicks couldn’t take advantage. The narrow gap between the teams seemed foreordained. “When we remember these games someday,” Mike Lupica wrote presciently in the News, “we will remember it all being like this, a point or two or three or four separating them in every one of these playoff games for four years.” Once the Knicks and Bullets were similarly linked, although those games were mostly beautiful to behold.
Knicks vs Heat wasn’t about skill, but about will. Thus, Anthony Carter fit in perfectly.
He had been finding Mourning inside all night, piling up eight assists on entry passes, and late in the game he set up the Miami big man, who was fouled. Mourning got a lucky bounce (remember those words) to convert the second free throw, and the Heat took a two point lead into the dying seconds. Houston or Sprewell seemed the obvious places to go with the ball, but Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy opted for a throwback. He designed a play for Ewing, and the old man rewarded his coach by floating home a jumper that evoked memories of his glory days earlier in the decade.
Tie game, and overtime. Naturally.
And of course, OT came down to the final seconds. Ewing made one of two from the line, giving New York a precarious 76-75 lead with 13 seconds left.
Enter Carter.
He drove the right baseline, but tight defense forced him into the DMZ behind the basket. With the same gumption that rescued him from the Atlanta ghetto, Carter said the hell with it, and tossed up a high arching shot that soared over the backboard. Somehow, the ball found the front rim, bounced high in the air, and dropped through the basket. Mourning had his hand near the ball as it was in the cylinder but alertly pulled it back before touching the rock. 77-76 Heat, thanks to a miracle playground heave that was reminiscent of Houston’s game-winner from the year before against this same troupe from Florida.
The Knicks had a chance for buzzer-beating heroics, but the inbounds pass was knocked away, and the Heat clung to the one-point victory. They led the series 2-1, and grabbed home-court edge back from New York.
At the buzzer Riley hugged Carter, his latest gem plucked from the scrap heap.
AFTERMATH:
The Knicks, uh, bounced back, pulling out a (very relatively) high-scoring Game Four, and went on to win in seven bitterly contested games, consuming the last dregs of this unsightly rivalry thanks to a Ewing dunk late in Game Seven. Spent, the Knicks fell to Indiana in the conference finals, and the Ewing Era was over.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“These games are about the same kind of laugh riot as the last 45 minutes of ‘Titanic.’ And seem to take about as long as the whole movie.”
—Mike Lupica, New York Daily News
FURTHER READING:
Blood in the Garden by Chris Herring
VIDEO:
737. MUHAMMAD ALI VS OSCAR BONAVENA
HEAVYWEIGHT NON-TITLE FIGHT
DECEMBER 7, 1970
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.67
DRAMA—8.59
STAR POWER—9.55
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.03
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—5.65
LOCAL IMPACT—6.88
TOTAL: 44.38
“ALI VS RINGO”
In the spring of 1970, Muhammad Ali was in flux. He had been out of the ring since 1967, after his decision to spurn induction into the U.S. Army made him a pariah without a boxing license. He was more concerned with raising money through his Champburger franchises than re-acquiring the heavyweight championship that had been stripped away.
Ali had even declared, in the pages of Esquire magazine, that he was done with prizefighting. Instead, he wanted to concentrate on rehabilitating “dope addicts,” and wished to fight a series of charitable exhibitions with Joe Frazier, in order to raise money for the working poor. “There are some black welfare women in Los Angeles,” he wrote, “who want my help because they don’t have clothes for their children. They’re trying to buy a shop where they can make their own clothes, but they can’t get the money. All they’ve got is the seven dollars the government gives them to live on. Me and Joe could put on one boxing exhibition and get them more sewing machines than they could use in a lifetime.”
But Ali said a lot of things. And he was born to box, and there was no better way for him to raise money and get the attention he so craved than by getting back in the action. After nearly four years on the sidelines, he at last was granted a license to fight in Georgia, and defeated Jerry Quarry in Atlanta in October, 1970.
Scarcely six weeks later, Ali was not only back in the ring, but he was fighting in the World’s Most Famous Arena. With the political winds now blowing against the Vietnam War and in Ali’s favor, New York State’s Boxing Commission reversed their previous hardline stance against Ali and licensed him to fight.
Given his opponent, perhaps the Commission thought it was being wily, and allowing Ali to get what he deserved in the ring. For Oscar Bonavena was considered an awfully tough opponent for someone who had fought just once since LBJ had been president.
Bonavena was from Buenos Aires, like many Argentines born to Italian immigrants. The best fighter from his native land since the “Wild Bull of the Pampas,” Luis Firpo, Bonavena was known as “Ringo” for his Beatles-esque mop top. A hard-punching if somewhat gawky heavyweight, Ringo rose through the ranks by splitting his time between NYC and BA, defeating the well-regarded heavy George Chuvalo and knocking Frazier down twice before succumbing to Smokin’ Joe in an all-action 1966 fight at the Garden.
Ringo fought his way back to a rematch with Frazier in Philly, this time for the title. Joe had learned his lesson and walloped Bonavena, leaving his face a welted mess. While Chuck Wepner was the immediate inspiration for Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky, the Italian Stallion and Bonavena shared many characteristics, including ethnic background, an unathletic, almost pudgy, frame, and a dirtbag brother-in-law (Bonavena pulled out of a fight with the late George Foreman after being arrested for assaulting his wife’s brother).
So Bonavena, record 46-6-1, was a dangerous if unpredictable challenge for Ali.
The Argentine figured his best chance was to out-hype the ultimate hype man, and he went after Ali, calling him a draft-dodger, a “maricon,” and, oddly, a “black kangaroo.” He nearly started a brawl in the stands with Ali during the Foreman-Ken Norton fight, and would regularly imply that Ali smelled, a twist on his attack on Frazier, when Bonavena would dramatically sniff the air around Smokin’ Joe and wrinkle his nose in faux-disgust. He also reversed gears on Ali, predicting an 11th round knockout.
“Imagine him, predictin’ on me” yelped Ali.
Bonavena even made Ali flinch during the weigh-in, when a clowning Ali threw some shadow punches in the Argentine’s direction. Ali may not have been as motivated as he was when he destroyed Ernie Terrell for repeatedly calling him “Clay” after he had taken the name Muhammad Ali, but it wasn’t far off. He wanted to demolish Ringo for his pertinent flamboyance.
“I never wanted to whup a man so bad,” Ali declared. “I’m gonna put some soul on his head.”
The two men met in the ring on the 29th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Monday night, December 7, 1970. At the same time, Cleveland was defeating Houston in the Astrodome on Monday Night Football, exactly two weeks after Howard Cosell had gotten so drunk during the broadcast of a Giants-Eagles game that he vomited on “Dandy” Don Meredith and had to be removed at halftime (incredibly, although the Jets played in the very first MNF game, at Cleveland, New York didn’t host a Monday night game until 1979, and the staid Giants didn’t keep their fans up late until 1982).
Ali was, as you would expect, an immense draw to the Garden, where 19,417 lucky fans got inside while thousands more jammed the surrounding streets. Ticket prices were expensive, and set a Garden record for the biggest gate for a non-title fight.
“He’ll be mine in nine,” prophesied the true poet of the squared circle, but the Argentine proved a tough slab of beef. Bonavena was wild, unorthodox, and that proved a challenge for the ring-rusty Ali. Bonavena repeatedly connected with lunging lefts and the occasional bolo right, and twice was warned for low blows. Overall, he turned the match into, in the words of Dave Anderson in the Times, “a grueling, brawling bullfight.”
Nevertheless, Ali was still Ali, and despite Bonavena’s whirling dervish style the People’s Champ took him apart, piece by piece. His lethal jab dictated the pace of the fight, and long right hands worked like a jackhammer on the game but outclassed Argentine.
In the fifteenth and final round, “after having chipped away at Oscar Bonavena's face as if it was a slab of rock from the Andes Mountains,” as Anderson wrote, Ali at last felled his opponent. Thrice-felled him, in fact. A textbook left hook that would have been the envy of Frazier sent Bonavena sprawling to the canvas. Ali, in a frenzy, refused to go to a neutral corner and stood over his opponent. Most assembled figured the contest over, but for some reason, the Argentine rose, only to be sent straight down with a right hand from the hovering Ali.
Referee Mark Conn somehow not only let the proceedings continue but again failed to steer Ali to a neutral corner—indeed, The Greatest appeared to swat away Conn’s steering hand and told the ref to get to counting. Hearing voices only he could detect that ordered him to rise again, Bonavena somehow staggered to his feet once more.
Ali then ended the matter with a smashing combination that automatically ended the fight on the three-knockdown rule in effect in New York. KO 15, to the Louisville Lip. Neil Leifer’s photo of Ali standing with arms raised in victory over a fallen Bonavena isn’t as iconic as the ones from the fights against Sonny Liston or Cleveland Williams, but it’s a great shot nonetheless.
Ali was now 2-0 since his reinstatement, and all eyes were upon a challenge to Frazier for the heavyweight belt Ali had been forced to give up.
AFTERMATH:
Bonavena fought for another six years, to increasingly little effect. He lost high-profile bouts with an ancient Floyd Patterson and gritty Ron Lyle, and by the end was badly out of shape, in part due to his playboy lifestyle, Ringo to the end. A major distraction was Oscar’s courting of Sally Conforte, the wife of mafia don Joe Conforte and a pioneer in the field of legal prostitution. Sally and Joe had just opened the world’s largest brothel, the Mustang Ranch, in Reno. Oscar even made Sally his manager, making her a pioneer in that regard as well, although she never got to set up any fights.
According to rumors and testimony by fellow mobsters, Oscar swept Sally off her feet, than inquired about how much it would cost to kill Joe. He once supposedly pointed an unloaded shotgun at Conforte, and another time reputedly tried to run his car off the road.
And you thought fighting Muhammad Ali was living dangerously?
Three months after his final fight, on May 22, 1976, Bonavena drove out to the Mustang Ranch (which had opened for business exactly one week earlier) in the wee hours of the morning, after Sally called him from there. At the gate, he was barred entry by security guards. One guard, a man named Russ Brymer, pointed a rifle at Bonavena. Ringo approached Brymer, talking to him calmly while slyly reaching for a pistol he carried in an ankle holster. Brymer later said he was firing a warning shot, but instead he put a bullet in Bonavena’s heart, killing the fighter immediately.
Brymer pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to fifteen months in the state pen, a shockingly light sentence, all things considered. Bonavena’s body was returned to Buenos Aires, where he received a state funeral attended by thousands.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“This is the champion. Frazier never win him.”
—Oscar Bonavena, after the loss to Ali.
FURTHER READING:
“I’m Sorry, But I’m Through Fighting Now,” by Muhammad Ali, Esquire
VIDEO: