“WARD OF THE GARDEN” and “DESPERADO (BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE)”
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974. NEW YORK KNICKS VS MIAMI HEAT
EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS
GAME FOUR
MAY 14, 2000
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.09
DRAMA—6.08
STAR POWER—6.73
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.05
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.55
LOCAL IMPACT—8.51
TOTAL: 42.01
“WARD OF THE GARDEN”
The Knicks and the Miami Heat tangled in four straight playoff encounters between 1997-2000. Unlike the “series of series” with the Bullets or the Bulls, however, few ‘Bockers fans remember the brutal battles with the Heat with similar fondness. The Knicks lost to Miami in controversial fashion in 1997 after an infamous brawl resulted in suspensions for Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, John Starks and two others across Games Six and Seven. New York bested the Heat, coached by turncoat Pat Riley, in ’98 and ’99. In 2000 the teams met yet again in the Eastern Conference semis.
Miami was the top seed, thanks in part to an improbable three-pointer hit by the Crossover King, Tim Hardaway, at the buzzer in a late-regular season contest against New York. The Knicks were the three-seed, and they disposed of the Raptors in the first round, while Miami took care of Detroit. That led to another matchup between two teams that, by this point, loathed one another. As Hardaway put it, “I hate the Knicks as much as I can hate. Can you hate the Knicks more than that? Then I hate them that much.”
Ordinarily such hatred is a good thing for fans and legacy. But the basketball on display was so lacking in aesthetic quality, such the antithesis of the free flowing beauty the Old Knicks of Bradley and Frazier possessed, that few fans could enjoy the rivalry. It was one thing for New York to resort to BullyBall with Charles Oakley and the X-Man, Xavier McDaniel, against teams with superior firepower. That was New York street toughness as a winning tactic. The games with the Heat in the main were physical in the absence of good passing, cutting and shooting.
The 2000 semis was possibly the ur-example of that ugliness. In seven very hard-fought games, the 90-point barrier was cracked exactly once. That was in Game Four, played on Sunday, May 14, 2000 before 19,763 fans in a Mother’s Day Matinee, a 12:30 PM game at the Garden. Miami led 2-1 in the series, so the ‘nooner was a must-win for the home team.
Appropriately enough, a former football player was the key element in the game. Charlie Ward won the Heisman Trophy at Florida State but chose the guaranteed money of the NBA over the punishment and cutthroat “loyalty” of the NFL. Ward turned in several good seasons in New York, and Game Four in 2000 against Miami was his masterpiece. Ward turned in 20 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists in an all-around performance to lead the Knicks to a 91-83 win to even the series at 2-2.
“We did not respect him,” Riley admitted afterwards.
Miami center Alonzo Mourning had some legendary battles with Ewing, his predecessor as Savior Center Out Of Georgetown. This was not one of his finest hours, however. Mourning was the best player in the game (and the series, and in Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy’s estimation, the Eastern Conference) but his nine turnovers prevented the Heat from winning, despite the 27 points and 14 rebounds Zo amassed. In all, Miami committed 19 turnovers, leading to 28 Knicks points. It was the sole reason they got to such a point threshold.
“Half of the turnovers were just unconscionable,” Riley—a man who knows something about unconscionable acts—said after the game. “The mind-blowing thing is that we were still right there if we had just made some free throws.” Indeed Mourning missed four in a row down the stretch, adding to his unclutch performance.
The eight-point win was by far the biggest “blowout” of the series.
AFTERMATH
The Knicks went on to win the series in seven brutal, incredibly tight games. In Game Six, which will appear later in the list, New York somehow erased an 18-point lead (akin to a 55-point deficit in today’s NBA) to pull out an incredible win. In Game Seven they went to Miami and won 83-82 on a Ewing dunk with 82 seconds left—the final points of this rivalry.
Post-Milennium the contending fortunes of both teams vanished. Miami and Riley have fared better, once it became “President Pat” and not “Coach Riley” and the team landed Dwayne Wade and then LeBron James. The Knicks lost to bete noire Reggie Miller and the Pacers in the 2000 Conference Finals, unwisely dealt Ewing before the following season, and thence entered the Dolan vortex of mostly horrible play and lack of success.
Given the ugliness of the Knicks in the 21st Century, maybe that unwatchable brand of b-ball they practiced at length against Miami wasn’t so bad after all…
WHAT THEY SAID
“It’s mind-blowing. Where was our focus, our concentration? How could we be so careless? How could we not realize how much the Knicks needed this game?”
—Pat Riley, Miami head coach
FURTHER READING:
The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All, by Paul Knepper
VIDEO:
973. ROY JONES, JR. VS FELIX TRINIDAD
JANUARY 19, 2008
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.34
DRAMA—6.57
STAR POWER—8.43
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.04
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.77
LOCAL IMPACT—6.87
TOTAL: 42.02
“DESPERADO (BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE)”
It was basically all over for Felix Trinidad. The great Puerto Rican fighter who went 40-0 while amassing titles in three different weight classes had recently been knocked out by Bernard “The Executioner” Hopkins and then suffered a second loss, a brutal whipping at the hands of the much younger Winky Wright, in 2005. Pushing 35, Trinidad, like all fighters, wanted to keep getting paid to box, but the opportunities were slim. Tito wasn’t going to enter the squared circle with just any up-and-comer or tomato can. At this stage, only a mega-fight, the kind that usually involves one or both fighters being big names but past their primes, would do.
Enter Don King. He thought Trinidad should battle Floyd Mayweather, even then widely considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. The King of the Ring flew to the PR to convince Tito and his father, Felix, Sr., to take the fight. Trinidad pere thought a better matchup for his son would be Roy Jones, Jr.—like Tito a boxing legend who had seen better days.
King had no sooner responded that he thought that fight would be impossible to make when his cell phone rang. On the line: Roy Jones, Jr., calling to hire King to promote his next bout (this according to an always reliable source—Don King himself).
The stunning coincidence may have swayed all parties. Two months later, Jones agreed to fight Trinidad at Madison Square Garden. New York City has a long tradition of welcoming entertainers who are mounting a comeback, or putting on one final show before slipping into obscurity, or are convincing themselves that some prior relevance still holds. The Jones-Trinidad fight fit neatly into that context.
The two one-time greats agreed to meet at 170 pounds, higher than Trinidad’s usual fighting weight but right in Jones’ wheelhouse—in 1999 he unified the titles in the light-heavyweight class with a breathtaking display of speed and savagery against Reggie Johnson. The former middleweight and super middleweight champ than took on the unprecedented move of blowing up to full heavyweight, where he won yet another crown, defeating John Ruiz in a one-sided decision. It was a moment that underscored the depths the once-hallowed title of “Heavyweight Champion of the World” had sunk, but it was an impressive feat nonetheless.
Jones was now 49-1, with his only defeat coming on a controversial disqualification earlier in his career. But the leap up in class took something from the aging Jones, and in 2004 he was battered by Antonio Tarver back at light-heavyweight. In his next fight, Jones was knocked into next week by Glen Johnson, with Roy unconscious on the canvas for several minutes after being counted out. After losing again to Tarver, it seemed the prudent thing was for Jones to call it a brilliant career and concentrate on his duties calling fights on HBO.
But fighters seldom do the prudent thing, at least when it comes to retiring. Soon enough, Jones was back in training, and winning fights in 2006 and 2007 provided enough of a confidence boost for Jones to call King. Providentially (and perhaps apocryphally), the crazy-haired promoter was with Trinidad at the time, and the fighters with title belts in seven different weight classes between them agreed to brawl on Saturday night, January 19, 2008.
Late on a cold night that had seen flurries earlier in the evening, Jones entered the MSG ring with his usual enormous entourage, consisting mostly of rappers, while Trinidad had the vociferous backing of New York’s large Puerto Rican population. After all, several of Tito’s greatest moments came in the Garden ring, including his legendary defeat of Pernell Whitaker (and his memorable loss to Hopkins). Still, savvy ringsiders noted that the new favorite from the island, Miguel Cotto, had drawn larger fan support earlier in the year at MSG. In fairness, that may have been due to the insanely high ticket prices for the Tito-Jones encounter. “I had nothing to with that,” King said. “That was done by Madison Square Garden. It was a big mistake.”
Tito’s fans were quickly disappointed. He had not fought in nearly three years, and Jones—even a long past his apogee Jones—wasn’t the sort of opponent to make a comeback against. The first two rounds contained few telling blows, but Jones was obviously faster and fought with better defensive tactics. Trinidad seemed tired after six minutes, and by the third round, Jones was taunting Tito and tapping his body to prove he could not be hurt by Trinidad’s punches.
The inevitable came in the seventh round, when Jones caught his rusty opponent with a short right hand to the temple that dropped Trinidad. Tito got up, but went down again in the tenth round, thanks to a vintage left-right combo that had fans reminiscing about Jones in his glory days.
Trinidad wasn’t badly hurt, and he made it to the final bell, but the fight was over long before. Jones won by unanimous decision, 116-100 on two cards, 117-100 on the third.
AFTERMATH
Jones was defeated in a bloody decision by Joe Calzaghe in the Garden ring nine months later. He kept fighting, in a long string of sad displays, for nearly another decade. He went 17-8 over his final 27 professional fights. After retiring at last Jones fought Mike Tyson to a draw in a bizarre exhibition match, appeared as himself in Creed II, and became a Russian citizen. It’s been a long, strange journey indeed for Comrade Jones.
As for Trinidad, this was his final fight.
WHAT THEY SAID
“There’s no way in the world as a former heavyweight champion I was going to let a middleweight champion beat me.”
Roy Jones, Jr.
FURTHER READING:
Felix Trinidad—Special Issue, by The Ring Magazine
VIDEO: