When the Garden Was Eden

by Harvey Araton

  During an extended run of sobriety into 2003, Monroe recommended Meminger for a coaching position at a small college, Manhattanville, in a northern suburb of New York, where Marita Green-Monroe worked in the office of development. Meminger landed the job but didn’t stay long. “I felt Dean needed that shot,” Monroe said. “He did okay, but it just didn’t work out for him.”

  There were other acts of kindness, responses to his cries for help. “There were times when Marita really tried to look after Dean,” Monroe said.

  He had tried to date Sandra Johnson, a model turned social worker, when he was still earning NBA money, but she resisted, wary of his lifestyle. Years into a friendship, romance finally blossomed when Meminger convinced Johnson, or she convinced herself, that he could beat the drugs. They married after the turn of the century. With her support, Meminger managed to stay clean. But even happiness brought trauma, then tragedy. In 2002, Johnson was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery to have a tumor removed. Months later, Meminger took her to Lenox Hill Hospital one night when she complained of stomach pain. A perforated ulcer had caused her organs to become infected. On the operating table, she suffered a heart attack.

  Meminger called Monroe, who rushed over to cry and pray with him. Though Johnson survived, the cancer would take her life within a few more years, leaving Meminger emotionally adrift once more.

  Asked in his apartment during the summer of 2009 if he believed his old friend and roommate would ever have clear sailing, Monroe shrugged and crossed his fingers. Monroe and others who cared about his well-being knew better than to speak with assurance. “Dean seems to be doing okay,” he said. “I saw him dance at his daughter’s wedding. I hadn’t seen him dance in years.” But months after the wedding, Meminger, at 62, was rescued from a fire, unconscious near his bed in a single-room-occupancy building in the Bronx. Newspaper reports said several crack pipes were found on the scene.

  Meminger recovered, tried again to move on, with the Monroes standing by him. Throughout his own physical and financial struggles, Monroe never could bring himself to cut Meminger from his life. Meminger was a good man, he believed, the most loyal of friends. As Meminger moved on from the Bronx fire episode and resumed working basketball clinics, drawing on his lifetime connection to the basketball community of Greater New York, he could be sure that Monroe would be there if he needed him.

  “I think Dean’s always known he could count on me but also that I’d tell him what I thought about things, even when it was painful,” Monroe said. The truth could hurt, but it was the only way forward, just as it was for Monroe after Game 7 in Boston, when he had to admit to himself that Meminger, at least on that Sunday afternoon, was the better man for the job.

  DWELLING ON THE PAST, Monroe liked to say, was for those who were powerless to do anything about the future. “As soon as the Boston series was over, I actually started thinking about Gail Goodrich,” he said. “I’d heard it a lot after the ’72 Finals—you know, how Gail ate me up. It didn’t matter to me that I was hurt. Great players make no excuses. Now that we were back, there was no time to think about what happened in Boston.”

  A mob of fans greeted the Knicks as they returned from Boston, filling the arrival area at LaGuardia Airport and briefly (mistakenly) engulfing the Kansas City Royals baseball team, which had arrived at a nearby gate simultaneously. The Knicks had only one night at home, jetting to Los Angeles the next day after their request to delay the start of the Finals from Tuesday to Wednesday—so they could have an extra day to recover from the Boston pressure cooker—was denied.

  The Lakers were finishing practice when the Knicks’ bus arrived at the Forum for a light practice late on Monday after they touched down in L.A. As they walked onto the floor, Meminger heard a familiar voice.

  “Hey, Dream, over here.” It was Wilt Chamberlain, ambling off the floor, barefoot, the biggest man in the gym summoning the smallest.

  “Little fella, I’m going to tell you something, these motherfuckers wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you,” he said.

  Meminger snickered. “What else do you want to tell me?”

  Chamberlain loved Meminger’s brashness. Playing along, he turned back to the court and pointed at the lane, painted Lakers purple.

  “See that area?” he said. “You’ll be fine if you keep your little ass out of it.”

  Meminger didn’t flinch. By this point, he pretty much embodied the contentious mind-set of his teammates, who had heard that the Lakers—after disposing of Golden State in five games in the Western finals—were not so keen on renewing their one-sided series with the Celtics a year after they had handled the Knicks with relative ease.

  “I’m coming for you, too,” Meminger told Chamberlain.

  THE GAMES OF THE 1973 NBA FINALS are never presented as classics on ESPN or the Madison Square Garden Network. There is no special moment to romanticize, or signature performance to immortalize. “I always say a lot of people don’t even remember that we won a second championship,” Willis Reed said.

  Other than being the reverse of the Finals the year before—when the Knicks lost four straight after winning Game 1—the series proved unremarkable indeed. This time, the Lakers got the jump, 115–112, behind Gail Goodrich’s 30 points (to Monroe’s 18) and Jim McMillian’s 27.

  Worse, in Game 2, Monroe tweaked his already sore hip when he collided with Bill Bridges, the Lakers’ power forward, in the third quarter. But once again, his roommate rode to the rescue. Meminger clamped down on Goodrich, who finished with 14 points, and the Knicks claimed a 99–95 victory behind Bill Bradley’s 26. The series was squared heading back to New York for Games 3 and 4.

  As always, or so it seemed, there was a key player hurt. Jerry West, weeks shy of his 35th birthday, was suffering from tender hamstrings in both legs. “That’s part of the game,” he said, consistent as ever in eschewing the alibi. “I seem to remember that when we beat the Knicks in the Finals, they had a couple of fellows who were hurting or out.”

  After scoring 32 points in Game 2, West managed only 16 in Game 3. Monroe finally outplayed Goodrich, outscoring him 21–14 while adding 6 assists. Phil Jackson had his Meminger moment, replacing a foul-plagued DeBusschere in the third quarter and staying on for 21 of the last 24 minutes, scoring 8 points, grabbing 9 rebounds, and being a nuisance on defense.

  But it was Reed, sensing the crowning completion of his long road back, who led the Knicks with 22 points and contributions that typically were undetectable in the box score. With the Lakers down a basket, inside a minute to play, he mustered every ounce of strength after a typically grueling night and denied Chamberlain a low-post position, forcing Keith Erickson to launch a jumper in vain with the shot clock running down. Reed claimed his 10th rebound and the Knicks held serve at home, 87–83.

  In Game 4, they were coasting by 13 after three quarters but lost Walt Frazier to fouls in the fourth and were clinging to a 4-point lead with less than a minute to play when Bradley missed a 15-footer. Chamberlain and Reed went for the rebound and deflected the ball right to DeBusschere, who scored on the put-back, was fouled by Chamberlain, and made the free throw. DeBusschere’s 33 points and 14 rebounds gave the Knicks a 3–1 series lead going back west.

  One win away, with West hobbling and Chamberlain looking all of his nearly 37 years in what would be his final season: what could possibly go wrong? But after failing to close out the Celtics early, the Knicks were wary, determined to put the Lakers out of their misery. They built a 14-point lead with about eight minutes to play in Game 5.

  DeBusschere, scoreless in the game, went barreling in for a layup, landing awkwardly and in pain. His ankle badly sprained, he was done for the night and possibly the series. Sensing an 11th-hour stay from the governor of fate, the Lakers went on a tear, cut the lead to 4. But in a series that lacked consistent play by the principal stars, in which DeBusschere could score 33 points one night and 2 the next, in which Monroe could follow up his 21-point Game 3 by sho
oting 1 for 11 in Game 4, here came the Pearl to go all Baltimore Bullet on the Lakers in the last 2:15. He scored 8 of his 23 points in the final stretch of the 102–93 clincher. Meminger sat on the bench watching his friend erupt after all he’d been through and thought: “This is one cool mother.”

  As Frazier dribbled out the final seconds, Bradley jumped into Reed’s arms. Jerry Lucas looked up at the clock alongside Holzman in front of the bench with fists raised in the air. In a fast-emptying Forum, the Knicks charged off the floor, into a locker room that Marv Albert would remember as eerily empty and composed, compared with 1970. It was about 1 A.M. back in New York, most editions of the newspapers long gone to bed.

  The championship was claimed 3,000 miles west and was celebrated while the City That Supposedly Never Sleeps was dozing in the middle of the night. In the years before the Finals had a fixed prime-time tip-off, regardless of location, three of the five games were played at the Forum beginning at 10:30 New York time, leaving only diehards and college students like me—thrilled to have an excuse to blow off morning classes—bleary-eyed but boisterous in front of our television screens.

  Word came that Reed was again named series MVP, though it was commonly understood that the award was symbolic—given to the Captain because no Knick had risen above the rest. The composite box score told a story of true teamwork—Bradley leading in scoring with 18.6 points a game, Frazier following at 16.6, then Reed at 16.4, Monroe at 16.0, and DeBusschere at 15.6. Amazing balance for the most democratic of championship teams.

  “That night, I said in the locker room that the three happiest people in there were Earl, Jerry Lucas, and me,” Reed said. “Because those guys had won their first title, and I had come back after they’d gotten all the way to the Finals without me. If we didn’t win it with me, what did that say?” With the trophy in hand, it said the weight of Reed’s leadership—along with the bulk so effective in keeping Chamberlain from the rim—was the difference between second best and a validating second title.

  The imagery of 1970 could never be surpassed, but one memorable snapshot was taken in the locker room, with a bare-chested Reed flanked on his left by Jackson and Bradley and on his right by Frazier and Lucas, all of them holding up raised index fingers. The photo was incomplete, of course, without DeBusschere, who was having his ankle treated, and without the two guards who usually showed up last and now were the first to slip out.

  “When the buzzer sounded, I went up to Dean and said, ‘It’s over, man, let’s go get something to eat,’ ” Monroe said. “I was never one to go all crazy. I’d rather be subdued, reflect on what we’d done. We ate, got into bed, and watched TV.”

  After a while Meminger turned to Monroe in the other bed, studied him carefully just as he had that first night on the bench. Yes, his friend was not the emotive type, not the easiest man to read, but Meminger hoped Monroe could appreciate what he had achieved, what he had been part of. He hoped Monroe finally felt like a New York Knick.

  “You good, Earl?”

  “Yeah, man,” Monroe said softly. “I’m good.”

  Bonded as more than champions, they turned out the light on the championship season and—in a sense—the best time ever to be a professional basketball player in New York City.

  17

  AFTERGLOW

  THERE WAS NO MIGHTY FALL. No collision or bloodletting or even a noticeable limp. “I’m running down the court and I feel this little snap in my right knee,” said Willis Reed of his last injury as a pro. “The good one.”

  It was November 2, 1973, early in the season following the second championship. Once again, the Knicks were playing the Lakers in Los Angeles under cover of the New York late night back home. The ghost of the retired Wilt Chamberlain haunted the court at the Forum while the Knicks dismantled the home team, led by Walt Frazier’s 44 points.

  “So many things happened in my life, and somehow the Lakers were always involved,” Reed said with a smile both rueful and sardonic.

  He sat out the last 33 minutes of that game and all of the next 7 with a strained joint capsule behind the kneecap. Nothing serious, the doctors said. Sure enough, two weeks later, Reed returned to play 35 minutes and scored 22 points against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Bucks, while favoring that knee for what it still gave him. But the pain and swelling persisted, and Reed finally flew to one Dr. Don O’Donoghue, the orthopedist who had treated the bad knee two years earlier.

  The good knee, it turned out, was not that good. Reed had torn some cartilage and would miss at least two months. He initially thought he would be just fine. “I’ll have the surgery, and I’m thinking I’ll be back for the playoffs,” he said.

  But while rehabbing with a trainer in Long Island, he began to ponder a life after basketball. “I’m starting to ask, ‘What are you doing it for?’ ” he told me. “One thing I knew I wanted to do was go on some hunts, and I was going to need two legs to walk on for that.”

  Still, recalling how the Knicks had gotten their playoff act together the previous spring, Reed fought off the notion of quitting right there. The hunter in him also fancied one last championship chase. So he put in the work, tried to come back, suited up for a handful of games at the end of an acceptable 49–33 regular season. But when the playoffs came around in the spring of 1974, Reed knew he couldn’t compete anywhere close to the level to which he was accustomed. “Wasn’t ready, couldn’t play,” he said. Reed being Reed, he dressed for the games anyway, contributing 12 minutes a game as a backup to John Gianelli, now finishing his second season. Reed averaged about a paltry 5 points and 2 rebounds.

  In the first round, the Knicks met their old rivals the Bullets, now playing in a sterile arena in the Maryland suburbs and renamed the Capital Bullets. Phil Chenier was their leading scorer now, followed by Elvin Hayes and Mike Riordan. Dave Stallworth was hanging on as a seldom-used sub (and would, in fact, return to the Knicks for a seven-game cameo the following season).

  Neither team was a serious contender anymore, but out of habit they battled ferociously, pushing to a seventh game at Madison Square Garden on April 12, a Friday night. For the fifth time in their six-year playoff continuum, the Knicks took the series, winning Game 7, 91–81, before 19,694 fans. Earl Monroe further tormented his former team with 30 points, but everyone agreed the difference in the game was Gianelli.

  Playing 41 minutes, he scored 12 points and hauled down 15 rebounds, but it was his big D on the Big E, Hayes, that most affected the outcome. With his long arms, Gianelli harassed Hayes into a 5-for-15, 12-point shooting night, 16 points below his average for the series. Afterward, the praise for Gianelli flowed like champagne.

  “What a job he did on Hayes,” crowed Dick McGuire. “The kid was the whole show.” Hayes raved about Gianelli, crediting him for his bad night and predicting he would be a handful for Dave Cowens in the next round against Boston. Gianelli wasn’t crazy about being fussed over. Nor was he thrilled to be presumed as the replacement for Reed.

  What made him even more uncomfortable was that Reed’s dressing stall was next to his own. Reed played five measly minutes that night, scored one basket, and pulled down a rebound. In the celebratory locker room, he talked about giving Gianelli advice and encouragement and how much he had improved. “When he puts on a couple of pounds and gains some strength, he’s going to be a terror,” he said.

  They were all getting a little ahead of themselves. Gianelli would never really replace Reed, would never become a star and, in fact, would last only two more seasons in New York. Worse, not only was it all but officially over for Reed, but the victory over the Bullets had merely postponed the departures of two other frontcourt linchpins, Dave DeBusschere and Jerry Lucas, who had announced their pending retirements before the playoffs.

  Lucas’s back had been barking all season, and he had decided to devote himself fully to his educational memory business. DeBusschere had tired of the pounding, night in, night out, and the travel he was never enamored of to begin with. At 33,
he believed he could still play, but he already had a lucrative parachute—an offer to run the ABA Nets, who played a short drive from his Long Island home.

  “Dave felt he had given everything, and after they won the second title he started thinking about stopping,” Geri DeBusschere said. “But he was torn because he loved the guys so much, especially Bill, so as long as they were together and had a chance to win, he felt he owed it to them to play.”

  But DeBusschere saw the deterioration in Reed, and he knew better than to believe that Gianelli could replace him for the long haul. After the Game 7 victory, he cautioned everyone to keep things in perspective. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy as hell,” he said. “But this is one game. You can’t go celebrate tonight knowing that the Boston Celtics are around the corner.”

  More than the others, DeBusschere seemed to understand that his team was probably experiencing its last triumphant hour. The lasting symbolism of that night was the juxtaposition of the two centers, Reed and Gianelli, representing the team’s glorious past and its at-best-uncertain future. Beyond the euphoria of another Game 7 survival, the era of the Old Knicks was about to signal its ultimate decline.

  IN THEIR DIMINISHED state, it was beyond expectation and probably belief to think the Knicks had earned anything more than a proper burial at Boston Garden. They did manage to win Game 3 of the series—in Boston—but returned for Game 5 down 3–1, clinging to life. On April 24, a Wednesday night, they hung with the Celtics for three quarters, but John Havlicek, fully recovered from the shoulder injury of the previous year, riddled them for 33 points, completing the transfer of power that had begun with the drafting of Dave Cowens and Jo Jo White. Much as it pained New Yorkers to admit it, Red Auerbach had every right to huff and puff.

  Having made what would be his farewell appearance in a two-minute cameo in Game 4, Reed sat out the entire fifth game, his only DNP in that postseason. Lucas logged 14 minutes, missing his only two shots. DeBusschere labored through 16 minutes with a painful rib injury, scoring 2 points and grabbing 3 rebounds. Five years after the Knicks were defeated in Bill Russell’s farewell title run, they lost 105–94, and dressed quietly in the same dingy room where Emmette Bryant had assured Reed that the Knicks were on the cusp of winning it all.