3

“The Flashiest Losers in the League”

1977–1978

“Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leaving today,” the song starts. After “today,” New York crowds loudly join in: “I want to be a part of it: New York, New York!” Originally performed by Liza Minnelli for the 1977 Martin Scorsese film New York, New York, the song became more famous after Frank Sinatra covered it a year later in a performance at Radio City Music Hall. Sinatra’s 1980 recorded version peaked at number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, and in subsequent decades the song has probably been played at more bar mitzvahs, weddings, and Yankees games than any other. But in the fall of 1977, it was brand-new, just in time to become the theme song for a new mayor.¹

The 1977 mayoral election in New York City was one for the ages. Better put, the Democratic primary was one for the ages, as Republicans had little chance of winning the mayoralty in the seventies. The primary was a crowded field, and incumbent mayor Abe Beame faced five prominent challengers, including New York secretary of state Mario Cuomo and outspoken former congresswoman Bella Abzug. The biggest issues facing these candidates were the economy and crime, as New York hovered on the brink of bankruptcy while David Berkowitz, better known as the Son of Sam killer, remained on the loose. Between the summers of 1976 and 1977, Berkowitz killed at least six people (and wounded nine others), seemingly at random. He did not limit his attacks to just one borough, committing crimes in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx and terrorizing New Yorkers until being arrested in August 1977, when Mayor Beame was finally able to tell reporters, “The people of New York can rest easy tonight.”² Despite being the incumbent, Beame failed in his reelection bid, and, in the end, it was Abzug’s former colleague in the US House of Representatives, Ed Koch, who would emerge victorious despite polling just 2 percent when the year began.

After winning the election, and even with the Son of Sam behind bars, Koch knew he faced a monumental task. As he later wrote, “When I came into office the city was on its rear end.”³ Tall and balding, with tufts of hair poking out like a monastic tonsure, Koch was notoriously confrontational. “His in-your-face humor and incessant flow of words … making impolitic jabs at opponents as ‘wackos’ in his fast New York twang,” writes one biographer, “Koch fashioned himself as a personification of New York.”⁴ His campaign slogan was particularly hard-hitting, asking voters, “After eight years of charisma [referring to John Lindsay], and four years of the clubhouse [Beame], why not try competence?”⁵ Even his inaugural address was stirring. “From its earliest days,” he began, “this city has been a lifeboat for the homeless, a larder for the hungry, a living library for the intellectually starved, a refuge not only for the oppressed but also for the creative.”⁶

Not all New Yorkers fixated on the mayoral election or the Son of Sam in the fall of 1977. Less than a week after the Bronx burned on live television, New York Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson smacked three home runs to lead his team to a World Series title and gain the nickname “Mr. October.” He was the most popular athlete in New York City. But a few years earlier, at the height of the Knicks dynasty, Walt Frazier had been the most popular. On the court, Frazier had orchestrated Coach Holzman’s beloved free-flowing offense by always finding the open man, and he had spearheaded the league’s stingiest defense, earning seven straight All-Defense team honors. Off the court, Frazier transformed into Clyde, the coolest cat in the Big Apple, as famous for his stylish attire as for his athletic prowess. Frazier drove his Rolls-Royce (New York license plate “WCF” in homage to himself, Walt “Clyde” Frazier) to the hippest bars and wore full-length mink coats and his trademark hats. In 1970, he became one of the first NBA players to endorse a sneaker, as Puma released the low-cut suede “Clyde.” All the kids in New York City wanted a pair, and they quickly became a part of Gotham’s underground sneaker culture, worn by playground ballers and B-boys alike.

But by the time of Jackson’s historic three-homer game, Clyde was clearly past his prime as a basketball player. “[Coach] Reed must find a way for the 32-year old Frazier to change his style of play,” Sam Goldaper wrote in the Times. “Pro basketball ways have changed and Frazier has not.” Frazier said all the right things, of course, when asked about his willingness to adapt. “Willis is the coach,” Frazier insisted, “and if he wants me to change, then, I’ll change.” Asked about the possibility of being traded to another team, Frazier laughed. “There are not too many teams that want a 32-year old guard with three more years left on his contract and my salary [$450,000 per year].”⁷

In a preseason game against the Milwaukee Bucks, Frazier scored 19 points, grabbed 7 rebounds, and handed out 8 assists. “Clyde has a new enthusiasm,” Monroe gushed to reporters. “Clyde is talking, he appears happier, he’s putting out more.”⁸ Sure, maybe Frazier was happier. Or maybe the Knicks drafting a point guard, Ray Williams, in the first round of the draft lit a fire under him.

It didn’t matter. A week later, Frazier was gone. Unbeknown to his teammates, president Mike Burke and general manager Eddie Donovan had been actively shopping Frazier for some time. Atlanta seemed a likely landing spot, but new team owner Ted Turner turned down the Knicks in the hopes that rookie head coach Hubie Brown could spark his young Hawks without an expensive superstar on the roster. Los Angeles general manager Jerry West, an old nemesis of Frazier, was interested, but Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke backed out, skittish about adding another big contract. Finally, the Cleveland Cavaliers, a season removed from their “Miracle of Richfield” playoff run, entered the fray. The Cavs desperately wanted to become legitimate title contenders and hoped Clyde would be the missing piece to take them to the top.

Frazier was floored. “After playing in New York for 10 years, I wanted to finish my career there,” he said.⁹ He was especially hurt that Reed, his former teammate, had not called to let him know personally. “My agent met me at my apartment in the city to inform me,” Frazier wrote in an autobiography.¹⁰ Later he reflected on the move. “I guess the cool image started working against me,” he said. “When we won, people said ‘Frazier’s cool, he never shows emotion.’ When we lost, they said, ‘Look at Frazier, he doesn’t care.’ ”¹¹ No matter what fans thought, Frazier’s agent was livid, informing reporters, “He’s not going to report to Cleveland—that’s for sure.”¹²

Technically, Frazier was not actually traded to Cleveland. Instead, he was sent to the Cavaliers as compensation. Part of the settlement of the Oscar Robertson lawsuit called for a team losing a player via free agency to receive a player or draft pick as compensation. In 1977, the Knicks signed the franchise’s first free agent: Cavs guard Jim Cleamons, a seven-year vet who Burke and Donovan viewed as a younger, cheaper, and more willing role player than Frazier. Cleamons was part of the first true class of NBA free agents (Gail Goodrich, who relocated from the Lakers to the Jazz, was the only significant free agent in 1976), and only a few players changed teams. Other than Cleamons, the major signings were the Bullets adding Bob Dandridge from the Bucks, Truck Robinson joining Goodrich in New Orleans, and Jamaal Wilkes and Gus Williams leaving the Warriors for the Lakers and SuperSonics respectively.

So, Cleveland received Frazier as compensation, but to many fans it seemed like the Knicks had just traded Clyde for a journeyman.

With Frazier exiled to Ohio, expectations for the Knicks in their first season under Reed were split. On one hand, given their talent, the Knicks were bound to improve their 40–42 record. “Last year,” new Times reporter Tony Kornheiser wrote, “they played as if they were strangers coming together for playground pickup games… . The Knicks were the flashiest losers in the league.” Sage veteran forward Phil Jackson agreed. “There were too many guys reading stat sheets … Willis is gonna surprise people. He’s not going to have the slightest trouble getting people to play hard for him.”¹³

But Reed and the man he replaced on the bench, Red Holzman, were less convinced. “I don’t know what happened with the team last year,” Holzman admitted. “Maybe the guys will do more for Willis. Who the hell knows?”¹⁴ For his part, Reed tried to downplay inflated expectations. “Let’s be realistic,” he told reporters. “We’re not a team that’s going to win the title. I’d be happy if we made the playoffs.”¹⁵ In training camp, Reed got a glimpse of his players’ motivation. “One of Willis’ innovations,” Jackson explained, “was to make the players run two miles on an oval cinder track within a prescribed time period. McAdoo ran the course in twenty-seven minutes, Ticky Burden did it in twenty-eight minutes, and I kind of limped in just behind them.”¹⁶

It was not what Reed hoped for from elite professional athletes. To put their times in perspective, American Garry Bjorklund finished thirteenth in the 1976 Olympic 10,000 meters, a little over six miles in roughly the same amount of time it took the Knicks trio to jog two miles.

With less-than-ideal effort given during the preseason, and modest expectations from a rookie head coach, New Yorkers were not sure what to expect when the Knicks opened the 1977–78 season at home against the Kansas City Kings. With no big-name addition to the team, attendance was low: around fourteen thousand showed up for opening night. Sharpshooting Kings forward Scott Wedman led all scorers with 29 points, but Jackson and Monroe—the two remaining members of the 1973 championship team—combined for 43 to lead the Knicks to a 120–113 win. Putting up 120 points and playing an up-tempo style was a refreshing change, and afterward Monroe was ecstatic. “We feel if we can get the ball out and we’re running we can be competitive,” he told reporters. “It’s a big change from last year and I love it—it’s my game.”¹⁷

Four days later, New York hosted their old nemeses from Washington and dropped 141 points on the Bullets, including 79 in the second half. In that game, New York tied a club record with 61 made field goals, as eight Knicks scored in double figures, led by Monroe’s 22. Perhaps most importantly, several rookies contributed substantially. Ray Williams handed out 7 assists and scored 12 points in twenty-one minutes off the bench, and, after the game, Frazier told reporters, “[He’ll] break all of my records. And that includes my record for assists.”¹⁸

But Williams was not the only rookie sensation for the Knicks that night. In the 1977 draft, New York had used its second-round pick on Toby Knight, who poured in 17 off the bench in the team’s win against Washington. Knight was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island but had headed west to play college ball at Notre Dame. Knight was a wiry and strong six-foot-nine. A natural left-hander, Knight often drove to the basket before finishing with a short jump shot or layup around the rim. He never became a star in New York—a serious knee injury in 1980 would derail a promising career—but Knight provided the team with much-needed versatility thanks to his ability to play either forward spot.

Three days after their big win against the Bullets, the 2–0 Knicks hosted the Cavaliers. A sellout crowd, the first in nearly four years, packed Madison Square Garden to cheer the return of Clyde to the Big Apple. Before the game, Frazier admitted he was nervous. “New York fans,” he told the Knicks’ radio broadcaster Marv Albert, “are about as sentimental as traffic cops.”¹⁹ But out of respect for Clyde, Knicks fans stood and cheered for several minutes when he was introduced. “I thought the ovation would go on all night,” Frazier said afterward. “Tonight was the greatest. They still love me.”²⁰ The Knicks and Cavs finished regulation tied at 105, and with less than two minutes left in overtime Cleveland clung to a three-point lead. In an ending straight out of a Hollywood movie, Frazier hit a game-clenching free throw and then deflected an errant pass to preserve the 117–112 win for his new team. After the game, Clyde visited his old haunts—PJ Clarke’s (at the corner of East Fifty-Fifth and Third Avenue), Maxwell Plum (on First Avenue, described as a “flamboyant restaurant and singles bar”), and, of course, Harry M’s (located under Madison Square Garden).²¹ Instead of another night in a hotel, Clyde slept in his apartment on East Fifty-Seventh, where a few years earlier he had hosted teammates to watch the Kings revive the Knicks’ playoff hopes. Looking back, his game-clenching performance in the Garden was a rare highlight in what would be his career-ending three-year stay in Cleveland. “The Cavaliers never accepted me,” he wrote later. “To them, I was New York. I was always an outsider on that team.”²²

After a strong start, the Knicks hit a rough patch in late November. Unlike in previous years, when the Knicks shook up their roster midseason, the front office decided to stand pat. “If we have a bad season, it’s going to be with the players we have,” Reed insisted. “We’re going with the horses we’ve got.”²³

Skill level, even without Frazier, was not the issue; the Knicks featured several of the most talented players in the NBA. The problem was discipline.

The Knicks drilled and scrimmaged for several hours per day throughout the preseason and then eased up on their practice schedule after opening night. In the late seventies, the team practiced at Pace University, in downtown Manhattan’s business district. Players arrived in the late morning, having Mike Saunders (who replaced Danny Whelan as the team’s trainer in 1978) tape their ankles or help with therapy. By 11:00 a.m. (maybe noon, depending on the day), players were on the floor, running through drills and reviewing the game plan for the next opponent. When the basketball arena at Pace flooded in early 1979, the team moved to LaGuardia Community College in Queens, just a few blocks away from Peter Parker’s stomping grounds as Spiderman (in Forest Hills). But the routine stayed about the same.²⁴

Still, hoping to instill more discipline, Reed installed a series of fines. Showing up late to practice, missing a team bus, or forgetting equipment resulted in a $25 fine … plus a $5 per minute charge for tardiness. Emblematic of the Knicks’ lack of discipline was their December 3 loss to the Bucks in which they committed an astounding 40 turnovers, including 10 by Ray Williams alone. Two weeks later, the Knicks traveled to Milwaukee and, despite a team-record 63 field goals, lost 152–150 in triple overtime. “Sometimes I think Willis wants us to play like robots,” McAdoo complained after a close loss in mid-December.²⁵ But even more problematic than McAdoo’s grumbling was the increasingly strained relationship between Reed and another star big man.

In Seattle, Spencer Haywood played for four coaches, including Bill Russell, who Haywood viewed as a father figure. When Russell pushed for the Sonics to trade Haywood to New York, the young forward felt betrayed. A deteriorating situation with Reed, also a Hall of Fame center, revived many of those same feelings for the now twenty-eight-year-old. Haywood had worked hard in the 1977 off-season, dropping twenty-five pounds of fat by spending hours on a Nautilus machine, and reported to training camp in the best shape of his career, despite battling a drug addiction of which few were aware.²⁶ But in a mid-December game against Phoenix, Reed penciled in a new group to start the game; Monroe and Cleamons would open at guard, while McAdoo, Jim McMillian, and Lonnie Shelton would begin in the frontcourt. Haywood watched the tip-off from the bench, an unfamiliar spot for the five-time All-Star. He played just thirteen minutes that night and lashed out after the game. “You don’t have to humiliate me,” he vented to reporters about Reed. “If you want to make a change, fine … but I don’t think they’re going to pay me that kind of money to sit on the bench.” Haywood insisted he wasn’t demanding a trade but admitted that “maybe I can go to New Orleans or someplace else where they need a forward who can score.”²⁷ “I just wish Willis would tell me what I should do,” he said. “I’m treated like I have the plague.”²⁸

Haywood and Reed met in private to diffuse the situation. “I think we resolved everything,” Haywood told reporters afterward. Yet Reed seemed confused by Haywood’s outburst. “I don’t know why Spencer does these things,” he said. “If a guy has a problem, let’s talk about it and we’ll deal with it.”²⁹ “When you are winning,” Reed continued, “everyone understands. When you are losing, they will gripe. We can be a competitive team if we play it my way.”³⁰

On Christmas Day, the Knicks showed how good they could be when they worked together, pulling out a surprising 113–110 win over the favored Sixers behind 30 points from McAdoo and 27 from the suddenly rejuvenated Haywood. Subsequent wins against the Nets, Jazz, and Cavaliers pulled them to 20–15, the third-best record in the Eastern Conference.

But just hours after the ball dropped in Times Square to mark the beginning of 1978, the Knicks experienced a shocking change.

Six months earlier, the Knicks had officially become a subsidiary of Gulf & Western Industries. Gulf & Western, which already owned 81 percent of the stock holdings of the Madison Square Garden Corporation, added the Knicks, the NHL’s New York Rangers, and a few other entities to their holdings, paying double the market value for the properties as part of their hostile takeover.³¹ “I was called into Michael Burke’s office,” Mel Lowell told me, “and I was told something was going to happen … ‘if you’d like to remain an employee,’ [Burke said], keep your mouth shut.” At the time, Lowell was a tax manager on the eighteenth floor of 2 Penn Plaza. A few months later, apparently having kept his mouth shut, he became vice president of sports operations, conducting all business and financial affairs for the Knicks and Rangers, including budgets and contracts.³²

Then, on January 1, 1978, Gulf & Western named a new chairman of Madison Square Garden—effectively the new operating owner of the Knicks.

Sonny Werblin was a native New Yorker, the son of a paper bag manufacturer from Flatbush. Werblin had attended Rutgers and started working with the Music Corporation of America (MCA) as an office boy in 1933.³³ By age forty, Werblin was the president of MCA, with a well-deserved reputation for putting together big-time entertainment deals like the Ed Sullivan Show and for working with well-known performers like Elizabeth Taylor and Ronald Reagan.³⁴ “Not only did Mr. Werblin know Mr. Reagan as an actor,” Lowell informed me. “Mrs. Werblin knew Nancy. They were very close. His secretary would buzz him and tell him ‘President Reagan is on the phone.’ ”³⁵

In the mid-sixties, sports fans took notice when Werblin led a syndicate to purchase the American Football League’s New York Titans. He renamed them the New York Jets and signed star University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath to a record-breaking deal. After selling his shares of the Jets, Werblin oversaw the construction of the Meadowlands Sports Complex out of 588 acres of New Jersey swampland. As he had done with the Titans/Jets and the Meadowlands, Werblin jumped in with both feet after agreeing to a deal with Gulf & Western. He signed Fred Shero, one of the NHL’s top coaches, to lead the Rangers and picked up star forwards Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg to anchor the team’s top line. The Rangers improved from thirty wins to forty and reached the Stanley Cup Finals in Werblin’s first year at the helm.

Could he work the same magic for the Knicks?

Werblin had a deserved reputation for being hands-on: “from million-dollar negotiations to the water pressure of the showers in locker rooms,” one journalist wrote.³⁶ He installed a lounge in Madison Square Garden for the wives and girlfriends of Knicks and Rangers and spent time after every game talking to players in the locker room. “He was the perfect owner,” Hubie Brown told me about Werblin, “Sonny was a physical force. He was the greatest master of making everyone feel comfortable in their jobs.”³⁷ Werblin was even hands-on in contract negotiations. “Sonny was born on March 17, 1910.” Lowell laughed, recalling the memory. “How do I know that?” he asked me rhetorically. “Every contract I did with a player had to end with $317.10”³⁸ A five-million-dollar contract, then, would actually pay out $5,000,317.10—it was just another of Sonny’s quirks.

Sonny also talked to newly elected Mayor Koch about cleaning up the area around the Garden to make it more fan-friendly. “Although the Garden’s location might seem the ideal spot,” he told reporters, “it falls way short. The Garden presents tremendous difficulties for the fan. I don’t think you want to buy a ticket,” he continued, “and then have to buy your car back after the show is completed.”³⁹ Maybe he had a point. Two years earlier, a “band of youths” roamed midtown after a concert at the Garden, “terrorizing, attacking, and robbing passers-by.” Nearly two hundred kids took part, ranging in age from 13 to 18. One police detective said, “They were like guerrillas in combat … they just hit and run.”⁴⁰

Still, even while badmouthing the Garden publicly, Werblin told his employees to refer to the Garden as “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”⁴¹ If you can’t make it, fake it.

The Knicks and Rangers were Werblin’s most public projects, but the Garden was booked almost every night of the week. Executives packed Suite 200, a luxury box at the arena, to hobnob with business bigwigs. “Suite 200,” Sonny’s son, Tom, explains, “was celebs all the time.”⁴² As Lowell remembers, “Monday night was wrestling. Tuesday night was basketball. Wednesday night was basketball. Thursday night was a concert or boxing. Friday was a concert (salsa was big then); Saturday was a Knicks home game. Sunday was hockey.”⁴³

Werblin knew business and how to generate publicity. But what did he know about basketball? Journalist Harvey Araton had his doubts, writing that Werblin “didn’t know a pick-and-roll from the first pick of the college draft.”⁴⁴ Stanley Asofsky, who watched hundreds of Knicks games from his courtside seats, was even more candid. “I’d love to give Werblin a basketball IQ test,” he said. “If his life depended on it, he’d be a cadaver every day of the week.”⁴⁵

Just two days after Werblin took over as the chairman of Madison Square Garden, the Knicks began their annual January road trip, giving the Garden time to hold its “Holiday on Ice” extravaganza. In 1978, though, the usual two-week trip was extended an additional week for an indoor tennis tournament. There was no way the old Knicks would have been bumped for the Colgate-Palmolive Masters, even if the tournament did feature nineteen-year-old John McEnroe upsetting tennis legend Arthur Ashe in the finals. All told, the long January excursion included eight games in eighteen days, sending the Knicks to Chicago, Kansas City, Portland, Oakland (Golden State), Seattle, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Denver before returning to New York.

Team travel in the late seventies was far different than in the modern NBA, in which teams fly on chartered jets. “We traveled commercially,” trainer Mike Saunders told me. “A lot of the flights didn’t have first-class seats.” For flights that did have better accommodations, the head coach and nine players (ranked in terms of seniority) were afforded first-class tickets, per the league’s collective bargaining agreement. Sometimes, if the Knicks had back-to-back games in distant cities, they would charter. Usually, though, the players flew the same commercial flights as everyone else.⁴⁶

Unsurprisingly, given the cramped travel conditions, the Knicks struggled on the 1978 road trip, losing five straight. For their game in Denver, Burke devised a unique strategy: oxygen tanks. After watching pro football players using oxygen when they played at high altitude against the Denver Broncos, Burke asked the Nuggets for a few. “It was an unusual request,” Nuggets vice president Bob King admitted. But Denver provided the tanks, which may have helped the Knicks break their losing streak with a 143–141 overtime win.⁴⁷

Before the trip sent the Knicks west, Reed reevaluated his early-season strategy of playing a dozen players every night and shortened his rotation. For Cleamons, the team’s new point guard, it was a welcome change. “He was too nice,” Cleamons told me of his first-year head coach. “Because he was so nice, we had three rookies, Ray Williams, Toby Knight, and Glen Gondrezick, and Willis wanted to give those rookies a chance to play. To me,” Cleamons continued, “he should have told those rookies to sit their asses down.”⁴⁸

Reed also seemed to give up on the “passing game” preached by his predecessor, Red Holzman, in favor of a more isolation-heavy brand of basketball. McAdoo certainly approved of the switch. “If I’m scoring,” McAdoo said, “it’s going to be hard for us not to win.”⁴⁹ Although McAdoo scoring thirty points didn’t necessarily correlate with team success, making him the undisputed first option on offense did establish a hierarchy on a team of talented players. “I don’t think Mac could accept a secondary role,” Haywood told reporters. McAdoo, never shy about his immense talents, agreed. “You play people equally, and that’s saying you have equal talent,” he said. “We don’t have equal talent.”⁵⁰

McAdoo was becoming a more comfortable on-court leader in his first full season with the team, but he was still uncomfortable with big-city living. Rather than residing in Manhattan, like Frazier, or near the Knicks’ practice facility in Queens, like many of his teammates, McAdoo first rented a house on Long Island. But traffic congestion caused McAdoo to relocate to North Jersey and the small town of Ramsey (population twelve thousand), an hour and a half round-trip commute to and from the Garden.⁵¹ “I get to have some trees,” McAdoo explained. “I couldn’t live on 33d and Park.”⁵²

The commute did not prevent McAdoo, however, from enjoying the downtown nightlife. The release of Saturday Night Fever in 1977 catapulted John Travolta into movie stardom and shone a spotlight on the music, culture, and dancing of the disco era. Even today, play the song “Stayin’ Alive” and see how many people put one hand on a hip and the other in the air with pointer finger extended. But disco existed long before Tony Manero tore up the dance floor at 2001 Odyssey. In New York City, its birth (like that of hip-hop) began at a house party. This one was on Valentine’s Day 1970 at a loft on Broadway in Manhattan where David Mancuso played an eclectic array of dance music. And just as was the case with hip-hop, such parties soon outgrew the space, and clubs sprang up to meet the demand. By 1978, more than one thousand discos existed in the NY metro area, including some like Le Jardin that encouraged straight and gay, white and Black to dance together.⁵³

In the summer of 1978, a new club named Xenon opened on West Forty-Third in Manhattan. Although the paint on the walls was still wet, McAdoo and twenty-five hundred fellow New Yorkers showed up for opening night.⁵⁴ Xenon pumped disco music through their house speakers as dancers strutted atop Go Go boxes. Some club-goers bopped along to the beat; others took in the scene from a table or bar, just enjoying being in the moment. It stood in stark contrast to the grittiness of the South Bronx, but those two worlds were starting to move closer to one another, and, by the early 1980s, venues like Xenon employed deejays to spin hip-hop records for dancing, replacing disco music at the center of club life.

McAdoo stood out in every crowd, and reporters rushed to him for his reaction to the new club. “This place is smokin’,” he told them. “I like it, it’s nice.”⁵⁵ McAdoo gave Xenon a thumbs-up but really dug Studio 54. “I was almost a regular there,” he told me. “They would see me coming, and it would be like parting the Red Sea … there would be a hundred people out there, trying to get in. And they would see me coming up, and the guards would part, bring me right on in.”⁵⁶ Xenon was about dancing and fashion; Studio 54 was Hollywood. People went there to celebrity-watch or, like McAdoo, to be seen.

Sometimes teammates joined McAdoo at the dance clubs. Butch Beard thought they were too loud, although he admitted to me that he would “pop in occasionally.”⁵⁷ Bernard King hung out there at Studio 54 as a Knick and one night “blacked out from drinking” (“I don’t remember it, but it happened”).⁵⁸ Micheal Ray Richardson later became a regular at Studio 54 (and at a well-known swinger’s club called Plato’s Retreat), often waking up his roommates—Mike Glenn and Ray Williams—to join him in his partying.⁵⁹ Glenn knew, though, that he had to have a star with him if he wanted to cross the sacred velvet rope. “If you wanted to get into Studio 54,” he said, “you had to go with McAdoo or Earl [Monroe] because they could get you in.”⁶⁰ Monroe straddled both worlds. On one hand, he was a New York City celebrity—only a half-step below Frazier. On the other, he was already producing musical acts and was growing increasingly interested in the established disco and nascent hip-hop scenes.

In February, a few months before Xenon’s grand opening, the Knicks stumbled into the All-Star break losers of three straight. At 26–25, the Knicks remained second in the Atlantic Division but, for the first time since 1969, had zero All-Star game starters; only McAdoo even made the team. But the break did give Reed and Haywood time to mend fences. “I wanted to talk to Willis about a couple of things,” Haywood told the New York Times. “I had to straighten out a couple of things. I was sort of unhappy with myself and my playing time.” For his part, Haywood was pleased, telling reporters that, “for the first time Willis understands.” As usual, Reed was guarded about his feelings regarding his disgruntled star. “I just told him,” he vaguely explained, “that for the rest of the season I wanted more offense from him.” In the Knicks’ first game after the All-Star break, Haywood gave Reed more offense and exploded for 37 points—his highest total since joining the Knicks.⁶¹

Two weeks after Haywood’s scoring outburst, the Knicks hosted the Seattle SuperSonics, then in the midst of one of the greatest turnarounds in NBA history. After a 5–17 start, the team replaced head coach Bob Hopkins with Lenny Wilkens. Wilkens reshuffled the starting lineup, led the team to a 42–18 record the rest of the way, and reached the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. In their mid-February tilt, the Sonics and Knicks traded the lead back and forth; Seattle led 61–60 at the half and then went on a 38–19 third quarter tear as the Garden crowd began booing the Knicks. “I’d rather play on the road,” Beard said after the game. “If that’s the way they treat us, then we’re better off playing without the people here.”⁶² Despite thousands of less-than-supportive fans, the Knicks outscored the SuperSonics 42–23 in the fourth quarter to eke out a 122–120 win. Most of the comeback was achieved using an unusual lineup, with McAdoo at center, flanked by Beard and three rookies: forwards Toby Knight and Glen Gondrezick and guard Ray Williams—sit their asses down indeed! McAdoo led all scorers with 37 points before fouling out, and Beard pumped in 20 to lead the come-from-behind victory.

Despite an electrifying win over the future NBA runners-up, which kick-started a five-game winning streak, the Knicks remained inconsistent. Reed embraced an up-tempo style, but that could lead to both easy baskets and too many turnovers. Asked to compare the current Knicks to the title-winning teams earlier in the decade, McAdoo told reporters, “We have more quickness. We’re a fast-breaking team. We’re different kind of players.”⁶³ Even when they lost, the Knicks put up gaudy point totals. They would finish third in the league in points scored (113.4 points per game) and scored at least 100 in each of their last nineteen games. Unfortunately, they finished dead last in opponent points per game, giving up 114 on average. On defense, Phil Jackson later wrote, “this team didn’t have a clue.”⁶⁴

With such a porous defense, the Knicks were unable to catch the 76ers to win the Atlantic Division and finished a dozen games back at 43–39. But that was good enough to secure a return to the playoffs and a first-round meeting with the Cavs.

Unfortunately for fans of both the Knicks and Cavaliers, Frazier would watch the series in street clothes after injuring his foot in mid-February. Dr. James Nichols, the Knicks’ team physician, told the media Frazier had a stress fracture; Cleveland coach Bill Fitch dismissed it as a “sprained little toe.”⁶⁵

The Knicks throttled the Frazier-less Cavs in the opener of the best-of-three, 132–114, behind 41 points from McAdoo and double-digit scoring from five other Knicks, including 16 off the bench from Haywood. In game two, the Knicks and Cavs found themselves deadlocked at 107 with two seconds left. Instead of forcing the ball to their All-Star center, the Knicks went to Haywood, who already had 25 points on the night. Haywood sank the mid-range jump shot, giving the Knicks the game and the series. The next day, a suddenly philosophical Haywood reflected on his time in New York. “I thought I should have played more this season,” he told reporters. “But I wanted to fit in, and I didn’t really know how. If I didn’t score, I’d get benched because I wasn’t producing offense. If I did score, my defense was blamed. My job now,” he continued, “is to please Spencer. I was pleased with myself last night.”⁶⁶

Riding high after their opening round victory, the Knicks set their sights on upsetting the top-seeded 76ers. On paper, the Knicks could match up with almost any team in the league, but the Sixers were on a different level. Guards Doug Collins and Lloyd Free (who would change his name in 1981 to World B. Free) ignited Philadelphia’s high-powered offense, and the forward tandem of Julius Erving and George McGinnis was the best in the league. Even young center Darryl Dawkins was developing into more than just a physical presence who liked to name his spectacular dunks (e.g., “In Your Face Disgrace”). And “Jellybean” Joe Bryant, whose wife was pregnant with a son they would name Kobe, contributed half a dozen points per game coming off the bench. Still, the Knicks remained confident. “We have a team feeling of love and devotion to each other now,” Haywood told the Times. “We think we can beat anybody.”⁶⁷

As it turned out, Haywood was overoptimistic. In game one, the Sixers blasted the Knicks; their 130–90 win marked the worst playoff loss in over 170 games of Knicks postseason basketball.⁶⁸ “Clowns,” Haywood called his team after the game. “We gave a display of selfish basketball. That’s what we were—clowns.” He shook his head in disgust. “In the playoffs and on national television, too.”⁶⁹ Game two was closer, but the result was much the same: a nineteen-point loss that could have been far worse. “We should have stayed home,” Haywood said. “It was like a rerun of the last game… . I don’t like the idea that we’re not fighting.”⁷⁰ Unfortunately, few Knicks liked to fight and mix it up inside. Haywood and McAdoo preferred to play with finesse, either tossing in long-range jump shots or sweeping to the rim on picturesque drives to the hoop. Only Lonnie Shelton, a six-foot-eight, 240-pound bruiser who reminded everyone of a young Willis Reed or Dave DeBusschere, liked to play physically. “He’s the only aggressive player in a Knick uniform too often,” Haywood admitted. “He is really just playing the way all of us should play.”⁷¹ Despite his willingness to battle, Shelton was quiet and unsure about the team’s chances. “I don’t know what we can do to beat them,” he admitted. “Maybe we can’t.”⁷²

As it turned out, Shelton was right: they couldn’t. The Sixers easily won games three and four to sweep past the Knicks and into the Eastern Conference Finals where, despite being heavy favorites, they lost to the eventual NBA champion Washington Bullets.

While Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes powered the Bullets to the franchise’s first (and to date only) NBA title, the Knicks faced another off-season of disappointment. Reed, after just one season on the bench, was already feeling the heat. “I don’t like when people say I’m a lousy coach,” he admitted to reporters. “When they say I’m doing a bad job, and when they say I have a center when I don’t.”⁷³ Unsurprisingly, McAdoo took offense to the perception that the team lacked a real center. “This club needs people in certain positions,” he said, “but I can’t see how mine is one of them.” In 1977–78 McAdoo put together a very McAdoo-esque season: 27 points per game on 52 percent shooting and 13 rebounds per game to earn an All-Star spot. But he was not the prototypical NBA center. McAdoo was six-nine and 210 pounds of lean muscle. He stood out while in a crowd outside Xenon or Studio 54 but was a few inches shorter (and often a few dozen pounds lighter) than most of his contemporaries. “People are gonna blame me for it, I know it,” McAdoo predicted, “They’ll say we needed a big center.”⁷⁴

Cleamons, signed before the season after coming from the Cavs, believed that the 1977–78 season was a lost opportunity for the Knicks. Not only should Reed have played the rookies less, but too few players were willing to sacrifice personal stats for the good of the team. “If we could have had a balanced attack on both ends of the floor…,” he sighed. “We had the personnel,” he told me. “But we just couldn’t put it all together.”⁷⁵ Cleamons sacrificed. He always did. After three straight seasons averaging double figures in Cleveland as a role player for a very good Cavs team, he scored just seven points per game in his first season starting in New York. The Knicks’ offense revolved around very good one-on-one scorers. They could score, sure, but Monroe was thirty-three years-old, and McAdoo needed to play next to a strong defender and rebounder who could mix it up inside. Shelton fit that bill, but Haywood was too talented (and was owed too much money) to sit on the bench. Shuffling those frontcourt spots seemed to be a top priority heading into the off-season.

As the Knicks struggled to develop an on-court identity under Reed, New York City, under Mayor Koch, struggled to shed its reputation as a center of moral depravity. President Carter’s visit to the South Bronx might have made that neighborhood a symbol of urban decay and poverty, but reports about Times Square made that locale America’s under-the-mattress porno mag.

Today Times Square is a glitzy neon light show assaulting the senses and is probably best known as the location where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. But in the late seventies, it was a much different place, where assaults of more than just the senses regularly took place.

Entrepreneurs built the first peep show in Times Square in 1966. A dozen years later, shops playing “loops” (short pornographic films) in coin-operated peep show booths littered Times Square, numbering in the hundreds. What emerged in the 1970s was an “Erotic City,” in the words of one historian: “Manhattan’s biggest erogenous zone.”⁷⁶ Stores with names like Sugar Shack and Honey Haven enticed passersby while thousands of sex workers showcased their wares up and down Eighth Avenue. Some movie houses showed pornographic films during which customers were allowed to engage in sexual acts. Midnight Cowboy, which won Best Picture at the 1970 Academy Awards, painted a gritty portrait of the area, as Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight) navigates Times Square with the help of sleezy “Ratso” Rizzo (played by Dustin Hoffman). Although fictional, Midnight Cowboy hit pretty close to the mark.

In the early eighties, Mayor Koch demanded a cleanup of Times Square, empowering the Office of Midtown Enforcement with closing down repeat offenders. As one regular says of the city’s on-again, off-again interest in the area, “public sex was largely a matter of public decency—that is to say, it was a question of who was or who wasn’t offended by what went on in public venues.”⁷⁷ Ultimately, the threat of AIDS—particularly problematic among New York City’s homosexual male population that frequented these downtown theaters—resulted in a 1985 health ordinance shutting down gay movie houses and beginning the whitewashing of Times Square.

But even as the mayor’s office worked to clean up Times Square (and the seemingly ever-present graffiti from subway cars), a new musical phenomenon was emerging organically from north of the Harlem River that would soon become the soundtrack to life in the city.

• 1977–78 Knicks
• Record: 43–39
• Playoffs: Won Eastern Conference first round versus Cleveland Cavaliers; lost Eastern Conference semifinals versus Philadelphia 76ers
• Coach: Willis Reed
• Average Home Attendance: 15,288
• Points per Game: (113.4—3rd of 22)
• Points Allowed per Game: (114.0—22nd of 22)
• Team Leaders:
  • Points: Bob McAdoo (26.5 per game)
  • Rebounds: Bob McAdoo (12.8 per game)
  • Assists: Earl Monroe (4.8 per game)
  • Steals: Butch Beard (1.5 per game)
  • Blocked Shots: Bob McAdoo (1.6 per game)
• All-Star: Bob McAdoo
• Notable Transactions: Signed Jim Cleamons as a free agent; sent Walt Frazier to the Cleveland Cavaliers as compensation; drafted Ray Williams in the first round of the 1977 NBA draft