How a conflict from the Knicks’ past can give context to their present
Pat Riley once chose to not sub out a historically struggling John Starks for veteran Rolando Blackman, perhaps costing the Knicks a championship in the process, a conflict that has been unearthed again thanks to two recent books. Can the current day Knicks and Tom Thibodeau learn from the past?
A prominent basketball writer digging into whether some Knicks players have had serious reservations about a critical rotation decision by the coach.
One of those players deciding to openly call out the coach for that decision; and a top Knicks executive revealing the disagreement he had with the coach.
Wait a minute… have there been new developments in the Thibs and the kids saga?
No. The description above refers to surprising disclosures in two new best-selling books, Blood in the Garden (by Chris Herring), and The Last Enforcer (by Charles Oakley), in connection with Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals. More specifically, the disclosures have to do with Pat Riley’s decision not to sub John Starks out during the fourth quarter when John… well, I won’t repeat those numbing stats.
And, the interesting thing is that, even with the hindsight of more than quarter of a century to evaluate what happened, from my perspective, both Chris Herring and Charles Oakley didn’t truly capture what transpired; and it illustrates how strong emotions can sometimes override a full, rational analysis when rotations and playing time are involved.
In his book, Oak expresses his belief that Riley “made a big mistake” in Game 7 and declares that “In the years that followed, Pat has admitted that he should have put Rolando Blackman… in the decisive game.”
Oak goes on to assert: “I know why Ro didn’t play. Riley was punishing him because earlier in the playoffs Ro had defied Riley’s request to not bring wives on the road. Why else wouldn’t he play?”
Chris Herring provides more detail about the dispute between Blackman and Riley after the Game 7 win over Indiana which enabled the Knicks to move onto the NBA Finals. In a nutshell, Blackman asked if the players could bring their wives on the road trip to Houston and Riley turned down Rolando. Ro challenged Pat’s decision, but Riley firmly reiterated his initial response.
Herring reported that then-Knicks boss Dave Checketts disagreed with Riley’s decision not to bring the wives along; but that he decided to defer to Pat because of his championship experience.
So, Chris noted: “…as Blackman languished on the bench during Game 7 against the team he’d enjoyed his career-best scoring average against, he wondered whether the run-in with Riley over the wives came into play. His teammates had—and to this day, have—the same question.”
Similar to Oakley’s assertion, Chris writes that “Riley called not subbing Blackman in ‘the biggest mistake I ever made.’” (And in offering the “biggest mistake” quotation, Herring cites a newspaper column written in 2006 by Fran Blinebury of the Houston Chronicle.)
But, when you look at the totality of what really happened in the 1994 Playoffs, there is certainly more to the story here.
Before the flare-up with Riley over the issue of the wives ever happened, Blackman didn’t play in Game 7 vs. either Indiana or Chicago. He wasn’t on the floor either in Game 5 vs. Chicago when the Knicks were down by one with less than eight seconds left; Hubert Davis was.
In fact, Blackman barely played at all in those playoffs. Blackman played a grand total of 23 minutes combined in the Chicago and Indiana series — with his last action of the ‘94 playoffs having been four minutes in the Game 3 blowout loss to Indiana.
Hubert Davis had been playing ahead of Blackman in the rotation during the ‘94 playoffs — so, if anyone was going to be subbed for Starks, I would have expected Davis (who had already demonstrated he wasn’t scared by the biggest moments when he drained those two foul shots with the Knicks trailing by one point with just two seconds left in Game 5 against the Bulls).
Blackman’s lack of playing time throughout the playoffs was a result of Riley’s penchant for tightening up rotations come playoff time — and this tendency is certainly fair game for criticism. And it was this penchant that Riley admitted to having made a huge mistake about in 1994.
As Alan Hahn reported in his book, 100 Things Knicks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, Riley expressly acknowledged when he returned to the NBA Finals in 2006: “‘I got caught up in the short rotation… That’s why we brought Rolando there. Immediately afterward, I knew. If we had played the two of them, but especially Ro, we would have won the championship."‘ Riley then added, ‘That’s the biggest mistake I ever made.’”
When Riley referred to “the two of them,” he was also talking about Doc Rivers, whom he had left off the playoff roster due to Doc’s recovery from a serious knee injury. But Doc would have been cleared to play during the middle of the playoffs.
The bottom line: to suggest that a coach like Riley — who wanted to win as badly as any coach or player I have seen — decided to bench a player in Game 7 because of some purported grudge over a dispute regarding bringing wives to the NBA Finals seems completely without merit (especially in light of Blackman’s exceptionally limited play throughout the playoffs).
And perhaps this background is something we should all keep in mind as we try to assess what is really taking place in the current Knicks’ controversy over rotations and playing time.
Fred Cantor’s book, Fred From Fresh Meadows: A Knicks Memoir is available for purchase, with all royalties going to the John Starks Foundation. NY Post columnist Mike Vaccaro said of the book: “Here is a delightful book that I can’t recommend highly enough… Fred Cantor’s stories ring like a trusted friend’s from the neighboring barstool. It’s about time the Knicks became a source for fun, terrific literature again.”
