Retro recap (1991) — Knicks 104, Bullets 101: Two eras collide
How one night in Washington became the nexus point of two eras passing in the night
The door hadn’t even hit the 2023 Knicks on their way out of the playoffs when talk turned to the question that’s replaced What now? as the drive behind so much curiosity: What’s next? Assessments must be made. There’s data to unspool. Direction to decide, decisions to direct. If they could only add a star. A wing who creates and defends. A center who can shoot. Anyone who can shoot. They need change. That we know. We’re ready to quit this era and hop onto the next one, ‘cuz rings.
Eras, like coastlines, look neat from a distance. Zoom in and be reminded of a greater truth: the realer borders get, the rougher, with land and love. It was true of the Knicks back in the winter of 1991, when a night in the capital marked one era in franchise history drawing to a close while the next took its earliest, primitive forms.
Late that February, the Knicks faced a home-and-away set against the Washington Bullets, whom they led by a half-game for the eighth and final playoff spot in the East. The first of the two games was in D.C. A loss would push the Knicks 10 games below .500 for the first time in three years, another lamentable landmark in an era that’d started out promisingly.
Only three years earlier, the Patrick Ewing Era took its first baby steps as the Knicks reached the playoffs for the first time in four years. Ewing completed his first healthy year as a pro. Mark Jackson won Rookie of the Year, dishing more than 10 assists a game. The following season under Rick Pitino, the best little whorehouse in coaching, New York shelled pell-mell wholesale hell down on opponents behind a fullcourt-pressing, fastbreak-running, 3-point-bombing brash babyface brigade, sweeping the 76ers before nearly riding a Trent Tucker miracle to a Game 7 against the Bulls. No, not that Trent Tucker miracle against the Bulls – this one.
Sadly, that proved to be the high point of Ewing Era 1.0. Michael Jordan drew the whistle and hit the series-winning free throws. The next year, with Stu Jackson coaching, the Knicks were good for a few months, then spent most of the season slipping and stumbling, upsetting the Celtics in a stirring comeback before going out quietly to the Pistons. The front office robbed the future to chase the present, trading Rod Strickland and a first-round pick for Maurice Cheeks and Kiki Vandeweghe in the twilight of their careers.
So: being 22-31 and down 21 in the second half in Washington felt like something sad and small getting close to being put out of its misery. How had it come to this? How did it happen so fast? And what does any of 1991 have to do with today? To start, we go back another 10 years.
The 1981 Knicks were the franchise’s first 50-win team since the 1973 champs; eight years later, Pitino’s Bomb Squad achieved the same feat. Between those years, the Knicks were a sad, skimpy sandwich, the only flavors of note the 1983 and 1984 seasons. The secret ingredient? Two-time All-NBA First Team scoring star Bernard King. The Brooklyn-born brilliance achieved nuclear nirvana in the ‘84 playoffs, averaging 42.6 points a game in a first-round upset of Detroit, then 29 per pushing eventual champion Boston to seven games. The second-biggest reason for the Knicks’ success was literally the biggest.
Bill Cartwright was Madison Square Garden’s man in the middle most of the 1980s, a presence on both ends. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Joni Mitchell sang, and it was true with Mr. Bill. In ‘84 he missed just five games, helping New York to the league’s top defensive rating. Then, poof! The littlest thing ruined everything.
In September of 1984, Cartwright suffered a stress fracture in his left foot that cost him the entire preseason and the year’s first seven games. As soon as he was cleared to return, pivoting for a hook shot in practice, he heard a crack. The fifth metatarsal was broken; he’d miss the entire season. With their best big out and back-ups Marvin Webster and Truck Robinson also absent long-term due to hepatitis and a hairline fracture in his foot, respectively, the Knicks were a sadder, smaller team that ‘85 season. The playoffs were a pipe dream by the time March 23 in Kansas City rolled around, a date which would live in infamy.
King suffered a torn right ACL, torn knee cartilage and a broken bone in his leg. In 1985, a torn ACL was a punishment straight out of Hades; King would spend two years rehabbing in the hopes of returning. As enormously as King’s injury impacted the Knicks’ plans for the future, it didn’t actually change much in the moment.
The Knicks were one of the league’s handful of worst teams at 24-46 when King went down. Counting the loss in Kansas City, they dropped their last dozen games. That didn’t really impact their lottery position, as all the teams below them were pretty much all safely worse. Seven weeks after King writhed on the Kemper Arena floor, the franchise celebrated winning the right to draft Ewing.
It’s worth wondering what might have been, had Ewing and King ever combined forces. Alas, they never did: King missed the entirety of the big man’s rookie season recovering from his injuries; the following year, Ewing sprained his left knee only a few weeks before King returned for the last six games, his first action in more than two years.
Over the last three games, King averaged 30 points a game drilling more than half his shots. But what seemed a phoenix rising turned out to be a swan song: three months later, Sidney Green was New York’s new small forward and King was with Washington. The Knicks went over a decade shuffling through small forwards, failing to find another All-Star at the position until Latrell Sprewell. They faced the Bulls in the playoffs in 1989 and 1991 starting Johnny Newman and Vandeweghe at the 3-spot. King could have turned either matchup – and NBA history – on its head.
By 1991, he was once again an All-Star, his 28 a night third in the league and King’s best since he injured his leg. He scored 43 late in ‘89 against the New Jersey Nets, his first 40-point game since the legendary Christmas 60. Nine months later King hit the mark again, giving the Knicks 42. In ‘91, in only 64 games, he scored 40+ 11 times, including two 50-point night’s. He was back, he was playing every game and he was giving everyone the business – including a certain Windy City outfit.
But the Knicks of February 23, 1991 had more immediate concerns. They weren’t just down 21 in the second half, they were shorthanded after the team controversiaslly suspended Mark Jackson for four days for what then-GM Al Bianchi termed “insubordination.” Bianchi and coach John MacLeod had met with Jackson at practice to tell him he was being fined for publicly complaining about his reduced role. Jackson, according to Bianchi, didn’t take it well.
“He's walking back to the team, mumbling under his breath and cursing,” Bianchi told reporters. “We don't take that, especially in front of the other guys. John told him to leave practice. He did so, but he slammed the door. After all that, at that point, we knew we'd have to do something more than fine him."
It’s hard not to side here with Jackson, a co-captain, honestly. “Mumbling” and “cursing” under his breath? Slamming a door? Did Bianchi and MacLeod expect thank-you notes after demoting Jackson behind Cheeks, nine years his senior? After that season, Cheeks played just 91 more games before retiring. Jackson played 988. Of course he was upset. Having a pulse earned him a four-day suspension. J.R. Smith got less for throwing soup at a coach.
Bianchi made a point to tell reporters he was in total control and on top of things, exactly the sort of thing someone in control and on top of things does. “The inmates are not running the asylum,” he said, which coupled with “insubordination” gives you a sense of the offensive level of privilege Bianchi presumed. Comparing your workplace to an asylum is maybe not a great look – especially when you’re the general manager of a losing team. Don Cronson, Jackson’s agent, showed a clear grasp of the realpolitik, musing: "[W]ho do you think is going to be employed longer, Al Bianchi and John MacLeod or my client?” Within a week, Bianchi was canned; two months later, MacLeod resigned to coach at Notre Dame. Jackson would last one more season with the Knicks before being traded in the deal that brought back Doc Rivers and Charles Smith.
The Knicks fought their way back in Washington, holding the Bullets to 36 second-half points. The comeback was fueled by extraordinary efforts from two of the team’s longest-tenured members. On a night Cheeks missed seven of nine shots and a first-year Knick by the name of John Starks missed all five of his, Gerald Wilkins came through with 25 points on 53% shooting. Charles Oakley did it all: 22 points, 20 rebounds, eight offensive boards and four assists. Ironically, no Knick had more assists than Ewing and Oak.
Still, King was on that night, pouring in 39 for the home team. He’s only a few weeks removed from netting 49 in a win at the Garden, earning cheers and a standing ovation from the same crowd that chanted “Al must go!” at Bianchi that night. King was emotional talking about it afterward.
And yet, despite King’s effort, the Knicks were a wave crashing down on the Bullets the entire second half. The game was tied late in the final seconds when Tucker, Mr. Miracle, hit the game-winning three to give the Knicks the win, 104-101.
You may have noticed that clip is of a Tucker game-winner two weeks later in Detroit, not Washington. Truth is I can’t find a clip of the D.C. shot anywhere. Can’t even find an adjective attached to it. Consider that Detroit clip an artist’s rendering of what Tucker’s Washington winner might have looked like.
The Knicks won the second end of the back-to-back in double overtime. After that, the Bullets collapsed, losing 18 of their last 26. The Knicks used the two wins to kickstart a 17-12 finish and win the last playoff spot – a consolation prize, though a long way from oh so close to a Game 7 at home with the conference finals on the line for a young team with a promising future. If that sounds familiar, it should.
It’s where this year’s young, promising Knicks finished: a win away from a Game 7 at home with the ECF on the line. It took the 1989 Knicks two years to go from sweeping brooms across the Spectrum floor after eliminating the Sixers to sweating a courtroom where Ewing pursued his escape from New York. A clause in his contract allowed him to become a restricted free agent that summer if he wasn’t one of the four-highest paid players in the league. Both sides agreed Hot Rod Williams, Akeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan were the top-three earners; the dispute centered on whether 70% of Larry Bird’s $7 million take-home that year was either salary or a signing bonus. The Knicks won the ruling, but that’s like “winning” an argument with your lover before sitting in silence for a four-hour drive. Something bigger than payroll hierarchy was going on. Ewing wanted out. Whether they acceded or succeeded in giving him reason to stay, either way, an era was ending.
Another era was ending, too; what looking back seems like a red flag seemed at the time like King proving everyone wrong over and over again. He kept piling up the points: 44 in the second end of the Knicks back-to-back; a week later, 50 against the Jazz. The minutes piled up, too. Over a five-game stretch, King played at least 41 minutes every game, including 100 over the two against the Knicks, one of which was a 56-minute marathon. He played the full 48 in the 50-piece vs. Utah.
Late in March, a lower back strain wouldn’t quite go away. Six months later, the Bullets were in training camp for another season King would miss in its entirety, again due to problems with his knee. Late the following season he came off the bench for the Nets the last couple months, unrecognizable from what he’d been before. Same with the Knicks, who’d become a 60-win powerhouse – albeit one with a power forward at small forward. They really never could replace King.
For one night in February, the Knicks faced meaninglessness head-on, got knocked down a couple times but never out, then fought back for a win so over-the-top it’d make Vince McMahon blush. This was a true fan’s win, one of those hidden gems whose shine makes the darkness and letdowns worth it. All we knew that night was that a win meant something, and the Knicks beat the odds to get it. Wherever the Knicks are in 2025, we’ll feel the same. Is that primitive? Yes. Did that make it any less satisfying? No. Not even if the only highlight from their playoffs came at their expense.
