Blood in the Garden: A 5 Star Review of a Terrific Knicks History

The four teams I root for in each of North America's major professional sports, have won 17 championships in my lifetime. The Yankees have won seven, the Steelers six, the Islanders four consecutive. The Knicks however, have not won an NBA title since about six months before I was born. I grew up with the echo of those early 70s teams but I have never seen a ticker tape parade for an NBA team and I fear that when I do, it will be for the Brooklyn Nets.

But my most intense sports memories belong to the Knicks. I was in sixth grade when they won the Patrick Ewing lottery and a jaundiced adult when they traded him to Seattle 15 years later. This book is a loving and thoughtful record of the best of those teams. Chris Herring finds the right balance of the personal and the professional. He also give just the right amount of coverage to all of the personalities that made this team of contenders so beloved in a city famous for its obsession with winning.

Anthony Mason, John Starks, and Pat Riley are the biggest personalities associated with these teams and Herring gives great insight into each of them. Mason's death at 48 gives extra poignancy to his life but I like how Herring centers him as the only New Yorker on those teams. He's sort of a half-fan half-NBA star in this telling. Maybe sources felt a little more free to speak truthfully about him since he is the only character that won't read these accounts. But he comes across well on balance, despite some horrible misbehavior along the way.

Starks is easy to write about. He will always be the most beloved member of this team, his failings quickly forgiven by Knicks fans, even if they dominate his legacy among every other group. What I wouldn't give for the chance to watch him play in today's game.

The portrayal of Riley is some of the best stuff in this book. It will always frustrate me that Riley had so much success before and after his Knicks tenure. I've long thought that he should bare most of the blame for the losses in 1993 and 1994. How could a coach of his caliber trust Charles Smith to be on the floor in closing time while Charles Oakley was on the bench? And how could he not see that John Starks needed to be pulled in Houston when he had Rolando Blackman sitting right there?

The truth is that Riley in the 1990s was a bit of a poseur. A lot of his success with the Lakers came easy. He had Magic and Kareem for god sakes. As much as he projected the cool image of a handsome man in perfectly tailored suits, he was still a crank who could whine about not being reimbursed for $10,000 he gave to his players at a casino and to contemplate leaving his second best player off the playoff roster in a fit of pique. Herring does get across that Riley has since matured. I was touched to read that he has sent Blackman multiple handwritten notes over the years and that he eulogized Anthony Mason.

And then there is the other Pat. Patrick Ewing. (Did you read that in the voice of Mike Walczewski?) Much as Paris Hilton is famous for being famous, Ewing is famous for not being famous. At least not as famous as he should be as the centerpiece of a New York sports franchise for 15 years. Ewing is almost always short-changed in the memories of this team. His greatness had a quiet consistency that never raised eyebrows and is now most remembered perhaps for not winning a championship. But this team would have been nothing without him. And Herring does him justice-writing about the work ethic the principled stands he took for his teammates and coaches behind the scenes and the difficult years of his life as a Jamaican immigrant in Boston. 

I  was left wanting more of Patrick Ewing, but that is the way Ewing will always be. Herring interviewed 204 people for this book but Patrick Ewing's name is not among those listed in the very helpful post script about sources. I can't think of another athlete who is less interested in correcting the record about his legacy. 

So let me do a little bit of that. Some years ago a dipshit Celtics fan with a podcast coined a scurrilous phrase "The Patrick Ewing Theory" to explain the phenomenon when a team does better without its best player. This was supposedly inspired by the 8th seeded Knicks run to the NBA finals in 1999, which Ewing had to sit out with an injury. But the facts say otherwise. Ewing was a huge part of that run. He played heroically on an injured leg in game one of the Eastern Conference finals, stealing home court away from the Pacers. He had 16 points and 10 rebounds. The next game he left the game with an aggravated the injury and was not able to play the rest of the playoffs. Without him, the Knicks went just four and six. 

I'm not saying the Knicks would have won the finals with Patrick that year. But he would have been 2 points better than Chris Dudley in Game 5, and that series goes back to San Antonio for at least game six. The next season Patrick led the Knicks to the Eastern Conference finals. Then he was traded and the Knicks have stunk ever since. 

Some "theory", asshole. 

As you can tell, this team brings out my passions. And this book brought to life so many of their most important moments, both good and bad. Highly Recommended! 

OKAY, A LITTLE MORE GEEK STUFF

The history of the New York Knicks can easily be divided in to five eras.

I. 1946-1968. The Early Days. (22 Seasons) 

.466 winning percentage 

No NBA titles, 3 NBA Finals

9-13 in playoff series. 

II. 1968-1974 The Glory Years aka Red Holzman's first coaching tenure. (6 Seasons)

.650 winning percentage

2 NBA titles, 3 NBA Finals 

11-3 in playoff series.

III. 1974-1985 The Interregnum(11 seasons).

.476 winning percentage, 

0 NBA titles, 0 NBA Finals

3-5 in playoff series.

1985-200 Patrick Ewing (15 seasons)

.556 winning percentage

0 NBA titles, 2 NBA Finals

16-13 in playoff series

V. 2000 - Present Post-Patrick. (21 seasons)

.407 winning percentage

0 NBA titles, 0 NBA Finals 

1-6 in playoff series.

I guess you can see why people still love these never champion Knicks of the 1990s so much.

Every Best Picture Winner, Ranked

For years, I have been slowly making my way backwards through the movies that have won the Oscar for Best Picture. A few days ago I finally made my way to "Wings", the 1928 silent film that won the first such award. I then decided to rank them from best to worst. Because it is the style of this blog, I also separated them into tiers from truly great to downright terrible. 

Yes, there are a handful of terrible movies on this list. But even they have something to teach us about American taste at some specific point in time.  

Tier One: The Unassailable.

These are the movies that stand out to me not just for their quality but for some amount of personal resonance. 

1. The Godfather (1972)  50 years on, it is still the gold standard for cinematic story telling. 

2. The Godfather Part 2 (1974) There is a case for ranking 2 higher than 1. The scope is more ambitious and John Cazale's performance is the best in the history of cinema. But beat for beat, Part One is just too solid. 

3. Casablanca (1943) Pour out a little for Citizen Kane, which belongs up here with the Big Boys but lost to  "How Green Was My Walley."

4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)  If you take anything from scrolling through this humble blog post, make it that you need to see this movie. You will not think about America in the aftermath of World War 2 the same way ever again.

5. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)   

6. Marty (1955)  A joy to watch. As light and life-affirming as anything on this list. 

7. Unforgiven (1992) 

8. Moonlight (2016)  Roger Ebert famously said that the best movies are machines that generate empathy.  The life of this movie's main character could not be more different than mine, but I felt every beat of his journey. 

9. Schindler's List (1993)  

10. A Man for All Seasons (1966) As history, this movie is bunk. But as drama, it will make you root for Saint Thomas Moore, even if you know all the terrible things he did in real life.

11. The Hurt Locker (2009)  Still the best examination of the wars we chose to fight in this century and how little the people back home bothered to think about them.

12. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Already we have four movies about WW2 on this list. 

13. The Last Emperor (1987)  An underrated masterpiece. 

14. Rain Man (1988) Rain Man Focus Group

15.Annie Hall (1977)  Crimes and Misdemeanors is Woody's best film. Take the Money and Run might be his funniest and Midnight in Paris is probably his most entertaining. But Annie Hall is the template for everything else he did. 

16. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

17. No Country for Old Men (2007)

Tier Two: The Other Classics.

18. The King's Speech (2010)  The speech itself gets me every time.

19. The French Connection (1971)

20. Wings (1928)  Amazing achievement in film making. And a good story too. 

21. The Apartment (1960)

22. Patton (1970)

23. The Artist (2011)

24. 12 Years a Slave (2012)

25. Terms of Endearment (1983)

26. Birdman (2013)

27. In the Heat of the Night (1967)

28. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

29. Chariots of Fire (1981)

30. Dances with Wolves (1990)

31. Argo (2012)

32. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 

33. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Tier Three: The Very, Very Good.

These movies are not, in the main, universally loved. Some are popcorn movies unfairly maligned for not being serious enough to deserve the Oscar. Others are overly serious movies about war. and tragedy. But they are all well made if you take them as they were intended.

34. It Happened One Night (1934) 

35. On the Waterfront (1954)

36. How Green Was My Valley (1941)

37. Rocky (1976)

38. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

39. Forrest Gump (1994)

40. The Shape of Water (2017)

41. The Deer Hunter (1978)  The scenes in Vietnam are salacious and dumb. But the first half of the movie is great. I would have loved to see an edit of the movie that was just set on the wedding day.

42. Ordinary People (1980)

43. Amadeus (1984)

44. Braveheart (1995) and Titanic (1997)

This is my only tie. Braveheart and Titanic belong together on this list. They are both entertaining, both are overly long and each was made to resonate with one gender more than the other. But they both work, despite being riddled with on dimensional characters and cliches.

46. Nomadland (2020)

47. Chicago (2003)

48. Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Tier Four: The Good.

These are fine. But I don't need to watch them more than once.

49. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

50. The Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

51. The Lost Weekend (1945)

52. The English Patient (1996)

53. West Side Story (1961)

54. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

55. Parasite (2019)  This movie is enjoyable but let's be honest, it is a bit over rated.

56. Gandhi (1982)

57.  Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Tier Five: Worthy But Flawed.

58. Green Book (2017)   This is the only recent winner that I had not seen before the awards ceremony. The field of nominees was weak that year. Black Panther was the popular favorite but I'm not shocked that the academy avoided giving its biggest prize to a Marvel movie. Roma was expected to win but did not for reasons that remain unclear.  There's a lot of tropes and it feels for stretches like a made for TV movie but the acting performances make it watchable.  

59. Mrs. Miniver (1942)

60. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

61. The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) 

62. All About Eve (1950)  Some people absolutely love this movie. I was bored at times but on a second watch, it was much better than I remembered.

63. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

64. Platoon (1986)

65. The Departed (2006) This movie being the one that finally got Martin Scorsese his Oscar is a bit like how Chuck Berry's only number one single is "My Ding-a-ling."

66. Grand Hotel (1932) 

Tier Six: Gone With the Wind.

67. Gone with the Wind (1939) This movie deserves its own consideration because it is very hard to judge in 2022.  I see all of its merits. The love story is great, if you overlook the scene of marital rape. And the heroine is easy to root for, if she wasn't trying to perpetuate her right to own human beings.

But I do not think this movie should be banished from the culture. You have to see this movie to understand American cinema and more importantly to appreciate the insane attitude this country had about the Civil War when most of the people who remembered it had died off.  

But this movie is not just sympathetic to the South or southerners. It is wistful for a lost way of life. That way of live is the right of rich white people to own black people and make them work their land without remuneration.  I can't pretend that this does not affect my reaction to the movie. 

Tier Seven: The Not Quite-Good.

68.  From Here to Eternity (1953)

69. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

70. Ben-Hur (1959)

71. Cimarron (1931) 

72. American Beauty (1999)

73. Rebecca (1940) 

74. Spotlight (2015)

75. An American in Paris (1951)

76. Going My Way (1944)

77. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)  

78. The Sound of Music (1965)  Did I mention that I don't like musicals?  

79. All the King's Men (1949)

80. Oliver! (1968)

81. Cavalcade (1933) 

82. Tom Jones (1963)

83. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

84. The Broadway Melody of 1929 

Tier Eight: The Bad.

85. You Can't Take it With You (1938) 

86. Gladiator (2000)

87. Gigi (1958) 

88. My Fair Lady (1964) Audrey Hepburn is one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. But she was a lousy actress. They were smart enough to dub her singing parts but couldn't do that for her dialog, so here we are. 

89. Crash (2005)  If you have seen this movie, you're probably wondering why this movie is not DFL.  Read on, friends!

90. Out of Africa (1985) I fell asleep so many times during this movie that I forced myself to watch it a second time the next day, a decision I truly regret.

91. Hamlet (1948) Laurence Olivier must have been a marvel on the stage but in 1948 he had not yet learned to stop projecting his voice for the people in the last row of the 3rd balcony.

92. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Irony.