http://www.nypost.com/sports/knicks/4210.htm In the book - Garden Glory: An Oral History of the New York Knicks by Dennis D'Agostino, the team's former PR man and now its official historian - ex-Garden President Dave Checketts also takes a jab at Pat Riley for the Knicks' failure to win the 1994 championship when John Starks shot 2-for-18 in Game 7 in Houston. "We should have won in 1994, if Rolando Blackman had been given any time off the bench," he says. The Knicks can still cry about the rightfully earned championship in the next millenium and will still have L-O-S-T!!!
I think that was the only NBA finals ever in which the losing team had a better series scoring average than the winning team...
just like the knicks SHOULD have won in '99 against the Spurs. They need to get over it and move on. The Rockets were the better team.
I don't know about Blackmon, but Hubert Davis should have definitely gotten more pt in Game 7. Riles had way too many plays run for Starks in that game
Shooting 2-18 is unheard of. If Mobley ever shot that bad in a game I wouldnt want to see the BBS for a few days. Knicks could have won but they didnt. The Rockets could have won in 97 but they didn't. Everybody just needs to move on.
Rolando Blackmon, rofl. The man was done. Actually, the guy they could have used that series was Doc Rivers, but he was injured. And people dog Starks (rightly so) for his brutal 2 - 18 but he was having a solid series before game 7, and outplaying Mad Max. He just picked a bad night to have the worst game of his career.
I have to say that it is true. The knicks should have won that series but unfortunately for them, Hakeem forgot to trim his finger nails before game 6 and thus got a hang nail on Starks 3pt shot at the buzzer that would have won the game for them, and that night he was shooting lights out. I think it got in his head... And we all know how the rest of the story goes.... If you wanted to get into the details, the Orlando Magic should have won the 1995 finals but a certain player, who will remain nameless as he has already suffered enough, missed four free throws at the end of regulation that would have iced game one. My thoughts are that if we would have lost game one, we might have been able to win a game or two but Orlando would have won the series. A little divine intervention in those two years??? Perhaps...but ey we will take it anyway we can! Now if only the Astros could learn a lesson from all of this....
hog watch. Knicks lost because they had no answer for Hakeem; and all the inside out / outside in plays Rox ran off Hakeem. Dave Checkett, the sore loser, more than anybody else, is responsible for the sorry state of the current Knicks. a lousy team in Salary cap hell. The Knicks will continue to be bad, for many more years to come. thanks to Dave Checketts.
I thought the Rockets should have won it all in '96, '97, '98, '99, '00, '01, '02 and '03, but what are you gonna do?
That's why you have to play the games, Dennis D'Agostino. It doesn't matter who 'should have' done anything on paper. It's what happens on the court that goes down in the history books.
I love how Checketts is playing armchair coach to one of the great coaches in the league. Riley has a couple more championship rings than Checketts, but doesn't know what he's doing with his sunstitutions?
The Knicks played above themselves in that series, but they did not deserve to win. They played the perfect game by playing physical. Bird Face Derrick Harper shut down Kenny Smith too. But all of that became irrevelant because the Rockets finshed games. The Knicks couldn't. Starks missed a lot of shots because the Rockets dogged him. He remembered Hakeem blocking his last shot in game six. And was mentally broken by it. As were the rest of the Knicks. If you ask me, I was supremely confident the Rockets had the better team entering the series. I was not as confident against Pheonix and Utah. The Rockets, however, were superior to the Knicks in every way.
In the book - Garden Glory: An Oral History of the New York Knicks by Dennis D'Agostino Question: Why is it called an Oral History if it's written?
The best part about Starks' 2-18 shooting-- well, aside from Houston winning the NBA championship-- was that it almost made Marv Albert cry on the air. Pull out the tape and check it out, he sounds like he's going to ****ing start sobbing when discussing Starks. "I would think there'd be a point... where you'd say... just STOP SHOOTING!!!" --Marv Alberts
