What’s funny is that we often walk past these old battles. Remember the headline? “Knicks vs. Slick”? — when thinking about the best of all Knicks rivalries. For example, there were some great encounters with the Bulls, including Michael Jordan, but it was more a study in headbanging than a rivalry.
Many Knicks fans remember the epic battle with the Heat that highlighted the postseason from 1997 to 2000, a series of four straight blood feuds that were equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. , (pun intended) would be outraged. But after a while, those games became a little taxing on the eyes, with his two teams produced by the same father playing exactly the same, and the 79-76 games going on and on.
People from the past? Oh, and it doesn’t take long to start telling them about the rivalry with the Bullets that started in Baltimore and ended in Washington. These teams met every year in the playoffs from his 1969 to his 1974, and some of the games had to be seen to be believed. However, the Knicks won five of those six series.
But what about the Knicks and Pacers?
“Let me tell you something,” Larry Brown told me in October, “I wish we could have a Knicks-Pacers playoff game.” tonight. You don’t even have to coach the game. I just want to see it. Can you do that?
I called Brown and asked him to compare this Knicks group favorably to the 2004 Pistons team that gave Brown the NBA championship after the NCAA title he won 16 years earlier at Kansas. Inevitably, the conversation returned to the Knicks-Pacers playoff series that used to liven up every spring.
“Sometimes you see those games on TV,” Brown said. “And I live and die with every fortune…and I know what happened! I was there.”
In fact, the Pacers have always been the Knicks’ main playoff opponent. That’s not only because they played each other often, but also because both teams won a share of the series. If the teams renew their rivalry in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals on Monday night at Madison Square Garden, it will be the eighth time since 1993 that the two teams have met in the playoffs.
The Pacers have won four times, including four of the last five. The Knicks won three times. The cast changed on both sides. The coach has changed. The Knicks went from Pat Riley to Jeff Van Gundy to Mike Woodson. From the Pacers’ Brown to Larry Bird to Frank Vogel.
But the memories remain and will remain for a long time. The last time these teams met in the postseason was 11 years ago in Game 6 of the East Semifinals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, where the Knicks were greeted by a giant sign as soon as they took the floor for their final warmups. Ta.
“Hicks
Own the Knicks! ”
When the Post first previewed its back page in 1994, the city of Indianapolis treated it like the worst kind of civil libel. Immediately the good people of Indiana accepted it. And by 2013, and maybe even now, they’re having fun with it.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Knicks in the NBA playoffs
Reggie Miller, a mainstay of the first six series, said in 2019, “The ups and downs between teams were one thing.” “But then two buildings were trying to win, the Garden and the Market Square Arena” – he shouts, giving each other out. It was thrilling. ”
The heated battle between the Knicks and Pacers began innocently and unconsciously. On the morning of May 12, 1985, the only thing both teams had in common was that they were bad at basketball. They were already supposed to be fierce rivals. From 1970 to 1973, the Knicks won two NBA titles and the Pacers won two ABA titles, but in the segregated world of professional basketball, they never appeared in any significant games.
Both teams reached their first NBA lottery after a tough season. The Knicks were 24-58, and the Pacers were even worse at 22-60. However, with two spots left, it was Patrick Ewing’s last two teams. When David Stern flipped the Pacers logo, Ewing became a Knick. Indiana selected Wayman Tisdale.
Advantage, Knicks.
Then they started bumping into each other in the playoffs and it always seemed like there was something up. In Game 3 of the 1993 playoffs, John Starks headbutted Miller. Miller screwed up twice: Game 5 in 1994 and Game 1 in 1995, and both years the Knicks won Game 6 in Market Square by elimination. Larry Johnson recorded a four-point play in 1999, but a year later, the late Reggie 3 kept the Knicks dormant for the better part of a quarter-century.
That could be old history for the Knicks and Pacers, who will be tangled up over the next few weeks. That’s not the case for people who pack gardens and fieldhouses. Knicks vs. Hicks? Yeah. Finally. We have waited long enough.
