Harvey Araton - When the Garden was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the glory days of the old Knicks

Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks

HARVEY ARATON

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY GEORGE KALINSKY

WHEN THE GARDEN WAS EDEN. Copyright 2011 by Harvey Araton.

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FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Araton, Harvey.

When the Garden was Eden : Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the glory days of the New York Knicks / by Harvey Araton.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-06-195623-2

1. New York Knickerbockers (Basketball team)History. 2. Araton, Harvey. 3. SportswritersAnecdotes. I. Title.

GV885.52.N4A83 2011

796.323'64097471dc23 2011018792

EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062097057

Version 04032013

11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

IT WAS A HOT SUMMER NIGHT IN RUSTON, LOUISIANA. The air inside Chilis, a bustling outlet just off I-20, was almost heavy enough to make breathing not worth the effort. The A/C system appeared to be waging the same losing battle as the makeup on the faces of several waitresses. But Willis Reed paid the wet heat no mind. He was much too tickled at tonights role reversal. Here, a few thousand miles south of Manhattan, Reeds best buddy and oldest friendHoward Brownwas the name brand, the guy with fans clamoring for his attention, the celebrity.

Thats what happens when youre a teacher and you have a long career in the same area, said Reed, former NBA champion and national sports hero. You know everyone.

Reed and Brown, both age 67, live not far from here on adjacent properties near the Grambling State University campus where they once shared a dorm room.

Howard helped me get the land, Reed said.

Whenever Willis would come back to visit, hed stay with me, Brown said from the seat across from mine. And about the time he was moving back, he said, If you want to build a house, why not right here?

The two might as well be brothers, and Reed calls them that. They met in the late 1950s at the all-black Westside High School, a few miles away from Bernice, a 30-minute drive north from Ruston. Willis and Howard both played on Westside Highs basketball team, Reed the star big man and Brown a 6'0" guard who, according to Reed, never met a shot he didnt like.

Well, only until it came down to the wire, said Brown. Then Coach would say, Get it insidewhich meant Give it to Willis.

Give it to Willis. A smirk grew across Browns face, and he looked across the table at Reed: Remember how Coach Stone would hold the bus for you?

Reed cackled at the memory, while Brown narrated:

Wed all be there, ready to go, except Willis. There was a guy named Duke who drove the bus, and hed be looking at Coach, waiting for him to say, Lets go. But then Coach would stand up, put his hands in his pocket, and say, Ive got to go get my keys. Hed go back in the building and wait until he saw Willis walking up to the bus. Then hed come back on and say, Crank it up, Duke.

And so the bus would roll with Reed on board, on the way to another all-black school, another audition for a young man destined for stardom in the heart of New York. But all of that had happened decades ago. It was ancient and unknown history to the Chilis crowd, sweating over their fajitas.

The night manager stopped by our table while making her rounds to comment on my accent, which doesnt sound too Louisianan.

Hes here to work on a book, Brown informed the perky young woman.

Really, she said. Whats it about?

This man right here and the basketball team he used to play for, Brown said. This is Willis Reed of the New York Knicks; his photo is on your wall.

He pointed to the entryway of the restaurant and there it was, along with other greats from this area, one uncommonly rich in basketball lore: Bill Russell, a native of Monroe, due east on I-20; Robert Parish, another Celtics Hall of Fame center, out of Shreveport, an hour away on the interstate in the other direction; Karl Malone, who put Rustons Louisiana Tech on the college basketball map; Orlando Woolridge, a cousin of Reeds and a gifted kid who played for Digger Phelps at Notre Dameon Reeds recommendationand later in the NBA; and, of course, Reed himself, who hilariously wasnt good enough for most of the major universities up north that deigned at the beginning of the sixties to recruit a player or two from the growing pool of African Americans.

In the end, after a brief and uninspired flirtation with the University of Wisconsin and Loyola University of Chicago, Reed was more comfortable moving on down the road to Grambling, where he could play for Fred Hobdy, a protg of the coaching legend Eddie Robinson, and stay connected with his best friend. Howard Brown might not have been cut out for college basketball, but Reed was more concerned about having a freshman roommate.

I bet my husband knows who you are, the night manager assured Reed. Then she asked for an autograph, which seemed like the polite thing to do.

IF WILLIS REED HAD INSTEAD RETIRED to a high-rise perch in Manhattan, maybe his fame would still precede him every time he stepped out the door. Whenever he got a hankering to aim his gun or cast his rod, he might have simply trekked upstate (just as he used to blow off practicewith Red Holzmans permissionon opening day of hunting season).

In some ways, remaining in New York would have been the easier life. He would have spared himself the discomfort of climbing aboard prop jets designed for Lilliputians when flying out of small airports in Shreveport or Monroe, on his way to Montana to hunt or to New York City whenever the Knicks or the NBA called. But the perks of celebrity were never his guiding aim. What mattered to him was this: I just wanted some quiet, to be able to get in my car without worrying about traffic and being able to walk outside on my property and take a piss without worrying about my neighbors.

He knew himself well enough to know that he didnt need strangers to remind him of who hed once been. For Reed, basketball was about the competition, the wins, and, because hes a practical man, the financial windfalls. Basketball was a life primarily defined by lessons gleaned from his parents and coacheseven from a few people he was once forbidden to so much as sit next to on the local bus.

If youre going up to Bernice, Reed told me, then youve got to go see Harry Cook. We were sitting in the den of the modern home he had built in 1989, on the property scouted for him by Howard Brown. Here, in an otherwise bland rural expanse off the Grambling I-20 exit, the roadside dotted with tired wooden houses and a low-slung Baptist church, was where Reed envisioned and developed his gated dream palace on a rolling landscape with three specially designed ponds he stocked himself with fish.

Three Ponds Road: the retirement address of Willis Reed and his second wife, Gail.

Mounted on the walls of the den were his beloved hunting prizesthe stuffed heads of a bison and a mountain lion killed in Montana, a moose bagged in the Yukon, and an elk felled with his arrow, among other stuffed heads and a basketball trophy, an MVP award.