THE 1970 NBA FINALS In 1950, a man named Red Auerbach took the helm of the Boston Celtics and in less than a decade turned the team into the NBA’s first dynasty. Behind his leadership, Boston won the Finals a record nine times from 1957 to 1966.
In 1967, another man named Red took the helm of a different team and in two years steered it straight past the Celtics and into NBA history. William “Red” Holzman took the job of head coach for the New York Knicks with one goal in mind: build a team that played together as a team. By 1969, he had accomplished that goal.
The cornerstone of the Knicks was Willis Reed. Originally placed in the forward position, Reed was moved to center in 1969. The center slot proved a perfect fit. Standing at six feet ten inches and weighing close to 240 pounds, Reed had the brawn to muscle his way inside. He was left-handed, making him difficult to defend once he found his way to the hoop. He had deadly shooting skills, too; he averaged nearly 20 or more points per game throughout his career. And to top it off, Reed had the ability to inspire his teammates to give every game their all.
Anchored by Reed and led by Holzman, the Knicks roared through the regular season to the Eastern Division’s top rank with a record of 60 wins and only 22 losses. In November alone, they racked up eighteen wins in a row, the longest streak in the NBA at the time. They then powered their way through the early rounds of the playoffs, beating the Baltimore Bullets in seven games and the Milwaukee Bucks in five to advance to the Finals for the first time in the team’s twenty-four-year history.
In the Western Division, meanwhile, the Los Angeles Lakers had made a surprising comeback to snare the opposing berth in the Finals. It had not been a smooth season for them, since their biggest players, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, had been sidelined in the early months with knee problems. Fortunately, the Lakers still had Jerry West, a guard whose precision passing, ballhandling, and shooting were equaled only by his drive to win.
That drive helped the Lakers claim second place in the division. With Chamberlain and Baylor back in the lineup, Los Angeles fought their way out of a 3–1 deficit to beat the Phoenix Suns in the first playoff round. The Lakers pounded the Atlanta Hawks in the semifinals, taking all four games, to make it to the championship round.
The Knicks and the Lakers met at New York’s Madison Square Garden on April 24, 1970, for game one of the best-of-seven series. New York emerged victorious, 124–112, but Los Angeles tied things up by winning the second game, 105–103.
The teams traveled to the Forum in Los Angeles for game three. And what a game it was! The two evenly matched squads traded the lead throughout. With two minutes left in the fourth quarter, the score was knotted at 96 apiece. One minute forty-eight seconds later, it was still tied, each team having added four points to their side.
Twelve seconds remained. The Knicks prepared to inbound the ball from under the Lakers’ basket. Their power forward Dave DeBusschere moved to set a pick so his teammate Bill Bradley could get the ball and shoot a jumper. But the pick didn’t work. Instead, DeBusschere got the ball. One head fake later, he tossed in a bucket to give New York a two-point lead.
Knicks fans were going wild. There were only three seconds left on the clock. The ball would be put into play from underneath New York’s hoop. The Lakers were out of time-outs. There was no way Los Angeles could possibly score!
Or could they?
Wilt Chamberlain took the ball from the referee under the hoop. He passed it in to Jerry West, who nabbed the ball near the top of the key. One second ticked by. West put the ball to the floor and dribbled once, twice, three times — with Willis Reed right alongside him.
Another second ticked by. West reached a spot three feet shy of midcourt. Then, with just one second remaining, he launched the ball into the air toward the distant hoop.
“West throws it up… ,” the Knicks’ announcer, Bob Wolff, cried. His voice lingered over the airwaves just as the ball seemed to linger in the Forum’s rafters.
The ball took so long to come down, in fact, that one player, Walt Frazier, had time to glance at West. “The man’s crazy,” Frazier later remembered thinking. “He thinks it’s really going to go in.”
The arcing ball spun downward and, unbelievably, went through the hoop!
“He makes it!” Wolff shouted. “West threw it up and makes it!”
If that shot had been taken today, the Knicks would have won the game by a single point. That’s because now if a basket is made from twenty-two feet or more from the hoop at the sidelines, or twenty-three feet nine inches or more from the top of the key, it counts as three points.
West’s shot was made from sixty-three feet away! No one, before or since, has duplicated such a shot during a game situation. And the fact that West made it in the last second proves he deserved his nickname: “Mr. Clutch.”
Sadly, Mr. Clutch’s last-ditch effort did not result in victory for the Lakers that night. New York took the game in overtime, thanks in part to Reed, who made a foul shot to give the Knicks a one-point lead with less than a minute remaining. The final score was 111–108.
Game four of the series went into extra minutes as well, but this time, the Lakers emerged with the victory. The two teams met back in New York for the fifth game. The Lakers sprang ahead to take an early lead, but the Knicks weren’t about to go down without a fight.
Then tragedy struck. Reed got the ball at the foul line. He made a move to dodge around Wilt Chamberlain. As he did, he tripped over Chamberlain’s foot. Unable to stop himself, he fell to the floor, wrenching a muscle in his leg.
Pain shot through Reed. He rolled on the floor in agony, clutching his leg. The game stopped, and the crowd grew silent as Knicks fans realized that their star center was injured — badly.
With Reed out, the Knicks fell further behind. By halftime, they were down by thirteen points. They didn’t give up, however. Instead, they changed their offensive attack plan and, ramped up by the crowd’s chants of “Let’s go Knicks,” surged from behind to win, 107–100.
“The fifth game was one of the greatest basketball games ever played,” said Dave DeBusschere years later.
The Knicks couldn’t pull it together for game six, however. Without Reed standing in his way, Wilt Chamberlain was unstoppable, scoring 45 points in the 135–113 Laker victory.
The final and deciding game of the 1970 NBA Finals was played in Madison Square Garden. Nearly 20,000 hometown spectators showed up to watch the match. Before the game, everyone looked around the arena, hoping for a glimpse of Reed. But he was nowhere to be seen.
Then, moments before the start of the game, the Knicks’ locker room door opened. A lone figure limped through the tunnel leading to the arena.
“Here comes Willis!” cried the announcer.
The crowd burst into applause and cheers. The noise only grew louder as Reed, looking shaky but determined, hobbled onto the floor to take a few warm-up shots.
As he did, teammate Dave DeBusschere glanced over at the Lakers. To a man, they were all staring at Reed. “At that point,” he remembered later, “I thought they were defeated.”
Reed hobbled to the center circle for the tip-off. It was obvious he was hurting, especially when he let Chamberlain jump for the ball uncontested. Some players might have decided then to leave the game.
Not Reed. He not only stayed in, he made the Knicks’ first basket a mere eighteen seconds into the game! And then, less than a minute later, he drained basket number two.
Those were the only points Reed made that night. But his contribution to the game was far, far greater than any stat. His mere presence on the court inspired the Knicks to push themselves ever harder to win.
New York racked up the points, crashed the boards, and dogged Chamberlain, West, and Baylor. In the end, the Lakers scored just 99 points. The Knicks had 113 — and their first NBA championship title! Reed was named the Most Valuable Player, the third time that season he had been so honored (he was also the MVP of the All-Star Game and the league MVP).
“[Reed] gave us a tremendous lift, just going out there,” Coach Holzman told reporters after the game.
“If Willis didn’t do what he did, I wouldn’t have been able to have the game I had,” agreed Frazier, who had 36 points and 19 assists for the night. “He got the fans involved and gave us confidence just by his coming onto the floor.”
Sometimes, it’s great shooting or great defense that wins games. This time, it was the heart and soul of one man that inspired a team to victory.
The New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers have met just two other times in the Finals. The Lakers nabbed the title in 1972, beating the Knicks four games to one. But the Knicks returned the favor the following year and bested Los Angeles by the same four-to-one margin. In the end, however, the Lakers have proved to be the better of the two teams. The Knicks have gone to the Finals eight times and won twice. The Lakers have been in the Finals thirty times and come away with fourteen championship titles.