The Willis Reed Moment: A Legendary NBA Icon Remembered

The most famous moment of his career is a household word in America, to this day.

It was May 8, 1970, the day of the seventh and final game of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers at the venerable Madison Square Garden. The game hadn’t even started when a storm of cheers suddenly broke out, the likes of which the most famous sports and concert hall in the world had perhaps never experienced again.

The fans in the Garden had spotted a large man limping out of the players’ tunnel with a grimace of pain on his face. It was Willis Reed, the Knicks team captain. And he signaled: I’m playing.

It was the legendary “Willis Reed Moment” that defined the myth of a basketball icon – and the symbol of a lasting legacy that transcended Reed’s comparatively short career. And about his death a year ago today.

Willis Reed 1970: A moment for eternity

To understand the historic moment, you have to know: Willis Reed Jr. actually couldn’t have played that day, at least not according to the usual judgment of a mere mortal.

In Game 5 of the series, the 2.08 meter tall center was seriously injured in a duel with the great Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain and suffered a painful muscle tear between his hip and thigh. Reed, however, was determined not to let anything stop him from helping lead the Knicks to their first championship.

With a combination of willpower and a strong injection of painkillers, he performed, triggering relieved ecstasy: “I thought to myself: Now I know what an earthquake feels like,” Reed later reflected on the audience reaction to his entry.

The Knicks captain played 27 minutes and his measurable influence on the game was small at four points. However, the inspiring effect on the teammates around top scorer Walt Frazier was invaluable: at the end of the evening there was a 113:99 victory and the Knicks’ first championship title. And a heroic legend for eternity.

The Knicks champion heroes Willis Reed (r.) and Walt Frazier at a reunion in 2011

Reed led the New York Knicks to two NBA championship titles

Reed’s services to the Knicks are even more extensive: As captain, he led the franchise through the most successful period in its history, won his second championship ring in 1973, he was also named MVP of the finals both times and also the league’s most valuable player in 1970.

The technically adept big man was the leading figure of the Knicks, athletic and humane, and also inspired through his personal rise from the less privileged farmer’s son from southern Louisiana during the era of racial segregation to the celebrated sports idol of the “Big Apple”.

Despite his influence on state-institutionalized racism, Reed was less political than his rival Bill Russell, who died eight months before him, and later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In an equally famous episode from the 1970 championship season, he had to be accused of even worse things.

A captain with authority

At the time, Reed was mediating a dispute between his white Hall of Fame colleague Bill Bradley and Cazzie Russell, who had come to the training ground with anger in his stomach – he had been threatened with a gun during a police stop on the grounds that a man was supposedly similar to him sighted African American had just escaped from prison.

Russell took out his anger about the “racial profiling” on his white teammate through rough training, Reed intervened – and Russell insulted him with the words: “Shut up, Uncle Tom”. A grave insult to an African American who kowtows to white power (based on the slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”).

Reed replied that Russell should be careful “or that Uncle Tom is going to kick some people in the ass.” Russell apologized, the great authority of “The Captain” not failing to have an effect.

Second career overshadowed by tragedy

A year after the second title with the Knicks in 1973 – the last for the traditional team to date – Reed resigned at the age of just 31 after too many injuries had impaired his performance.

He was less successful as a coach (with the Knicks and the then New Jersey Nets), but was more successful as sports director and general manager of the Nets from 1989, which also included one of Reed’s darkest hours: the tragic accidental death of his top player Drazen Petrovic in Germany in 1993. “It’s like I lost a son,” Reed said at a subsequent press conference.

Reed remained active with the Nets until 2004, and until 2007 he filled the general manager job with the New Orleans Hornets in his home state before retiring from the profession. “The Captain” Willis Reed died of heart failure on March 21, 2023 at the age of 80.

2024-03-21 12:25:43
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