When you come across an “it’s been a while since the Knicks did a thing in the playoffs” stat, it generally means you have come across any historic Knicks playoff stat. But, hey, do you know the last time the Knicks closed out a series with a Game 5 road win?
Of course you do, it’s the Allan Houston game.
That was one of nine all-time road Game 5 victories that the Knicks have ever had. The eighth, to be exact, because in the Eastern Conference finals, Latrell Sprewell put 29 points on the Pacers to break a 2-2 series tie, followed by Reggie Miller shooting 3-for-18 and scoring eight points in Game 6, which the Knicks won, 90-82, to go to their most recent NBA Finals.
An aside: We as a nation should be talking more about the time Reggie Miller came to Madison Square Garden with the season on the line and put up the John Starks game from the 1994 Finals. Three-for-eighteen instead of two-for-eighteen, and a made three-pointer on eight tries compared to Starks’ 0-for-11, but still, eight lousy points and have a nice summer. Only, John Starks wasn’t a Hall of Famer carrying the 1994 Knicks. He was a dude who had a bad night. Reggie Miller, on the other hand, is a Hall of Famer and also a choke artist whose signature moment only happened because he shoved Greg Anthony and somehow got away with it.
It was Knicks in six in that Eastern Conference finals, which of course was best-of-seven, but the first round at that time was best-of-five, which is why Houston’s shot kind of feels like it was in a Game 7.
Not to take away from the achievements of the Knicks teams who won do-or-die Game 5s on the road — at Detroit in 1984, at Boston in 1990, at Miami in 1998 in addition to 1999 — but that’s a different kettle of fish. A nearly equal sized kettle, as it accounts for four out of the Knicks’ nine Game 5 road wins ever. We are not going to simply overlook Bernard King scoring 44 at Joe Louis Arena, or Patrick Ewing dropping a 31-8-10 at the Other Garden, nor Starks connecting for 5-for-9 from downtown in a win-or-go-home game in which the running-on-fumes Knicks started Terry Cummings and gave legit minutes to Anthony Bowie, and won by 17 points.
Of the four times the Knicks have won a Game 5 on the road in a best-of-seven series, two have been series clinchers and two have not. The first was decidedly not, as the 1951 Knicks needed every bit of Connie Simmons’ 26 points and Max Zalsofsky’s 24 to stay alive in the Finals against the Rochester Royals. The Knicks forced a return trip to western New York for Game 7, but fell, 79-75 — two of those Rochester points scored by Red Holzman.
Two decades later, Holzman guided the Knicks to all the rest of their road Game 5 wins. First was Game 5 of the 1972 Eastern Conference semifinals in Baltimore, where Jerry Lucas led the way with 20 points and 16 rebounds. The Knicks went home and won Game 6 and the series, 107-101, with incredible balance that saw Lucas and Walt Frazier score 22 apiece, with 20 each for Dave DeBusschere and Bill Bradley.
That Game 6, by the way, is the last time the Knicks had four 20-point scorers in a playoff game. The Lakers did that in Game 1 against Memphis this year with Rui Hachimura (29), Austin Reaves (23), Anthony Davis (22), and some guy named LeBron James (21). Actually, if D’Angelo Russell (19) could have gotten one more bucket, the Lakers would’ve been the first team with five guys scoring 20-plus in a playoff game since Game 5 of the 1987 Finals (Danny Ainge, Larry Bird, Dennis Johnson, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish). Problem for that Celtics team was, the Lakers did the same dang thing in Game 2 with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Cooper, Magic Johnson, Byron Scott, and James Worthy, and Los Angeles won the series in six.
You know who else beat the Celtics? The 1972 Knicks, in five games, including 111-103 to padlock the arena by North Station for the summer. Or, for exactly one week before Game 1 of Bruins-Rangers in that year’s Stanley Cup Final.
That was the first time that the Knicks closed out a playoff series with a Game 5 road win. The second time, and the only other time that they did it in a best-of-seven?
It was the last time the Knicks won the NBA title, with Earl Monroe scoring 23 and Willis Reed adding 18 and 12 to give New York its second title in four seasons. That’s the last time the Knicks closed out a best-of-seven with a Game 5 road win, and the last time they won a title — 20 years before this retrospective piece that’s now 30 years old.
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