- It's May 16th, 1999.
The visiting New York Knicks have the ball down one
with just seconds to go in a winner takes all game five
against the Miami Heat.
Maybe you know what's about to happen.
But do you know what just happened?
Do you know what happened earlier this year
and this decade to make this moment possible
and to make it meaningful?
Before we witness a historic NBA event, let's rewind.
(soft music)
We're gonna get in to what makes this series unusual,
but first we must acknowledge that these two teams
know each other as well as any two rivals ever have.
It starts right here with Miami coach Pat Riley
and New York coach Jeff Van Gundy.
Riley spent the '80s as the hottest coach in the NBA,
winning four championships with the Lakers
of Magic, Kareem, and Worthy.
In the '90s he found a new challenge.
Taking over as head coach of the Knicks,
a team that won consistently, but always lagged behind
the Eastern Conference titans Riley's Lakers
had been battling in the finals.
In his new gig, Riley inherited
a young star center, Patrick Ewing,
and a precocious young assistant, Jeff Van Gundy.
Even with their new hotshot coach, the Knicks fell short.
A new Eastern Conference titan, the Bulls,
led by Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson,
repeatedly snuffed out their finals aspirations.
When MJ retired to play baseball,
Hakeem and the Rockets stuffed the Knicks
in the '94 finals.
And once the Pacers broke the Knicks' hearts in '95,
Riley bailed for a new challenge.
One that presented him more power and money.
Coach and president of the Miami Heat.
He made an instant impact acquiring star center
Alonzo Mourning, then making a trade
to pair Mourning with a star point guard, Tim Hardaway.
Mourning had a rivalry with Ewing who had helped recruit him
into the brotherhood of great Georgetown Big Men.
So there was another connection between the Knicks and Heat.
And the connections only multiplied in 1996,
when New York made Van Gundy,
Riley's former assistant, their head coach,
while Van Gundy's big brother, Stan,
became Riley's assistant in Miami.
Meanwhile, spurned by Michael Jordan and some other
big name free agents, the Knicks made Alan Houston
and Larry Johnson their big offseason acquisitions
in the summer of '96.
Johnson and Mourning had been teammates in Charlotte
and things hadn't ended well there.
Fate would bring these two
familiar teams together instantly.
Van Gundy's first full season
as Knicks coach was a success.
He and new assistants like Tom Thibodeau,
managed a tough unflinching defense,
one of the best in the NBA.
The reward for their excellence was a 1997
Eastern Conference Semi-Final battle with the Heat.
And it was truly a battle.
The coaches knew each others every move,
and the grinding play fomented contempt between the players.
The violent slog of a series climaxed
when Miami's P.J. Brown wrastled New York's Charlie Ward,
igniting a brawl that caused devastating suspensions.
The Heat would eventually win
the decisive game seven and advance.
1998 was similar.
The Knicks and Heat met in the first round
and this time the old teammates, Mourning and Johnson,
exchanged knuckle hugs in game four
while Van Gundy desperately tried to break up the fight.
The Knicks won the decisive game five
behind Allan Houston's 30 points and advanced
to lose to the Pacers, who would then lose to the Bulls.
'Cause that's the way things always went.
And here are the Knicks and Heat again.
For the third year in a row one will eliminate the other
in the final game of a play-off series.
The coaches are the same.
The stars are the same.
The notorious fight participants are still here.
But this matchup is distinct from those preceding it.
For one thing, it's been relatively drama free.
All four games before this were blowouts.
Even Miami's comeback win in game four
ended with a double-digit edge.
There weren't any big fights this time,
which means we finally have a series-deciding game
in which no important players are missing
because of suspension.
So internally it's a different kind of series.
But that's not all of it.
The situation of this series constitutes a ripple
from some massive splashes earlier this year.
It's the middle of May,
but we're only in the first round of the playoffs.
The Heat are the one seed, the best team
in the Eastern Conference for the first time ever.
That means the Knicks, even though they're here,
one clutch basket away from winning this series,
are the eight seed.
To make sense of this, you've gotta go back to January.
That's when Michael Jordan, having ended the prior season
with a legendary bucket to win his sixth championship
announced his second retirement.
The Bulls had already lost Coach Phil Jackson,
who stepped down after the finals.
And once Jordan retired, the team exploded.
They traded Scottie Pippen and Steve Kerr,
released Dennis Rodman, and started from scratch
as one of the worst teams in the NBA.
The road to the finals no longer ran into MJ and the Bulls.
This marked Miami's chance.
Pat Riley's club entered camp relatively unchanged
adding only veteran Terry Porter to the regular rotation.
And they didn't need to change.
Miami had been the two seed behind Chicago
each of the last two years,
and this season reached the one seed behind Mourning,
the defensive player of the year.
This could finally be their season.
The team hung an image featuring a Heat championship ring
to motivate themselves.
In a normal season, being the one seed would mean
playing a relatively bad team in the first round.
Only once before this, in 1994,
has an eight seed beaten a one seed.
But the Knicks could do it right here.
They are not a typical eight seed,
because this wasn't a normal season.
MJ didn't make his big announcement until January
because that's when the NBA lockout was finally ending.
This '98-'99 lockout was the first time in history
that NBA games had to be canceled
because of a work stoppage.
The season didn't start until February.
Teams only played 50 games a piece.
The post lockout rush hit the Knicks particularly hard
because their team had changed.
Two fixtures of the Knicks-Heat rivalry,
John Starks and Charles Oakley, were gone.
In their place were the newly acquired Latrell Sprewell
and Marcus Camby, younger guys who've barely had time
to learn Van Gundy's system because of the lockout
shortened training camp.
New York had one of the worst offenses in the NBA,
and the new acquisitions couldn't really help.
Sprewell, back in the NBA again after a year long suspension
for choking his coach in Golden State,
promptly fractured his foot and missed a month of games.
Camby was coming off the bench and not happy about it.
He didn't get a starting role, even when Ewing
missed time because of an achilles injury.
Camby's playing time became a point of contention
between Van Gundy and Knicks GM, Ernie Grunfeld,
and there were plenty of those.
While the Knicks lost their way out of the playoff picture,
management reportedly considered firing Van Gundy
on multiple occasions, potentially replacing him
with Phil Jackson.
But then things changed on the court and off.
On April 21st the team reassigned Grunfeld
effectively firing him from his GM role.
And around the same time New York rallied,
rattling off six wins in their last eight games,
including a huge comeback victory over the Heat.
Camby was getting more minutes.
Sprewell was playing great off the bench,
and Ewing's achilles wasn't 100%,
but by the end of the season
he was well enough to at least play.
So the Knicks are in eight seed
because of unusual circumstances,
but they came into this series with a ton of momentum.
Does that mean Van Gundy's job is secure?
Absolutely not.
Listen to how Madison Square Garden President,
Dave Checketts, responded to sideline reporter,
Jim Gray, during this game.
- If he loses today, he can count on coming back?
- Well, I didn't say that.
I said everybody's on,
what I've been saying and I mean is
everybody's really on notice.
- So yeah, despite having pushed a one seed to its limit,
a miss here might cost Van Gundy his job.
But the Knicks lineup on the floor right now
shows how their coach has tried to outrun his doom.
These aren't New York's starters.
The Knicks start games with two true big men,
Kurt Thomas at power forward, alongside Ewing.
But Van Gundy's had success going smaller,
moving Larry Johnson up to the fourth spot
and playing the more guard-like Sprewell up at three.
Speedier lineups like that one have generated
huge runs in this series, including today.
And the Knicks have been particularly fast-paced
when the high-flying Camby replaces
the injured Ewing at center.
(loud cheers)
But make no mistake.
This is still Eastern Conference basketball in the '90s.
This game, like several before it,
has been a battle of the familiar franchise centers,
though not always directly.
Ewing has gone to work against P.J. Brown too,
and Brown's been pretty productive himself.
- [Game Announcer] P.J. Brown has been Mr. Dependable
for the Miami Heat today.
- And when New York's gone small,
Zo has seen a lot of match-ups against
his former and disgruntled costar, Johnson.
Ewing has the most points of any Knick,
despite searing pain in his achilles.
He even delivered the tough offensive rebound
and clutched free throws that cut Miami's lead
to one 40 seconds ago.
Mourning leads his team in scoring,
just like he has every game this series.
And he's playing without his goggles,
despite a fractured eye socket.
Zo's the last person to score a field goal
in a game that hasn't had a lot of them,
and it was a big one with just under two minutes to go.
And it's a good thing the centers have made stuff happen,
because the perimeter players
have not produced for either team.
Sprewell and Houston are New York's primary wing scorers.
Both have been pretty inefficient overall.
Hardaway is the clear Robin to Mourning's Batman,
but this has been a bad series for Tim.
And today, despite having some big moments,
he's been less like Robin and more like, I don't know,
the Penguin, and never at a worse time than this
slippery flippered play just moments ago.
Jamal Mashburn, who's been similarly week all series,
has played well today, but seeded most of his minutes
to the newcomer, Porter, who's been off.
That said, Porter made this moment happen
for better or worse.
The Knicks called their last time out
to set up a play down one with 20 seconds left.
But Riley's defense completely ruined it,
blowing up the two-man game between Sprewell and Ewing.
With time winding down, Sprewell was going to
have to create a tough shot head-to-head versus Porter,
but Porter knocked the ball out of bounds.
It might have gone out off Sprewell.
It's hard to tell.
But with no review, the call was Knicks ball.
And now they've had a quick breath
to set back up and call a new play.
Van Gundy called for triangle,
an old set Riley used to run,
and you can see Riley frantically communicating that
to his defense as Charlie Ward inbounds
the ball to the curling Houston.
But with the little Hardaway guarding the inbound,
and Houston getting a step past Dan Majerle,
the Knicks are gonna get a look here.
This shot can make them the second ever
eight seed to beat a one seed.
It could abort what is supposed to be Miami's breakthrough
year in the power vacuum left by MJ's retirement.
If Houston misses, it'll end this springtime sprint
of a team that struggled for most
of this shortened knockout season.
And it'll probably make his coach the next
high profile Knicks firing.
A fate intensified by the fact that it would come
at the hands of his mentor and his brother.
No matter what happens, it'll be a dramatic close
to the third chapter of a vicious rivalry between
familiar foes who always push each other to the limit.
Okay, let's see what happens.
Welcome to a moment in history.
- [Game Announcer] Houston, Houston gets under.
Got it!
With 0.8 left!
(loud cheers and screams)