[To help mark the 2026 world-champion New York Knickerbockers, how about a quick flashback to the franchise’s first NBA title in 1970? Here we go. What follows is an excerpt from my book, Balls of Confusion, on that legendary game seven in Madison Square Garden. Enjoy—and, don’t forget to get the book, now at a special discounted price for those who love NBA history.]
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New York, May 8, 1970—And so it all came down to the rectus femoris. That was the badly strained muscle preventing Willis Reed from lifting his right leg to run, jump, and even walk normally. That was the muscle that, if mended, would put the Knicks’ captain back on the court for the biggest game of the year and probably, up to this point, NBA history.
Well-meaning fans called the Knicks’ front office today offering home remedies. The local news broke for live, up-to-the-minute reports from the Garden and aired anxious commentaries about the big one. “This is the night you gotta do it for us. C’mon Knicks,” pleaded one talking head, speaking on behalf of the greatest fans in the world.
Some newspapers were more lyrical. One wrote: “Like the cavalry thundering over the hilltop at the moment the beleaguered frontier fort is about to fall. Or like Superman exploding from a telephone booth when Lois Lane is face to face with villainy of the worst order, Willis Reed (in the fantasies of thousands of fans of the New York Knickerbockers) will bound onto the court of Madison Square Garden tonight and save his team from worse than death.”
About two hours before game-time, and after every possible rub, tug, and physical test of a rectus femoris, Clark Kent, a.k.a. Willis Reed, was back in his phone booth of sorts—the Knicks’ locker room. “I’m gonna play,” he steeled himself. “It still hurts, but I’m gonna play.”
His decision set the stage for another immortal NBA moment, this one even greater than Jerry West’s 61-foot heave. Reed’s dramatic entry onto the basketball court to join his teammates for pregame warm-ups was captured live by the ABC cameras, optimally positioned by producer Chet Forte and broadcast from coast to coast.
“I think we see Willis coming out, Chet,” broadcaster Jack Twyman famously interrupted his on-air pregame commentary, and Forte cut to the dark gangway leading from the Knicks’ locker room to the Garden floor. There was Reed emerging from the gangway like Superman in full uniform, minus the mask and cape. But a glowering superhero just the same. The southpaw swished a practice shot, and the greatest fans in the world rejoiced. Reed’s rectus femoris wasn’t healed, just comfortably numbed from an injection of the local anesthetic Carbocaine.
When Reed swished the game’s first shot 19 seconds in, a high-arching thing of beauty tossed from the free-throw circle, the Garden literally roared. It roared again 64 seconds later when Reed swished another one.
Across the country, millions adjusted the volume on their TV sets to experience the raw, unfiltered roar of this New York moment, this epic profile in courage later summarized adroitly by the Bronx-born sports scribe Murray Janoff, who thought he’d seen it all during his 35 years on the basketball beat. “You had to be there. You had to be one of the lucky, fanatic, screaming 19,500 fans packed into the Garden to see it . . . To see a man named Willis Reed ignite them to levels unsurpassed.”
Between Reed’s makes, the astute Twyman shared with his viewers some déjà vu. “The Lakers, as they were Monday night in that upset win by New York, are standing around trying to get the ball in to Chamberlain, so he can try Willis Reed.”
Over the next several Laker possessions, millions at home watched the one-legged marvel hold his ground against the NBA’s Goliath. Reed did it on sheer will, sheer determination, and with a deep, nagging throb pulsing down his right leg. The Carbocaine wasn’t working. “I was dragging the leg,” Reed described jostling for position and inching Wilt away from the basket. “I hated to pick it up, but I had to keep forcing him out by pushing him before he got the ball. If he got it in close, I couldn’t jump.”
Jump ahead to the second quarter, and Wilt looked nothing like the dominant Goliath of game six. Pushed two steps further away from the basket with Reed holding his ground, Wilt dribble-bumped, dribble-bumped to back into his sweet spot closer to the basket. All this dribble-bump was an open invitation for Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, and the Knicks’ ballhawking defense to swoop in from the side and disrupt Wilt and the Lakers’ offensive flow. Frazier in particular kept stealing the ball and hurrying the other way, where he and his teammates sank nearly every shot, near and far. “And you notice,” Twyman entertained more déjà vu about the near shots in the Knicks’ set offense. “Wilt Chamberlain has to come out on Willis Reed, and it opens up the inside.”
With three minutes left in the first half, Reed was whistled for his third foul, and better safe than picking up a fourth personal, limped to the bench with four points and five rebounds. Hardly awe-inspiring numbers, but Reed’s one-legged willingness to do the dirty work for his teammates equaled the lopsided numbers on the scoreboard: Knicks 61, Lakers 37. At halftime, Reed braced for a six-inch needle and two more jaw-clenching jabs of Carbocaine, just in case the Lakers’ rallied in the second half.
Reed made a few leg-dragging cameo appearances early in the second half, but his services weren’t needed. The Lakers, built for power not for speed in the playoffs, couldn’t catch up to the runaway, adrenaline-fueled Knicks. “The remaining 24 minutes were as uninteresting as they were unnecessary,” sniffed one NBA scribe. As the game reached its waning seconds, the sell-out crowd rose as one, and like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, counted down to ecstasy. Organist Eddie Layton serenaded the final buzzer, followed by the mob’s crowning chant of “We’re number one!” Gotham had its world championship, and the mob could rest easily tonight that NewYork reigned again.
From Way Downtown 