Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks

by Chris Herring

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A SELECTION ON BARACK OBAMA’S SUMMER READING LIST The definitive history of the 1990s New York Knicks, illustrating how Pat Riley, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason resurrected the iconic franchise through oppressive physicality and unmatched grit.For nearly an entire generation, the New York Knicks have been a laughingstock franchise. Since 2001, they’ve spent more money, lost more games, and won fewer playoff series than any other NBA team. But during the preceding era, the Big Apple had a club it was madly in love with—one that earned respect not only by winning, but through brute force. The Knicks were always looking for fights, often at the encouragement of Pat Riley. They fought opposing players. They fought each other. Hell, they even occasionally fought their own coaches. The NBA didn’t take kindly to their fighting spirit. Within two years, league officials moved to alter several rules to stop New York from turning its basketball games into bloody mudwrestling matches. Nevertheless, as the 1990s progressed, the Knicks endeared themselves to millions of fans; not for how much they won, but for their colorful cast of characters and their hardworking mentality. Now, through his original reporting and interviews with more than two hundred people, author Chris Herring delves into the origin, evolution, and eventual demise of the iconic club. He takes us inside the locker room, executive boardrooms, and onto the court for the key moments that lifted the club to new heights, and the ones that threatened to send everything crashing down in spectacular fashion. Blood in the Garden is a portrait filled with eye-opening details that have never been shared before, revealing the full story of the franchise in the midst of the NBA’s golden era. And rest assured, no punches will be pulled. Which is just how those rough-and-tumble Knicks would like it.

Genres: Sports, Basketball, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, New York, Book Club

362 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 18, 2022

About the author

Chris Herring is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He previously spent five years covering the NBA for ESPN and FiveThirtyEight, and prior to that spent seven years at The Wall Street Journal, where he covered the New York Knicks. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in his spare time.

Reviews

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Irresistible read - this is the team of my youth, and they were captured wonderfully.

[Patrick J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book, another misleading title. At no point in this book do they teach you how to grow/maintain a garden with your own blood. Despite it's lacking in the vampiric agricultural arts, this book tells the very intriguing story of the 90's Knicks. If you like basketball then I'd recommend this book. If you want to learn how to grow cantaloupes with blood then keep moving.

XOXO,

Gossip Pat

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patrick Ewing disliked playing road games against the Bucks, because he was convinced that the hotel the Knicks always stayed at in Milwaukee was haunted.

This will be a pleasant trip down memory lane if you happen to have enjoyed watching the Knicks (or just basketball in general) in the 90s. It's all revisited- Jordan's surprise retirement, the Spike Lee-Reggie Miller feud, and the New York-Houston Finals game that no one watched, not even the people who were there at MSG, because they were all gathered around big-screen TVs to watch the police chase O.J. Simpson in a white Ford Bronco. The Knicks of the 80s, discussed here in passing, sound like they could've been the subjects of an interesting book themselves, despite the fact (or maybe partly because) they were terrible. Three Knicks from that decade, for example, names redacted, were investigated by the FBI for point-shaving, after it was observed that large amounts of money were being placed against the team, in games they always failed to cover the spread. These were the days before the Fan Duel app, when the guys you placed your wagers with had names like Timmy the Fish. Anyway, it sounds like there's probably more to that point-shaving story.

But as the book's main focus, the 90s were the right choice. I didn't root for the Knicks- back then there was something called the New Jersey Nets, and while we didn't have cable at home I would often listen to them lose on the radio, on 710 AM- but I never hated them the way I did the Yankees in baseball. And it should be acknowledged that the Knicks were central to the NBA in a way the Nets never were- both as one of the primary antagonists to Jordan's Bulls, as well as inheritors of the Detroit Pistons' “Bad Boys” style. It meant essentially that the Knicks, led in this department by their enforcer Charles Oakley, would maul any player who dared take the ball to the paint. It was a style that evolved in Detroit and later in New York as a response to one player, Michael Jordan, as both teams tried to use the threat of brute force to close the talent gap with the Bulls. It got to the point that the NBA eventually responded in the mid-90s by overhauling its defensive rules to limit the physicality.

The Knicks were coached by the slick-haired, Armani-wearing Pat Riley- picture Michael Douglas's character from Wall Street- who was already basketball royalty when he agreed to terms with the Knicks, having won five championships (as coach) for the Lakers in the 80s, with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It's still conventional wisdom that Riley is a master motivator, and maybe so, but the tactics that Chris Herring recounts here range from puzzling and incredibly lame (putting on a pair of baseball cleats and then “breaking into a baseball slide” in front of the team) to unintentionally hilarious (telling a player that reading the Bible too often would make him less aggressive on the court). In one of my favorite anecdotes, Riley held his own head under ice-cold water for “minutes” while the entire team looked on, increasingly anxious. Riley finally came back up for air with a primal scream of aggression GRRRAHHHHHHHH! What exactly this “meant” is unclear. But this is the kind of basketball coach psychopathy that's entertaining enough to read about, even if probably less fun to play under, and Riley does indeed come across as a genuine prick, the kind of person who makes 5k a year but still demands $300 per-diem in his contract. Personality-wise I felt much more in tune with Riley's disorganized and disheveled successor Don Nelson, even if certain players didn't.

Overall, this is an enjoyable book that delivers on the anecdotes, even if it never quite gets outside that bubble that sports writers tend to inhabit, from which a contending team or great player who never quite wins a title can seem almost as tragic as, say, the fall of the Spanish Republic. And if you doubt there are people who feel that way, please listen to Mike Francesa or New York sports radio sometime. Still, the book had me rooting for these guys I'd never before rooted for, and admiring the sustained run of success they pulled off, which made it even more of a bummer to read about how the team was handed over in the late 90s to James Dolan, who screwed everything up with his micromanaging and heavy-handed style. Dolan still owns the team, and they've barely had a bright spot for the last quarter of a century; but this book is a reminder of how electric the Garden can be when the Knicks actually have a good basketball team. We'll see if that happens again in my lifetime.

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professional basketball in the 1990’s was certainly dominated by the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan, having won six titles during that decade. Two others were won by the Houston Rockets and at the end of the decade, the San Antonio Spurs won the first of their five titles. However, if one is talking about teams that excelled during that time, one must also include the New York Knicks. Those Knicks teams provided some of the most thrilling moments for their fans and faced the Rockets and Spurs in the NBA Finals during the 1990’s. This excellent book by Chris Herring chronicles those teams in a fun, fast-paced read – not at all like the style of play by those teams.

Led by Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason, the Knicks were most famous for their stifling defense and their physical play. This carried over into their practices, and it is in those practice sessions where Herring tells the most interesting stories and information about the team. Whether it was about John Starks not wanting to drive to the basket during practice early in his tenure with the team, Gerald Wilkins sharing a story about practice ending early if he ran through a line of teammates ready to throw elbows and shoulders at him (he declined the offer) or the details in which coach Pat Riley had the team execute during these sessions, I enjoyed these sections more than the either the game writing or the portraits of key personnel.

That doesn’t mean that these sections of the book weren’t good – there were full and complete profiles on many of the key people who made the Knicks so successful during the 1990’s. That starts with Patrick Ewing and Pat Riley, the best player and coach respectively for the team during this time. But others are included as well – Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Jeff Van Gundy, Dave Checketts – those are just some of the names and people a reader will learn about as he or she reads about the team.

As for in-game writing, that is not as in depth as one might expect as only memorable games or moments are covered in detail. Take the 1994 Finals in which the Knicks lost to the Houston Rockets in 7 games. Of course, game 7 and the shooting struggles of John Starks are well documented as was the scene at Madison Square Garden during game 5 when the fans were leaving their seats and watching the television monitors in the concourse during the low-speed police chase of O.J. Simpson. But if a reader wants more detail of the other games in the series, there isn’t a lot aside from some details of the Knicks wins. The reader will still get a good perspective of the series, just not a lot of detail. This is true for all of the regular season and playoff basketball described in the book.

Knick fans who remember this time with mostly happy memories (after all, they did not win a championship) will want to get a copy of this book as will fans of the NBA during this time frame, when the Knicks, through their physical play, were one of the better professional teams.

I wish to thank Atria Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...

[Armand Rosamilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I'm not a basketball fan, I grew up in NJ and my brother is a huge Knicks fan. I remember all of his whining about the 90's teams, and this book really dives into what was wrong (and right) with the team in that period. Great stories, and a lot of characters involved, both on the court and in the office and beyond.

[Zeke · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, so good. Gives a summary of the events of the 90s Knicks without feeling like a retread at all for big hoops fans. Absolutely everything you’d want from a great sports book about some really iconic teams. Growing up in college basketball country I never really appreciated the NBA but fell in love with the game watching the 93 Finals. Being on the east coast I would end up catching a lot of Knicks games over the next decade - they may not have won a title but they were as emblematic of an era as anyone else (a la 70s Dutch football, or 2000s Phoenix Suns). Herring delivers so much that I didn’t know but helps contextualize and humanize the players and people behind those teams. Highly recommend if you’re an NBA fan or just an appreciator of sports.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this aloud with/to my dad. Neither of us are Knicks fans. It was awesome to have something to look forward to doing together.

We both laughed constantly. I got choked up about Anthony Mason. My dad was suped that Obama put this on his summer book list. I wrote Chris Herring a note about how much reading it meant to us, and how happy we were for his success; he responded with kindness and grace. The full depth of human experience.

Not the most important (whatever that means) book I've ever read - it's damn good, and the reporting/storytelling are sterling - but few reading experiences have ever been better.

[Dimas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is mostly just a collection of (enjoyable) Wiki entries. It’s really hard to do a book about a whole sports era and probably impossible nowadays to do a book just focusing on an individual sports year. But this would have been better if the author was able to just go deep. (Should add there is already a pretty awesome Mike Wise Knicks book about the 1999 season.)

It’s also clear that the author had very little access to the most interesting character (Pat Riley) and the book suffers mightily because of it.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me begin by stating that I have been a Knicks fan going back to the 1960s. The great teams led by Willis Reed, Walt Clyde Frazier, Bill Bradley and company will always be the benchmark for success, a model that has been impossible to replicate. After a few down years, the drafting of Patrick Ewing created hope that was almost realized in the 1990s. Since that time there is only one way to describe this franchise; dysfunction, incompetence, and an inability to draft properly despite the presence of the supposed genius of Phil Jackson. Today it seems the team may have ended the thirty year point guard drought by signing Jalen Brunson to go along with its young core, but who can tell whether this is the first step back aside from the Julius Randle mirage and false hope of two years ago. When one thinks of the plight of the Knicks fan there is nostalgia for the past and prayers for the future. Since this is the case if one wants to feel better one can return to the last time the New York Knicks were relevant and Madison Square Garden was rocking. To meet that need I must thank Chris Herring, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated whose new book, BLOOD IN THE GARDEN: THE FLAGRANT HISTORY OF THE 1990S NEW YORK KNICKS fills that void.

Herring’s deeply researched account highlights a number of combative personalities. Coach Pat Riley and his Armani suits instilled a fighting spirit in players like Charles Oakley, John Starks, Anthony Mason and others which after two years of “intimidating” basketball led the National Basketball Association to alter certain rules. The 1990s team had an amazing work ethic highlighted by its “wars” with its perennial enemy Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls, and later with the Riley led Miami Heat. Their playoff games were classics, though in the end the Bulls were more talented, and they presented a roadblock that the Knicks could never overcome, and the Heat would succumb to the Knicks more often than not. Herring dives deep into the player relationships, player attitudes and talents, and a number of fascinating personalities as he describes the highs and lows of the decade, but also the staunch support from New York basketball fans who grew to love the team.

Herring begins his narrative at the New York Knicks’ first practice under Pat Riley in 1991 with a fight between Xavier McDaniel and Anthony Mason during a rebounding drill. This would set the tone as to the type of team the Knicks were on the way to becoming. Under Riley they would emulate the physicality of the then recent two time world champion Detroit Pistons, a strategy that would dominate the team for a decade.

Herring reviews Riley’s physicality drills, one called “suicide ally” in detail and how players reacted and adapted. In Riley’s world there was no such thing as working too hard and Herring takes a deep dive into Riley’s methods and psychological approach to coaching. He was a master at manipulating his players, presenting speeches that captivated his team and provided a motivation that few coaches could replicate as he turned the team into a winner. In their first playoff series in 1991 they even out bullied the Detroit Pistons, replacing them as the leagues’ “bad boys.”

The epitome of the type of player Riley favored was Charles Oakley whose 1992 playoff hit on Indiana Pacers Reggie Miller shocked officials into not calling a foul, but later he would draw a $10,000 fine and would lead the league in flagrant fouls. The question for the media was whether the Knicks were dirty or overly aggressive as they pushed the envelope with their type of play. Herring provides numerous examples of hard fouls, fights, and other types of melees involving players and coaches.

The aberration to the Knicks type of play was Charles Smith obtained in a trade in 1992 from the Los Angeles Clippers. Smith’s personality and on the court makeup was the opposite from most of his teammates. Herring’s discussion of Smith is just one example of how he analyzed players for their temperament, approach to the game, relationships with coaches and teammates. He explores the likes of rambunctious and at times dangerous players like Anthony Mason and John Starks, players with short fuses who played with a sharp edge. Patrick Ewing, the key to the team, is ever present in Herring’s analysis as he describes Ewing’s triumphs and disappointments. Ewing was the rock that the Knicks leaned on throughout the decade and it is a shame that he never earned that championship ring no matter how much heart he left on the court. Herring also focuses on players outside the core including Latrell Sprewell whose controversial arrival to the team turned out well as did the drafting of Larry Johnson.

Herring introduces coaches aside from Pat Riley in an interesting fashion. Riley’s replacement Don Nelson was the anti-Riley. Riley was a bit paranoid and a control freak who rarely exhibited empathy. Nelson came across as a mad scientist who created an “inverted, semi-position less system” that has evolved into a dominant coaching strategy two decades later. The most important coach apart from Riley during the decade was Jeff Van Gundy, a workaholic in the Riley mode but exhibited greater sensitivity toward his players. Always looking behind his shoulder because of the arrival of the new owner James Dolan he drove the Knicks to the 1999 NBA finals and was an exceptional teacher of basketball.

After reliving the 1990s with Mr. Herring I am still trying to determine which loss was the most heartbreaking – 1994 to Houston, 1996 to Miami, Reggie Miller’s 9 points in 12 seconds, a brawl that knocked out their five best players from a playoff game, and 1993 to the Bulls which still hurts as I still have memories of Charles Smith’s inability to put back a rebound.

The sports media cauldron of New York is always front and center. The arrival of James Dolan and the decline of the Knicks over the last two decades does not receive the coverage it should and perhaps a longer epilogue would have enhanced this component of the story. However, overall, Herring has delivered an exceptional sports book dissecting a team that was adored in New York and as he states that the reason he accepted the challenge of authoring the book was to fill the void for Knick fans – I will point out he has accomplished his mission.

[Jeremy Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a really good book. I learned everything I wanted to about an iconic team from an NBA era I'm too young to know firsthand. It's easy to read and follow, and you can tell there's thorough research behind it. I have two nitpicks:

1) maybe 15% of the sentences are over-thesaurized. "The bowling-ball-shouldered southpaw shuffled toward McDaniel and delivered an abrasive left fist to his jaw" is slightly too juiced for my taste, and I like crazy sentences when describing crazy sports stories.

2) the book is entertaining, but not many of the stories jump out as memorable. I can't tell if that's a writing issue or a content issue - maybe these stories are good enough to be memorable but the writing isn't descriptive or outlandish enough. Maybe better stories exist but the research didn't find/coax them out. Maybe they don't. Maybe a full decade is a long enough time period for one book that there isn't as much room for the crazy antics. It's probably unfair to compare this book to Jeff Pearlman's, but I found it slightly lacking an entertainment factor I've always gotten from his work, and I don't know if that's just the 90s Knicks or something else.

I'd still recommend it to the right NBA fans.

[Mike Gutierrez · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read on the New York Knicks teams of the 90's. In depth stories on what happened behind the scenes. Pat Riley signing and leaving the Knicks, Anthony Mason and his immaturity, Charles Smith trying to score while surrounded by Bulls, John Starks 2-18 performance in Game 7 of the 1994 Finals, the surprising run to the NBA finals during the 1998-99 season and the threat of Jeff Van Gundy being fired during the run is all in this book. As a huge Knicks fan during this time I highly recommend reading this book.

[Justin Gerber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful read to relish in the good ol’ days of the NBA as well as to remind one’s self that the Knicks have essentially sucked ever since.

[Sam Rivere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great view into the 1990s Knicks. I wish I could have experienced those runs as a young Knick fan but hope is on the horizon with our new man Jalen Brunson.

[Josh Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fun era of hoops. I wish I remembered it better than I do. I would have loved rooting against these Knicks teams. I hope they get good again someday. Their crowds alone would make it fun.

I think I wanted a bit more on the people in the story. Ewing’s background doesn’t come up until near the end. More on Van Gundy, Riley, etc. I still really enjoyed it, but I always love learning more about the people involved in teams like this. 7.5/10

[Arjun Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just a fun read even if you’re not a basketball fan. Chris Herring’s rich portrait of NBA in the 1990s coupled with the strong stories surrounding the personal angst of players on the Knicks like Charles Smith and John Starks make this a compelling read. Casual observers know about Michael Jordan’s reign with the Bulls, but Herring does a phenomenal job looking at the psychology of what it was like to be a top performing team in the shadow of one of the greatest players and teams in league history. The inner turmoil of the team whether it be coach Pat Riley’s neurotic obsession to prove he was bigger than his old team the Lakers or the sting the players feel after consecutive losses to the Bulls is on full display, and it’s what makes this such a great character study.

[Jamele (BookswithJams) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Atria Books for the gifted copy to review!

I loved basketball in the 90’s, and was fascinated with Pat Riley. Not having Google back then it was tough to learn too much about him quickly, and so I was grateful to receive this book and dive in. I listened to this via audio and followed along with the book, and there were tons of anecdotes in here, some I remembered and some I did not. This is a must read for basketball fans in general, but especially fans during that time, as this was one I could not stop once I started and very much enjoyed.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was the team I hated the most as a kid, as an adult it’s a team I still hate but kind of in a ‘I miss this team being good…James Dolan, you suck.’

A fun read with being put down to look up YouTube videos of moments I clearly remember and want to replay.

[Boso · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Se mi levi dal cazzo di campo un'altra volta, ti uccido" messaggio recapitato da Anthony Mason sulla scrivania del suo allenatore Don Nelson. I Knicks degli anni 90 mai vincenti ma entrati comunque nella leggenda. Gran libro per appassionati ma anche per quelli che vogliono leggere una bella storia sportiva.Epico

[Pascal Vanenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

De 90’s Knicks. De angstgegner van de Jordan & Pippen Bulls, een ploeg die zo snoeihard speelde dat je ze haatte en respecteerde tegelijk. Toen de NBA nog niet zo soft was als nu. De onvermijdelijke val van grote hoogte zonder dat de echte top ooit echt bereikt was.

[Anthony Bevilacqua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent basketball book that takes you on a journey while dropping nuggets of facts and information along the way. I'm a basketball-head but not a Knicks fan and I still found it a fascinating read that transports you back to the 1990s NBA.

[Matt B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Totally cinematic and expertly written/paced. I enjoyed reading it and it disappeared from my brain as soon as I closed the book.

[John Monday]

Audio book version, pretty good! but felt a little bit too “and then this happened” rather than a holistic story.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Knicks fan born and bred and in my 20s during this decade, this journey down memory lane was so much fun, albeit with some PTSD. Where were you when Challenger blew up, when the Towers fell, when Charles Smith missed those layups... I text messaged my HS buddies all throughout my reading, giving them updates. I would recommend this to any Knicks fan from that era. I know they'll enjoy this as much as I did.

[Nick Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book and recommendation from my brother Coose. This is the type of book I love to nerd out with and got me pumped for this season. #KnicksIn7

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a Knicks or basketball fan and yet this is one of the best sports books I’ve read. Having grown up in NJ during the 1990s I couldn’t help but follow the Knicks’ saga and to read these recollections and dig into the chaos (chaos that led to dominant defensive basketball that set the tone for the NBA for ten-plus year) was really enjoyable.

What made this five stars was the author’s abilities to recount seasons, games, and plays without getting bogged down in minutiae. Entire playoff series were covered in three paragraphs without losing any of the tension or excitement.

This is what sports history should be.

[JS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool book. I remember liking the Knicks over the Rockets and the Knicks over the Spurs in the Finals matchups forever ago. And I particularly liked Jon Starks and Charles Oakley. It was cool to see some background on those physically dominating teams. Don’t expect the level of greatness of a Jeff Pearlman book, but this is better than most sports books

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t even tell you how excited I was to read this book. Chris Herring is among the sharpest, most insightful NBA reporters working today. What I appreciated about this book is that it not only unearthed new information about a cast of characters, including Riley, Ewing, Oakley and Mason, but it gave me a deep sense of who these fascinating, complex and troubling characters are. Where they come from. Why they operate the way they do. What makes them seem to always be on the verge of popping off. Herring captured not only the intensity and toughness of one of the most underachieving teams in NBA history— but the humanity of all those involved, a feat only a reporter as skilled and as dogged as Chris could.

[Konrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Supremely enjoyable. In the same way certain food dishes are best paired with a fine wine, this is best paired with a laptop that has YouTube pulled up. So many wild moments and missed opportunities punctuated the 90’s for the Knicks—found myself constantly looking up old skirmishes and buzzer beaters. The enigma that is the Knicks has been synonymous with dysfunction nearly all my life, so admittedly I never knew just how close they were to the peak in the 90’s; it makes the drop off of the last 20 years that much more brutal and fascinating.

[WM D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried to read blood in the garden. Once I started reading it. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.