Home > People Index Page > Ernie Grunfeld
To Fix The Knicks
Can Ernie Grunfeld Bring an NBA Championship Back
to New York?
by Kenneth Shouler
In Ernie Grunfeld's corner office opposite
Madison Square Garden, two things are immediately noticeable. Near the
door hangs an enormous photograph of Patrick Ewing, the Knicks'
proudest warrior. In the photo, Ewing's arms are raised above his
head, spread like antennas in a "V," celebrating a seventh-game
victory over the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals in 1994. The
second item of note is the aroma of smoke.
The smoke emanates from a Macanudo Baron de Rothschild. "Just one a
day," Grunfeld says, almost sheepishly. Other people say Grunfeld's
office is too full of smoke, too often, for "just one a day." "He's
always relighting after lunch," says Josh Rosenfeld, the Knicks'
director of public relations. "Though it could be one cigar, one very
big one."
Grunfeld, president and general manager of the New York Knicks, was
introduced to cigars on a golf course several years ago by Mike
Gminski, Charlotte Hornets color commentator and 14-year NBA pro. He's
been hooked ever since. He even has a humidor with a lid fashioned
from a piece of the old 1973 Garden floor, played on by the last
Knicks championship team.
It is a late spring afternoon and Grunfeld, 40, has time to relax and
draw on a Mac or any number of favorites. He'll try Upmanns, Dunhills,
Davidoffs, most anything that his smoking buddies--Gminski,
broadcaster Ahmad Rashad and Los Angeles Lakers general manager Mitch
Kupchak among them--light up. He's open to new experiences; a good
trait for one who must bring together the right pieces for a
championship game.
Grunfeld has a friendly, inviting mien, though when talking about his
plans for the Knicks he is like a card player holding them close to
the vest.
His plate has been full--overflowing--since the start of the 1995-1996
season. First, the entire National Basketball Association had to await
the outcome of the union decertification issue, which threatened to
wipe out the NBA season. In February, he had to unload two ordinary
but high-priced players, Charles Smith and Doug Christie, to make room
under the salary cap to deal for free agents this summer. Then he
fired coach Don Nelson and replaced him with a more fiery Jeff Van
Gundy, whom he hoped would bring back the Knicks' "identity of defense
and rebounding" and their "work ethic." In May, the Knicks made a
two-year commitment to Van Gundy, 34, a longtime Knicks assistant
coach and protégé of Pat Riley.
Grunfeld's best player, Patrick Ewing, has not been dominant enough to
deliver a championship. If basketball were likened to a college
course, then Ewing's grade is "incomplete." After 11 years and
millions in paychecks, the Knicks have not won with Ewing. In his
defense, it could be said that whenever he's been double-teamed since
1985, he's had to kick the ball out to Trent Tucker or Darryl Walker,
Mark Jackson or Gerald Wilkins, Johnny Newman or Doc Rivers, John
Starks or Derek Harper--and untold, nondescript others--who couldn't
bury an 18-footer on a consistent basis. Not since Walt Frazier, one
of the stars of the Knicks' championship teams of the early Seventies,
has the franchise had a guard who could hit jump shots regularly while
playing big minutes.
Of 29 teams in the NBA, 27 finish the season earlier than they'd like
to. Then one more, the one losing in the finals, must ask what went
wrong and what it can do to get over the hump. The Knicks are two good
players away--perhaps three--from an NBA championship. The Knicks lost
in the second round of the playoffs to the Chicago Bulls in May, four
games to one. It was the second consecutive year the Knicks failed to
survive the second round in a tournament in which a team must win four
rounds for a championship.
For the most part, the New York Knicks have a trench warfare style of
play more suitable to the playoffs--the NBA's second and real season
that runs from April to June. But the Chicago Bulls, who went on to
win their fourth championship in six years, have haunted the dreams of
several teams. The Knicks' defeat at the hands of the Bulls marks the
fifth time since 1989 that a Jordan-led squad has sent them packing.
Were Chicago to be magically scratched from the league, the Knicks of
the Nineties might count themselves a huge success. In the last five
years, the Knicks have had a regular-season won-lost record of
270-140, a .659 winning percentage. But in sports, as George C. Scott
snarled to Paul Newman in The Hustler, "you don't count yardage."
There's only one question worth asking when it's over: Did you win?
The Knicks last won an NBA championship in 1973. Being good isn't
enough.
The NBA playoffs are a Darwinian battle waged on a 50-by-94-foot
court. Easy baskets are few, as are the breakaway layups and three-
digit scores that mark the regular season. Defense and
rebounding--which show team will as much as team skill--tend to
dominate.
Two years ago, the Knicks were a paradigm of smothering defense,
allowing their opponents an average of just 91.5 points per game. It
was the lowest points-per-game average allowed since 1954, an
extraordinary and undersold accomplishment. In this season's playoffs,
they battled Chicago proudly in every game, playing ferocious defense
and leaving the Bulls seething, battered and bruised.
Whatever success the in-your-face, disruptive Knicks have had is
best measured in the kinds of stats that only assistant coaches in
suits keep: shots contested, loose balls retrieved, offensive rebounds
allowed, passes stolen and deflected. In a word, effort plays.
New York fans demand it that way. The Garden faithful can tolerate a
year without a championship banner. But they want a team that mirrors
the lives of people in Gotham: a team that fights. The chant of "De-
fense, De-fense" began with the Knicks' championship squads from 1970
and 1973--with players like Willis Reed and Frazier, Dave DeBusschere
and Dick Barnett, Bill Bradley and Earl Monroe, Jerry Lucas and Phil
Jackson--and it's been the identity of their better teams
since. "Defense has been the trademark," says Grunfeld. He ought to
know.
Grunfeld grew up in Forest Hills, New York. On days when he wasn't
battling to hold onto some asphalt court in Queens, Grunfeld crossed
the East River with his father to watch the Knicks in their
white-and-orange uniforms, playing in a spanking new Garden before
they had replay scoreboards, Knicks City Dancers or a cocky theme
song. "One of the memories I have as a little kid, sitting up in the
blue seats--way up high with my dad and watching the Knicks play--was
the shot going up and all five players would box out. And then you can
just hear the ball bounce and one of the Knicks would pick it up and
you'd have the loudest cheer of the night. The fans realized that they
were all working as a team and doing something that was very important
to winning games. I'm not sure it's emphasized as much nowadays as
then."
As time goes on, those Knicks teams from 1969 to 1973--shining
brightest during Nixon's presidency, before VCRs, before disco
even--will grow larger and larger in his mind's eye. Until the day....
Grunfeld's family arrived from Satu-Mare, Romania, in 1964. "We
couldn't speak a word of English," Grunfeld recalls. "My dad was a
house painter for two years and he had saved up money to buy a small
business. He ran a fabric store in Romania and so he bought a fabric
store here in the South Bronx in 1966." The family was fortunate to
emigrate, Grunfeld stresses, since Romania had a quota for how many
Jews could leave. His father, Alex, his mother, Livia, and Ernie
worked at the store 12 hours a day, six days a week.
"I worked there until I became really involved in basketball. Then my
father saw me play and said, 'You know what? I'll hire somebody to
work at the store. You go play.' He saw how much interest I had. I was
in the tenth grade. He was a sports fanatic and a very good athlete in
his own right in Europe," Grunfeld says. "He was one of the best
goalies as a soccer player. One of the top three or four in the whole
country. He was also an excellent Ping-Pong player, world-ranked. And
he grasped basketball.
"There was no basketball in Romania. I started playing here in Queens
as a young kid, going down to the playground. I couldn't speak
English. But everybody was playing basketball. I was just one of the
kids. I think New York City players in general learn to compete at a
young age. If you don't win, you can't stay out on the court. If you
lose, you may have to wait an hour or an hour and a half before you go
out on the court again. So the games were pretty serious."
Grunfeld wanted to stay on the court. "The better I got, the more
friends I had. At first, I used to drive a lot and go inside a lot
more." But then, the 6-foot-6-inch Grunfeld says with a laugh, "For
some reason I stopped growing. In high school I could dominate on the
inside if I wanted to. But in college, the players were a lot bigger
and I had to improve my outside game. In my freshman and sophomore
years in college, I took the whole summer and really worked on my
outside shot."
He attended the University of Tennessee and played with Bernard King,
who would later become the greatest offensive player in Knicks
history, once scoring back-to-back 50-point games, winning an NBA
scoring title in 1985 and finishing his career with 19,655 points. At
Tennessee, the duo would become known as the "Ernie and Bernie Show,"
with Ernie averaging 22 points per game and Bernie nearly 26. "He was
just a great competitor," Grunfeld says of King. "It was interesting
because it was a couple of New York City guys going down south--a
whole different culture. We were pretty brash."
A 215-pound forward, Grunfeld played nine seasons in the NBA, with
stops in Milwaukee, Kansas City and New York. Each NBA stop had its
own distinction. Starting in Milwaukee in 1977, Grunfeld was coached
by Don Nelson, whom he would hire for the Knicks in 1995. The other
two stops were marked by appearances in the conference finals.
The Kansas City Kings of 1980-1981 were one of the great underdog
stories of basketball. In the first round of the playoffs, the no-name
Kings eked out a victory over the Portland Trail Blazers. Then,
against a Phoenix Stars team that had proven stars in Walter Davis,
Dennis Johnson and Truck Robinson, the Kings pulled off an upset in
seven grueling games. People took notice of the overachieving bunch,
with Otis Birdsong, Scott Wedman, Phil Ford, Reggie King, Sam Lacy,
Joe Meriweather and Grunfeld. But their run ended in the Western
Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets and their indomitable
center, Moses Malone.
Grunfeld's final stop as a pro was with the New York Knicks in
1982. One circle in his life was now complete. The boy from New York
now played for New York. He played under Hubie Brown, who had been
coach of the year with the Atlanta Hawks in 1978 and had coached the
Kentucky Colonels to an American Basketball Association championship
in 1975. "Hubie Brown was an excellent basketball coach," Grunfeld
says. "He was extremely prepared. He was great with X's and O's, very
organized and a very competitive guy. So I enjoyed playing for Hubie
and we had a lot of success playing with him."
The 1984 Knicks brought the city back some of the excitement of the
old days. "In 1984, we took the Celtics seven games [in the conference
finals]; they went on to win the championship. They had a great
team--Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson.
"Hubie's philosophy was that he had two units that played different
styles. The first unit was more half-court and more
offensive-oriented. The first unit went to our big guys down low
[read: Bernard King and Bill Cartwright] and then we went to our
second unit and Hubie was substituting all five of us within a minute
or two. We pressed the whole time and we would just go all out and
give 110 percent and change the tempo of the game. Hubie wanted us to
leave everything out there on the court, and then he went back to the
starting unit in the hopes of wearing the other team down a little
bit. It was very successful."
Though Grunfeld was not getting the minutes or points that he had been
getting earlier in his career, he was a crucial part of that team that
went to a seventh game against a superior opponent.
"Ernie was like a coach on the second unit," recalls Brown, now a
basketball analyst for the TNT network. "He had a great aptitude for
the game and he and Louis Orr always made sound and thought-out
suggestions and were very helpful. I would keep the two of them next
to our coaches. They were the best ever at the second phase of the
2-2-1 trap. They played the passing lanes, had great anticipation and
made up for a lack of quickness with IQ." Larry Bird said that he knew
the team that won the series would win the NBA championship. He was
right; the Celtics beat the Lakers in seven games in the finals.
While the Kansas City and New York squads were two highlights of
Grunfeld's pro career, the high point of his basketball life occurred
in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where he played on the U.S. team that
beat Yugoslavia in the finals to win the gold medal. But "we wanted to
play Russia," Grunfeld says. (In the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the
Soviet Union was given the gold in one of the most controversial
finishes in basketball history.)
Grunfeld found himself at a crossroads in 1986. "I had an
opportunity to play with some other teams for a year, maybe two
years." But the astute on-the-court performer made an astute career
move. "The Knicks asked if I'd be interested in broadcasting. I worked
on the radio doing color with Jim Karvellas, and then moved to the TV
side. I had to learn to be analytical and study all the teams and all
the plays and ask people why they do certain things and ask a lot
about different players and habits and what they like to do in certain
situations. It was very good preparation."
He left broadcasting in 1989 to be an assistant coach under Knicks
coach Stu Jackson for a year and a half. "I told them I had
aspirations of becoming involved in management. There was an opening
for the director of administration, so I came in and took that job for
about a year. And then Dave Checketts came in [from the league office]
in March 1991. He was interviewing five or six guys for the vice
president of player personnel job. He hired me. I became GM a couple
of years later [in 1993]."
Grunfeld saw the Knicks' fortunes take a sharp turn for the better
when they signed Pat Riley as coach in 1991. The team had won just 39
games the previous season. But Riley, who had coached the "Showtime"
Lakers to five NBA titles between 1982 and 1988, gave the Knicks
instant stature, with a 51-31 won-loss record in his first season. The
team began a roll whose momentum hasn't stopped.
From 1992 through 1995, the Knicks under Riley won 223 games and lost
105, not counting the playoffs, a winning percentage of .680. This
little detail seems the most overlooked point in the media rush to
castigate Riley after he left the Knicks with one year remaining on
his contract. He took the Knicks almost to the mountaintop, but for
four years, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Reggie Miller--and the
Knicks themselves--kept them from the peak. Yet Russ Salzburg, sports
host on WFAN, an all-sports radio station in New York City, called
Riley a "cold-hearted snake" who "slithered" out of town. Whether
Salzburg and other critics ever bothered to look in a record book is
anyone's guess. If they had, they'd find that Riley's .680 mark is
better than that of any Knicks coach in history. Not even Red Holzman
in the Knicks' glory years of 1969 through 1973 put up that kind of a
run. Yes, Riley left rudely, faxing his resignation to the Knicks'
offices. But his failure to stand before the press and take hits while
explaining a broken contract is a management and media issue, not the
substantive one.
The Knicks subsequently dropped "tampering" charges against the
Miami Heat, who negotiated with Riley in 1995 while he was still under
contract with the Knicks, settling for compensation--$1 million and a
first-round draft pick from Miami. Case closed.
But the real question raised by Riley's quitting is this: Is it
possible, just possible, that he was right--that these Knicks can't
climb higher?
Anyone wishing to draw that conclusion has ample ammunition to
support it. The team is old. Patrick Ewing will be 34 when he plays
his next game and Charles Oakley will be a month from his 33rd
birthday. Between them they have 22 years of pro experience, but not
one championship ring. If they couldn't steal a title in 1994, when
Jordan was away, or in 1995, when Jordan had just returned from
flailing at curve balls, how are they going to do it now?
How, indeed? To listen to Grunfeld after the second postseason game
against Chicago was to hear the voice of EveryFan. "We didn't execute
down the stretch and that hurt. We're competitive and we have a lot of
pride. We need to do a better job down the stretch." In crucial spots
the Knicks looked terribly short on offensive options and long on
mistakes. "We kept them out of transition," Grunfeld said, explaining
the Knicks' irrepressible effort compared to the Orlando Magic's
abysmal performance against the Bulls in the first game of the Eastern
Conference Finals. "But the difference was rebounding."
In sum, the Knicks traveled and turned the ball over with bad ball
handling and passing, didn't protect their defensive boards and
couldn't buy a basket in the half-court offense when they needed it
most. So in five games that were up for grabs, an equally seasoned but
more talented Chicago team stole four.
The series was a bump-and-grind war, not one of those NBA run-and-gun
affairs where teams either slam-dunk or set global records for
three-pointers attempted. To stop the running of the Bulls, the Knicks
and Van Gundy revived their disruptive chest-to-chest style from the
1994 NBA Finals, a seven-game series in which they scratched and
clawed with the Houston Rockets for every basket.
It worries the NBA that point totals have gone down. In the 1985-1986
season, the average team in the league scored 110.2 points, compared
with 99.5 this past season. Commissioner David Stern and other league
executives have tried a little aesthetic engineering in recent years,
hoping to sustain their ESPN highlight-reel brand of ball, including
frequent dunks and primal screams. Run-and-gun basketball gets big TV
rating numbers--even when it results in 4-0 sweeps like the 1995
finals between Orlando and Houston.
The changes--new rules against hand-checking to stop shoving and
clawing on defense, and a closer three-point line to further increase
offensive production--haven't pleased all people. "The average game
has become boring," says career basketball man and Indiana Pacers
coach Larry Brown. Houston center Hakeem Olajuwon doesn't appreciate
all the changes, either. "People who really know the game appreciated
the style of play in our series with New York," says Olajuwon. "You
had to fight for every basket."
Following the New York-Houston finals--whose TV ratings were 20
percent lower than the 1993 finals--the league began to censor the
kind of tough defensive play that the Knicks, and the "Bad Boy"
Detroit Pistons before them, had been practicing. Thus, the
hand-checking and three-point-line rules were put into place before
the 1994-1995 season. Since it takes nine two-point goals to equal six
three-pointers, the result was predictable for offenses around the
league. Everyone was hoisting threes. (Just ask anyone who has
coached Knicks guard John Starks.) In the first season following the
new rule change, there were 33,877 three-point-shot attempts, 11,982
more than the previous year. This past season there were 37,255
attempts.
Grunfeld doesn't mind these changes. "The scoring has really dropped
in the NBA in the last 10 years. There is more emphasis on defense. A
lot of coaches feel that defense is constant, while shooting is there
sometimes and sometimes not," he says. "Coaches do a great job of
double-teaming, getting it out of the best players' hands. So the
three-point line was moved in to increase the scoring and make it a
little bit easier shot. If you pack it in in the middle, you have to
pay a price with a closer three-pointer. And the intent was to try and
open up the middle a little bit more to take advantage of the great
ability of these great players in the NBA. I think the three-point
shot is really an interesting part of the game. Because with a
three-point shot, a team that is behind is never really out of it. For
the most part it's worked pretty well."
But since the three-point line was moved in, the average score in the
league has dropped from 101.4 to 99.5 points per game. So with more
three-pointers being attempted, it seems there's less of a tendency to
look for other, perhaps easier, ways to score.
In addition to trying to pump up the offense, the league has attempted
to put an end to rim-swinging, chest-bumping, non-stop taunting and
the in-your-face-disgrace behavior that had come to typify NBA
contests. Such behavior will now get you whistled for a technical
foul.
These problems have abated but are a long way from disappearing. If
long-term contracts are supposed to result from achievement and
winning, how do you control players who receive guaranteed multiyear
contracts, sneaker commercials and other endorsements prior to setting
foot on an NBA court? If the NBA system of signing players provides
all its first-round draft picks with the sun, the moon and the stars,
can the players be blamed for coming in with both hands out? Punk
behavior naturally results from this attitude of entitlement. Then
that behavior is positively reinforced by being shown on the evening
news and ESPN highlight shows. Suddenly rudeness abounds.
Consider the following cases. Players on the 1994-1995 New Jersey Nets
missed practice so often that coaches had to suit up just so the team
would have 10 warm bodies for practice. The most frequent culprits
were team "leaders" Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson, both of whom
have since been dispatched to other teams. "It's just scary," says
Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Wayne Embry. "We even have players
missing practices and meetings to tape commercials. We have guys
challenging coaches every day. That bothers me. Too many guys want to
just go their own way."
Some of the media elevate players like Dennis Rodman to the realm of a
seer or mystic because he is au courant enough to reject authority,
dress in drag and head-butt referees--and disrupt his teams. No one
batted an eye when Bulls marketing and broadcasting vice president
Steve Schanwald recently described Rodman as a "genius." Why? Because
he throws his jersey into the audience after every game.
No wonder Magic Johnson, 37 and trapped in the Generation-X gap, said
of this past season, "I've been through more nonsense in this one year
than in 12 years with my old squad." Want more of the same sentiment?
Ring up a couple of guys named Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.
The NBA reached its zenith with the flourishing of team basketball
ushered in by Bird and Johnson and modified of late by Jordan. This
threesome prized team success first; the trappings of success--money,
glory and commercials aplenty--arrived later. What must they think of
the new breed, these agent-driven slackers who have the world handed
to them before making the All-Star team or playing in a single NBA
playoff game?
Grunfeld has more to worry about these days than players' behavior. He
righted the Knicks' drifting ship last March by firing coach Don
Nelson and hiring Van Gundy. "Nelson was regarded as one of the best
coaches in the league for many, many years. Two years ago he coached
Dream Team II [the NBA all-star contingent that won the world
championship in Toronto], so obviously he was held in very high regard
in the basketball industry," Grunfeld says, explaining his original
choice of Nelson. "It was unfortunate that it just didn't work
out. The players were not responding to him. We were sort of in a
downward spiral and I felt a change had to be made in order to give
ourselves a chance to be competitive toward the end of the
season. We're a proud organization, a proud bunch. We pride ourselves
on defense and rebounding. Those are our strengths. We got away from
that and lost our identity and our work ethic. A lot of people will
say, 'You play like you practice,' and you know different coaches have
different philosophies. Unfortunately, what Nellie thought was the
right thing for this team wasn't working."
Prior to the playoffs, moves were made to upgrade the Knicks. A major
move, in early February, was Grunfeld's prudent trade of Charles
Smith, a favorite whipping boy of Garden fans, who believed he was
impersonating a shrinking violet trapped in a 6-foot-10-inch
body. Most of the time they were right. Sending him to the San Antonio
Spurs (with Monty Williams) rid the Knicks of Smith's 39 percent
shooting percentage (lowest among the team's regulars last season)
and prohibitive salary and brought over forwards J.R. Reid and Brad
Lohaus last February. Ten days later, Grunfeld unloaded guard Doug
Christie and center Herb Williams to the Toronto Raptors for
guard/small forward Willie Anderson and forward/center Victor
Alexander. The Knicks subsequently re-signed Williams (he was waived
by Toronto) and waived Alexander. The Knicks renounced their rights
to Anderson and Reid on July 14.
The moves gave the Knicks nearly $10 million to maneuver with under
the cap, money that they were hoping could be used to acquire one or
two top-shelf free agents. It wasn't an accident that Grunfeld was
named Knicks president on Feb. 23, five days after the second
deal. When asked what he thought of Trader Ernie's deals, Garden
president Dave Checketts dubbed them "miraculous."
In June the Knicks used their 18th, 19th and 21st draft picks on
three forwards. With pick 18 they snatched 6-foot-8 Syracuse forward
John Wallace. They also used picks 19 and 21 on forwards, getting 6-10
Walter McCarty of Kentucky and 6-7 Dontae' Jones of Mississippi
State. All are athletic, all come from winning college programs and
all can score. Few analysts expected that the Knicks would get such
talent with late picks.
Grunfeld was also pleased. "We had three picks and we never thought
a player like John Wallace would slip to us. All of them are athletic
players, good scorers and very versatile players. They can all play
more than one position. They all have good size." By themselves,
however, they were not the solution to the Knicks' championship
quest. And Grunfeld and Checketts knew it.
In an effort to further bolster the team, the Knicks in July signed
free-agent guards Allan Houston and Chris Childs and obtained forward
Larry Johnson in a trade that sent forward Anthony Mason and Lohaus to
the Charlotte Hornets. Houston, 25, addresses the Knicks' perimeter
shooting needs and gives them another three-point shooter; last year
he averaged 19.7 points per game for the Pistons. Childs, 28, will
play point guard for the Knicks after two seasons with the New Jersey
Nets. Johnson, 27, is expected to play small forward. In one fell
swoop the Knicks likely replaced three-fifths of their old starting
lineup.
How will Ewing mesh with these new players? "I think the addition of
these players will help the entire team," says Grunfeld. "Everybody
can score and opponents won't be able to double-team any one player."
Hubie Brown was also impressed. "So far, New York has probably done
the best job of revamping themselves with the trade, the free-agent
signing and the three drafts picks," says TNT's resident professor of
hoops.
Even so, there will still be major question marks. Michael Jordan is
33, and his indefatigable, ultra-competitive self should be around to
haunt NBA teams until 2000. Another hill to be climbed is Orlando, a
younger team with one of the best players in the league in Anfernee
Hardaway.
So Grunfeld and Dave Checketts have their hands full, trying to devise
a way to beat the Bulls and the greatest player that ever laced up
sneakers.
Still, there's no reason to toss in the towel. Several things are
working in the Knicks' favor. Since an overwhelming majority of NBA
players voted not to decertify the union last September, there will be
no more preposterous long-term rookie signings in the $100 million
neighborhood. While the top four 1994-1995 rookies signed contracts
averaging $3.3 million per year over the first three years, the top
four last season averaged a shade under $2 million. In the collective
bargaining agreement ratified last year, the players agreed to hold
rookie contracts to three years (they were unlimited before), in
return for unrestricted free agency when those deals expire. This is a
definite plus for Grunfeld and others around the NBA who had draft
picks to sign before the start of the 1996-1997 season.
Also working for the Knicks is the success of Madison Square Garden,
which has a healthy bottom line. The Knicks have sold out 172
consecutive regular-season games, with the last non-sellout occurring
in February 1993. No surprise here. Attending games at the Garden
these days is akin to witnessing a special effects show. Scoreboard
videos, courtside celebrities, sexy dancers, Knicks theme songs and
pre-game laser shows are all the norm. It is one of the best nights
out in New York.
So panic is not the appropriate emotion. Grunfeld can take some time
to hit the links and smoke with Gminski or Kupchak. Gminski not only
introduced Grunfeld to cigars, but celebrated with him at Smith &
Wollensky's steakhouse after Grunfeld's appointment to general
manager. "People were sending over magnums of Robert Mondavi
Cabernet," Gminski recalls. "We had this great meal, a lot of great
wine and we just pulled out the [Macanudo] Prince Philip maduros
afterward. It was fun because Ernie was really excited."
In the off-season, Grunfeld has more time to spend with his wife,
Nancy, and their two children, Rebecca and Danny, at their Franklin
Lakes, New Jersey, home. Nancy owns In the Paint Basketball Gear, a
sports clothing line of activewear.
When he's in the office and has time to relax, Grunfeld can always
pull out a Macanudo. At that moment, his eyes might drift over to the
oversized picture of Ewing or the humidor with the piece of the 1973
Garden floor. Nice artifacts both, but also double-edged swords. The
Ewing picture, so full of euphoria, tells a tale without a happy
ending.
Should Grunfeld's eyes settle on the humidor behind his desk, he'll
recognize a fuller tale. That humidor will remind him of his youth and
the 1973 Knicks team that in five games beat the Lakers and a few
chaps named Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Gail Goodrich--Hall of
Famers all--to capture their last championship. While the humidor will
remain behind the desk, the picture should one day be replaced.
"We can always do better by winning a championship," Grunfeld
says. "We're extremely competitive people and the fans deserve it and
the players have given great efforts to win."
Perhaps a new picture will show Ewing with his hands thrust skyward,
pointing toward the 1970 and 1973 championship banners and retired
uniform numbers of Reed and Frazier in the Garden rafters. But in this
photo, Ewing should be celebrating the Knicks winning a new
championship banner for those rafters.
Kenneth Shouler, a freelance writer based in White Plains, New
York, is a frequent contributor to Cigar Aficionado.
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