Today, we look at the first NBA team to push a playoff series to seven games after being down 3-0.
This is “Don’t Got No Sports,” an occasional foray by me into a discussion about sports, which technically IS part of pop culture, but I’ll admit is very different from the stuff that I normally cover here, hence it receiving its own feature. Besides my pop culture and comic book writing, I also manage two sports blogs, one for the Yankees and one for the Knicks. So occasionally I’ll have something I feel like writing about sports.
I thought you folks might enjoy the tale of the first NBA team (of just four teams to ever do it) to come back from down three games to zero to force a Game 7, the 1950-51 Knicks, the first Knicks team to ever make it to the NBA Finals.
The Knicks were in their fifth year in existence in 1950-51, their second in the NBA (the Knicks began in the BAA, which formed the NBA in 1949 after absorbing the NBL). They had a good season in 1949-50 but took a step back in the 1950-51 season as they lost their leading scorer, shooting guard/small forward Carl Braun, to military service (Braun retired as the Knicks’ all-time leading scorer, although he has been passed over the years by first Willis Reed, then Walt Frazier and finally Patrick Ewing).
The Knicks were led by second-year point guard Dick Maguire and third-year big man Harry Gallatin (both Maguire and Gallatin, as well as Braun, are Hall of Famers). Still, after finishing second the year before they fell to third in the Eastern Division with a 36-30 record. The top four teams in the Eastern Division made the playoffs (same with the top four teams in the Western Division). The Knicks upset the #2 seeded Boston Celtics in the first round (which were best of three back then). The #4 seed Syracuse Nationals upset the #1 seeded Philadelphia Warriors and the Knicks knocked off the Nationals in the final game of a best of five Division Finals.
Meanwhile, in the Western Division, the Rochester Royals (I love the days when a team in New York was in the “Western Division” of a league. In the early days of the NBA, it was very much an East Coast league) were serious also-rans in the West because of the Minneapolis Lakers and their dominant center George Mikan. Mikan led the Lakers to four titles in five years from 1948-49 to 1953-54. This season, though, Mikan was dealing with a severe leg injury so the Royals and their strong big men (led by Arnie Risen) finally led the Royals to the NBA Finals.
After dispatching the most dominant team in the League, the Royals were quite confident against the Knicks. And when they won the first three games (including a 27-point victory in Game 1 at home and a 15-point victory in Game 2), things looked like they were going according to plan.
Beginning in Game 4, though, the Knicks began turning the tables. Gallatin has 22 points and 14 rebounds as the Knicks finally got on the board. Following a three-point victory in Game 5, the Knicks returned to New York to tie the series in Game 6 with a 7 point victory. Royals shooting guard Bobby Wanzer recalled, “We were a little bit leery about the last game. We weren’t down. We figured we still had the best team, but it was no cakewalk. We blew a couple of games. We should have won another game in there, but we didn’t, and we were concerned.”
The Royals stormed to a big lead in the final game (held in Rochester) but the Knicks came back from 14 down in the fourth quarter to briefly take the lead. Then, with 44 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter and the score tied 75-75, the Rochester point guard, Bob Davies, was fouled. He made both free throws. Back in those days, if you made the second free throw in the last three minutes of the game then there was a jump ball. The Royals won the jump ball. Also back in those days, there was no shot clock, so the Royals just held the ball before scoring once more with 3 seconds left, taking the game 79-75 and the series 4 games to 3.
The game was the first championship by the Royals (and, even after the Royals eventually moved to Sacramento and became the Kings, this is still the only title won by the franchise). One of their key reserves was a man named William Holzman. Yep, that’s right, future Hall of Fame coach for the Knicks, Red Holzman.
This began a three-year stretch where the Knicks made it to the NBA Finals every year (they would lose the next two Finals to the aforementioned Lakers – with a healthy George Mikan).
Since the 1951 NBA Finals, only the 1994 Denver Nuggets (in the second round), the 2003 Portland Trailblazers (in the first round) and this year’s Boston Celtics (Eastern Conference Finals) have come back from 3-0 deficits to take the series to a Game 7. Eventually, some team will make the comeback all the way from 3-0 down to win. Maybe that will happen Monday night!
Fascinating look at Game 7 Finals history in general.
I also loved that you had to reach into the black-and-white era to find a historic highlight about the Knicks. They’ve been an underachieving-or-garbage team for virtually my entire lifetime, and I turned 41 this year. Patrick Ewing led the team to the playoffs and even the finals many times, but he/they could never get past Michael Jordan. And after Ewing retired, James Dolan, eccentric billionaire behind MSG (who headlines a lame midlife crisis rock band on the side), became the sole owner of the team and in the 23-plus years since, the Knicks have only gone to the playoffs a handful of times, and only won a playoff series twice (including this year). A fan would have to be pushing thirty to even recall an era where the Knicks getting deep into the playoffs wasn’t science fiction.
For the record, despite all of his achievements with the Knicks, they wouldn’t even let Ewing interview for a coaching job. Instead he’s in the college system.
As a reader can tell, I live in NY. The only saving graces to basketball in this state are the facts that the Nets, arguably more underachieving, will still be seen as “the team that fled Jersey” for another generation, and the NY Liberty usually do well (although that is women’s basketball which gets only a fraction of the fans). Sports wise, the NY Jets usually are more dysfunctional and cursed as a team in comparison. I mean, at least the Knicks made it to the finals when Clinton was president. When was the last time the Jets even reached the Superbowl? And before anyone mentions the Mets, they at least made it to the World Series twice within the last 23 years (2000 and 2015), and even avoided being swept in each loss (albeit barely). NY is still a Yankees and Giants state, although the Buffalo Bills are reaching.
NY is so starved for quality basketball that any season where the Knicks reach the playoffs, even if they get swept in the first round, the press and most fans treat it with the same passion as the St. Crispin’s Day speech, and ignore all other problems within the team. This year they, gasp, won a playoff series, (and didn’t even get swept in the playoff series they lost) so most fans are in a good mood. My average life expectancy is another 30-38 years so I imagine in that time, if I am very lucky, I might see the Knicks reach the conference finals once. But only once. They’ll probably get swept.