An ode to the Knicks (and the 1973 blue suede Puma)
Though I should’ve been, I was never a Knicks fan, but a shoe I loved (and wore on the court, so courted? Sorry, dad joke) was the Clyde, the blue suede Puma launched in 1973, the last year the Knicks won the NBA championship (until last Saturday night). It was named of course for Walt Frazier, the legendary point guard on that team and New York’s acknowledged king of cool back in that day.
I have adored, and adorned, many shoes since then—many, many, many, recently, as I sell them now at Fleet Feet in Carrboro, NC. (And the shoes are amazing today!) But the Clyde, as long lost loves can, holds a special, wistful place in my soul, partly because an upper back injury (prematurely?) ended my rec playing career as I turned 50, and also because that low-top blue suede Puma, before the white and red leather Converse Dr. J’s (I had a pair of those, too), before the succession of Nike Jordans, was just so freakin’ cool.
The stuff, now, alas, only of dreams, for a vertically challenged former point guard.
Should’ve been a Knicks fan, I guess, because, born on Long Island, my parents (the children of immigrants) and brother were native Brooklynites, but at age 3 we moved to Connecticut, which while plenty close enough for my father to commute by train to the city, and certainly in the New York sports orbit, was far enough for me to be pulled northeast toward Boston's teams, at a critical time in my emerging sports consciousness, 1967-68.
It was when the Celtics (in their black canvas Converse All-Stars, BTW) and the Red Sox were ascendant, and New York’s teams were not quite yet. Also, baseball, not basketball, was the family sport. Historically, my father, who played semi-pro while a G.I. in Panama during World War II, had of course been a fan of Brooklyn’s Dodgers, and later, my older brother, of the Yankees, as the “Bums” (as the Dodgers were then known) had by 1958 left the spurned borough for Los Angeles.
As time went on, I was largely indifferent to the Knicks, if admiring, in retrospect (as my father was) of those 1970 and 1973 championship teams, for their peerless excellence forged through admirably selfless teamwork. They were so rarely, afterward, a serious threat to my Celtics (unlike the Lakers, who (with apologies to Nietzsche and Hunter Thompson) I both feared and loathed, even more when I became a Portland Trailblazer fan as a transplanted Oregonian).
Still, I did admire those 1970 and 1973 teams, an admitted reverence renewed when I interviewed their great center and captain, Willis Reed, who had graciously appeared at a friend’s hoops camp in Ketchikan, Alaska, where I was the editor of the small daily newspaper there. Reed, by then a New Jersey Nets executive, was so down-to-earth, neither self-effacing nor self-aggrandizing, a Mt. Rushmore-like figure in my eyes, more the quiet, stoic country Louisianan he’d always been than the big-city hero he always would be. Willis Reed, whose Knicks’ record 38 points in an NBA finals were eclipsed by undersized point guard Jalen Brunson’s 45 Saturday night.
So, I was never (really) a Knicks fan, aside from some lingering nostalgia. Until this spring’s NBA championship run, and probably only for that. Because while their finals opponent, the San Antonio Spurs, had won five titles since 1999, the last in 2014, the Knicks, and their long-suffering fans, had endured a 53-year drought and were finally sensing that one was within their grasp. My long-time resistance to their fans’ annoying sense of entitlement as the city’s historic place at the center of the basketball universe (if not professionally) buckled under the weight of this team’s dramatic march through the playoffs and the city’s endearing exhilaration as it unfolded.
So, I teared up a little as I read Sunday morning of Knicks’ fans’ collective emotional catharsis. I even, during this past week, peeked at the Puma website, to peruse a retro version of the Clyde. At $90, not a bad price, but unsurprisingly sold out in the classic Knicks blue in my men’s size 9. The kelly Celtics green option looked good too, but somehow not quite right.