• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The Knicks averaged just 13,000 fans per game at Madison Square Garden in 1979, selling out the building only three times. By 1982, the Knicks were averaging just 10,000 fans per game, with zero sellouts.

New York began to turn things around in the early 1980s, though. In 1982, the Knicks won thirty-three games. Hubie Brown was hired as head coach, replacing the venerable Holzman. In 1983, they won forty-four games and made the playoffs, losing 4-0 to the eventual NBA champion 76ers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. In 1984, the Knicks won forty-seven games and again made the playoffs, taking the eventual NBA champion Celtics to seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Even greater than Brown’s impact on the Knicks’ improvement was the signing of dynamic scorer Bernard King as a free agent just before the 1983 season began. When Golden State matched the Knicks’ offer sheet, the Warriors and Knicks worked out a trade that sent King to New York for Richardson.

The ship be afloat.

With King aboard and the team steadily improving under Brown, the Knicks had high hopes going into the 1984-1985 season. The season turned out to be a disappointment, but King established himself as the League’s most unstoppable offensive force. He was averaging 32.9 points per game when he suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament of the right knee in a game in late March. The Knicks’ superstar won the scoring title, but was lost for the season. He was also out for the entire next season, and would only play six more games in a Knicks uniform before resurrecting himself and his career in Washington as a free agent.

Losing King was devastating to the Knicks, but a superstar savior loomed on the horizon—Patrick Ewing of Georgetown University. And, giving them their best chance at landing Ewing, the consensus College Player of the Year, the Knicks lost their last seven games of the season, gaining them entrance into the NBA’s first-ever draft lottery.

When the NBA instituted its lottery system in 1985, it was designed to prevent teams from “tanking,” or losing on purpose. In 1966, the League adopted a policy where the last-place finishers in each of the two conferences would flip a coin to determine which team would have the honor of drafting first. In some seasons, the difference between the top two picks in the draft was negligible. In other years, that coin toss determined future NBA champions.

For instance, the top two picks in the 1969 NBA draft were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Neil Walk. Milwaukee won the coin toss against Phoenix, and the Bucks won the 1971 NBA Finals. Phoenix, to this date, has never won an NBA Championship.

The top two picks in the 1974 NBA draft were Bill Walton and Marvin Barnes. Portland won the coin toss against Philadelphia, and drafted Walton. Three years later, the Blazers won the NBA Championship.

In the spring of 1984, the Houston Rockets coveted University of Houston center Hakeem Olajuwon, and there were virtually no scenarios in which it appeared Olajuwon would be available to be drafted without the first overall pick in the draft. The Rockets had finished 14-68 in 1983, had won the coin toss, and used it to draft center Ralph Sampson of the University of Virginia with the first overall pick. Although Houston had improved in Sampson’s first year, they still found themselves battling the San Diego Clippers for the worst record in the west. Houston knew that if they lost more than the Clips they would have a 50% chance to draft local hero Olajuwon, and to pair him with Sampson, the 1983-1984 NBA Rookie of the Year.

The Clippers and Rockets met on March 16, 1984 in San Diego, and the Clippers managed a 128-118 victory. If Houston had won that game, their record would have been 27-39, 3.5 games better than the Clippers. They couldn’t do that and maintain a reasonable chance at Olajuwon. Instead, Houston lost, and began their push to lose games and “win” Olajuwon. The Rockets finished their season by losing fourteen of their final seventeen games. Of their last ten games,