Rant #1,405: Life's Greatest Moments

You don't have to be a world's most famous person to have memorable points in your life.

Even us common folk have days that helped to make us what we are today, days that we will never forget.

They are sort of in your own personal "Wikipedia entry" in your mind, and these memories stay with you forever.

One of those days was my bar mitzvah on May 9, 1970, and as I approach the 45th anniversary of that day, I also have to look at the prior day, on May 8, as another one of those days I will never forget.

All of this came back to me last night, after I watched the current New York Knicks--an amalgam of D-League players and NBA wannabees--get routed once again.

MSG Network, which normally would go right into a dire postgame show, went instead into a short, half-hour special about the 1970 New York Knicks, the first Knicks team to win an NBA championship.

It showed some quick footage of the games versus the dreaded Los Angeles Lakers that led up to the championship, and interviewed various players on the Knicks' championship team, including Walt Frazier and Captain Willis Reed.

I remember the whole thing like it was yesterday, and both May 8 and May 9 stand out to me as two of the most important days of my life.

Leading up to my bar mitzvah on May 9, when I had my ceremony--due to some quirk in the schedule, I had to have my actual party on May 23--I had had a really tough time. I was sick for about a week to 10 days prior to my bar mitzvah day, all from a case of nerves.

Look, I was the first grandchild, the first child, the first of the next generation in my family to reach this point in my life, and I guess I felt that he world was coming down on me.

Anyway, I had burst a blood vessel in my throat a few days prior to my bar mitzvah, and even closer to the date, I had anywhere from a mild fever to a high fever near 104-105. Yes, 105 degrees. In today's medicine, I would have been placed right in the hospital without hesitation, but back then, my doctor, old Dr. Geller, knew exactly what I was suffering from--nerves--and he kept me home.

Anyway, I watched every minute of the NBA championship series that I could. It was difficult because in those days, games were blacked out in the home city, so our local ABC outlet didn't carry a lot of the games live, but on tape delay.

But I had a secret weapon--my TV picked up Channel 8 very well, the ABC affiliate in Connecticut, and they carried the games live, so I was able to watch the games on that channel.

On May 8, I was really sick as a dog. I probably teetered to near 105 degrees in fever that day, and the pressure was on.

My Orthodox grandfather slept over because he would not drive on the Sabbath. At about 7 p.m. that evening, he came into my room and told me, "You will have to do your haftorah in my bed" if I was still sick enough the next day, so there was no way out of this.

I knew my haftorah--my speech in Hebrew that I would have to say at my bar mitzvah--inside and out, but I let my nerves get the best of me.

Anyway, after my grandfather made this proclamation, I decided to watch the Knicks game, the biggest NBA game that the team ever played up to that point.

I turned on Channel 8, and the game changed my life.

Team Captain Willis Reed, who was injured earlier in the series, decided that nothing was going to stop him from taking the court in deciding Game 7.

The rest of the Knicks had come out for their shootaround, as had the Lakers, but when Reed came out of the locker room apart and after his teammates, the Lakers were so stunned that they all stopped whatever they were doing and watched what was unfolding as the crowd cheered their hero, and they never really recovered.

Reed limped along on a bad leg, made his first two shots of the game, Walt Frazier had one of the greatest clutch games ever played by a Knick or any NBA player, and the Knicks won 113-99.

When I saw Reed limp out, I got goosebumps myself.

I thought to myself, if this guy can do what he is supposed to do on one leg, then what am I doing in the bed here as sick as I was--I can do it too!

I swear to you, when that game was over, I felt like a burden had been taken off my back. I felt maybe not 100 percent well, but I felt so much better. I know that that night, I went to bed with a smile on my face and a new determination to do my bar mitzvah the way it was intended to be done.

I woke up on May 9, all ready to go. Sure, I still had temperature--probably 100 or 101--but I felt like I could take on the world.

All told, I barely made it through the ceremony in our synagogue, and I nearly passed out toward the end. But I did it. And later in the day, I felt fine--100 percent fine, no fever, no nothing.

If I met up with Willis Reed and Walt Frazier today, I would literally tell them this story, and thank them for pushing me to do what needed to be done, under any circumstances.

Those two days--May 8 and May 9--were certainly the most important days of my young life, and over 40 years later, still stand out as two of the most important days of my existence, along with getting married the second time and the births of my two kids.

What a wonderful memory that I have of those two days, and I hope I conveyed to you exactly what I felt when Reed walked onto the court. It was as if a heavenly presence entered my body and made me almost whole again. Maybe he felt the same thing.

It is hard to explain, but I hope that I did.

Forty five years is a long time, but the time and place is so clear in my mind ... it is like it happened yesterday.

I am sure that we all have such moments in our lives; thanks for taking the time to read about mine.