Rant #1,730: Red-Letter Day

Today, August 10, 2016, would have been Red Holzman's 96th birthday.

If you don't know who Red Holzman is, and was, and will forever be, either read on or come back tomorrow to read about something else.

Even if you are not a basketball fan, you should know what the name Red Holzman stands for, and who he was during his prolific career, in particular if you lived in the New York Metropolitan area in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

Red Holzman WAS basketball in this area during that time period, and he never bounced a ball or hit a shot at that point in time.

As the coach of the New York Knicks, he guided the team to its only two NBA championships, in the 1969-1970 and 1972-1973 seasons, and he won over 600 games with the Knicks, still holding their record for most wins by one of their coaches.

William Holzman was a New Yorker through and through. He was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and he died in Cedarhurst, Long Island.

He was 5 feet 10 inches himself, and during the early days of the NBA, he was a pretty good player himself, but it was his coaching that would eventually gain him stardom.

First dabbing his hand in the coaching waters with the Milwaukee and later St. Louis Hawks, Holzman was hired by the Knicks as a scout in the late 1950s, and in 1967, with the Knicks floundering, he was brought in as a wily veteran of the NBA, both on and off the court.

The Knicks had the pieces to be a respectable team, but they still were a ways away from actually being that team.

Holzman and the Knicks stayed the course, and by gaining some of the most cerebral basketball players ever--including Rhodes Scholar Bill Bradley--the Knicks were able to assemble a team that could compete with the best of them.

Finally, with Walt Frazier and Willis Reed leading the way, the Knicks won their first championship in May 1970, using a pass first mentality, looking for the open man and with a tenacious defense that is still marveled at today.

Using that same drive and determination, they also won the championship in May 1973, and 43 years later, those are the only championships the Knicks have ever won.

However, his influence has been felt in the NBA to the present day, through Phil Jackson, currently the Knicks president but the architect of championship-winning basketball in both Chicago and Los Angeles.

And even though Holzman was a no holds barred type of coach--Walt Frazier has told numerous stories of the coach using very colorful language to chastise players in the time-out huddle--the players who played for him absolutely loved him, because like them, all he wanted to do was win, and it didn't matter what he said, as long as the end justified the means.

Holzman was eventually named one of the 10 greatest coaches in NBA history.

He died of leukemia in 1998.

To me, Holzman was the glue that kept this talented bunch of Knicks focused on the prize. During those years, the Knicks were the only New York team that galvanized the entire city and metropolitan area when they went for the championship.

Seemingly everybody became a Knick fan during those fantastic runs, and even casual and non-fans were drawn into the hysteria when the Knicks were battling it out at this level.

Although he has been gone for nearly 20 years now, he is greatly missed, especially by Knicks fans who know how Team Turmoil has unwound during the past several years.

They have needed someone like Red Holzman to guide them ...

But there was only one Red Holzman, and they only have to look to the rafters of Madison Square Garden to see his winning number retired up there with Frazier, Reed and all the rest, to know that while he isn't with us anymore, he is still present, waiting for the next Knicks championship that may never come.