Rant #3,096: Thank You

The Captain has left the building.

Willis Reed, the once and forever Captain of those great New York Knicks teams of the early 1970s, passed away yesterday at age 80, and the news hit me hard—and I mean really hard.

Growing up in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York when I did—the mid-1960s to the early 1970s—basketball was more than a game to me, it was a passion.

Baseball was and is my favorite sport, but growing up in such an urban area, basketball was the go-to game of that area.

And the Knicks weren’t very good when I first became enamored with the game.

My father took me to my first professional basketball game when I was about eight years old, and it was at one of those old NBA doubleheaders they used to have.

We got to the old Madison Square Garden a little late, and the first game was still being played. I don’t quite remember who played in the first game, but in the second game, the Knicks played the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Lakers won the game, and I remember my father asking me if I had a good time. Even though the Knicks lost, I shouted out an emphatic “YES!”

I was hooked for life, and that game was the first of many that I have been in person for at the Garden, both the old one and the newer one.

And my favorite player was Willis Reed.

He simply had a sense of presence that was right there on display with those horrid teams, and continued when the Knicks got Walt Frazier, Coach Red Holzman and some other great players and matured into the best basketball team in the world.

I have told this story many times, but with Reed now gone, it pays to tell the story again,

I owe The Captain a lot, and I wish during his lifetime that I could have met him and told him this story about the most pivotal time of my life, and how he helped me get through it.

This is not necessarily a sports story, but a story about will, grit and determination, all attributes that Willis Reed possessed and were put on great display on the night of May 8, 1970.

So without further ado, here is what I wrote in Rant #1,405, March 26, 2015:

“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 the 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 haphtarah in your bed" if I was still sick enough the next day, so there was no way out of this.

I knew my haphtarah--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 shoot around, 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 all these 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.”

There really is nothing more to say.

Willis Reed, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, showed the courage it took to get the job done, and his appearance in that game basically pushed me to do what I had to do on the most important day of my life.

If he could do it, I could too.

The Captain, may you R.I.P.