While I have never been a fan of the New York Knicks and the teams in this book were ones that I use to despise, I was nonetheless very pleased with this book and thought it was an excellent portrayal of a team that was so good and yet couldn't win a championship. Here is my review of "Blood in the Garden."
Title/Author: "Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990’s New
York Knicks" by Chris Herring
Rating: 5 of
5 stars (excellent)
Review: Professional
basketball in the 1990’s was certainly dominated by the Chicago Bulls and
Michael Jordan, having won six titles during that decade. Two others were won by the Houston Rockets
and at the end of the decade, the San Antonio Spurs won the first of their five
titles. However, if one is talking about
teams that excelled during that time, one must also include the New York
Knicks. Those Knicks teams provided some
of the most thrilling moments for their fans and faced the Rockets and Spurs in
the NBA Finals during the 1990’s. This excellent
book by Chris Herring chronicles those teams in a fun, fast-paced read – not at
all like the style of play by those teams.
Led
by Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason, the Knicks were most famous
for their stifling defense and their physical play. This carried over into
their practices, and it is in those practice sessions where Herring tells the
most interesting stories and information about the team. Whether it was about John Starks not wanting
to drive to the basket during practice early in his tenure with the team, Gerald
Wilkins sharing a story about practice ending early if he ran through a line of
teammates ready to throw elbows and shoulders at him (he declined the offer) or
the details in which coach Pat Riley had the team execute during these
sessions, I enjoyed these sections more than the either the game writing or the
portraits of key personnel.
That
doesn’t mean that these sections of the book weren’t good – there were full and
complete profiles on many of the key people who made the Knicks so successful
during the 1990’s. That starts with
Patrick Ewing and Pat Riley, the best player and coach respectively for the
team during this time. But others are included
as well – Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Jeff Van Gundy, Dave Checketts – those
are just some of the names and people a reader will learn about as he or she
reads about the team.
As
for in-game writing, that is not as in depth as one might expect as only
memorable games or moments are covered in detail. Take the 1994 Finals in which the Knicks lost
to the Houston Rockets in 7 games. Of
course, game 7 and the shooting struggles of John Starks are well documented as
was the scene at Madison Square Garden during game 5 when the fans were leaving
their seats and watching the television monitors in the concourse during the low-speed
police chase of O.J. Simpson. But if a
reader wants more detail of the other games in the series, there isn’t a lot
aside from some details of the Knicks wins.
The reader will still get a good perspective of the series, just not a
lot of detail. This is true for all of
the regular season and playoff basketball described in the book.
Knick
fans who remember this time with mostly happy memories (after all, they did not
win a championship) will want to get a copy of this book as will fans of the NBA
during this time frame, when the Knicks, through their physical play, were one
of the better professional teams.
I
wish to thank Atria Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in
exchange for an honest review.
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