Q&A with Harvey Araton, author of When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks

How did being a lifelong Knicks fan help –or hinder—writing WHEN THE GARDEN WAS EDEN?

I tried to approach writing the book with two different perspectives and voices. The first was as a reporter delving into the era of the Old Knicks and, once there, becoming reacquainted with a younger version of myself as a fan. The challenge was in striking an appropriate balance so that the book would be presented as a work of honest sports journalism but with the appropriate level of homage. These players were, after all, heroes of my adolescence and early adulthood.

I believe a perfect example of the right mix is in the chapter that explores a confrontation between Willis Reed and Cazzie Russell, provoked by a racial profiling of Russell that led to him calling Reed an Uncle Tom. While the story is reported objectively and in context with the racial pressures of the time, the sub-text clearly portrays Reed as a man of unusual character and leadership skills. In my mind, he was always that, but one-dimensionally, seen through the prism of performance. I was grateful that my reporting upheld my boyhood views but it also gave me greater insight into Willis Reed the man.

What was it like interviewing the players you once rooted for?

In most cases, especially with the principal characters and some of the opponents, I had established relationships based on my newspaper career. Bill Bradley was the main exception. By the time I was covering the Knicks, he had left the basketball scene for his political life. I had never interviewed him in a one-on-one setting. I feared he might be reluctant to spend any significant time with me. As it turned out, he was more enthusiastic than anyone, eager to have a team he is so obviously proud of chronicled in a meaningful way four decades after the fact. There were times during the reporting when Senator Bradley actually called me with information, updates and offers to be of assistance in any way he could. I will always be grateful.

What was the biggest contribution that the Knicks of late 60’s and early 70’s made off the court?

The Old Knicks were truly part of the New York fabric in ways that contemporary athletes cannot or will not commit to– in large part because they live in a world so far removed from the average person. These were famous athletes, princes of the city, who rode the subways, dropped in at the YMCA to play with the weekend warriors and toured the Catskills during the off-season to scrimmage against counselors at summer camps. The book spends a fair amount of time putting what the Old Knicks did and who they were into the social and political context of a tumultuous era. If I had to summarize it in one sentence, the Old Knicks – with their style, intelligence and diversity -- were a Broadway production based on what America aspired to be but clearly was not.

Has the business end of sports –free agency, salary cap, etc—detracted from the purity of the game? If yes, how so? I believe the game has had and always will have a grace and beauty at the higher end. The great teams of every decade and generation in my mind are almost interchangeable, however different they might look or whatever styles they embrace. The business impact on the sport comes less from free agency, salary caps and the like but from the distortions of the developmental system for young basketball players. The lack of institutional consistency, the corruption of values that fosters me-first mentalities instead of teaching the gifted and talented how to function within a team concept, the AAU and NCAA meat markets that turn 12-year-old kids into commodities and coaches into craven hustlers dependent on them for a living – it’s become difficult to produce well-rounded young men in such a cesspool and the greatest players across the years have tended to be pretty darn good people. Seldom perfect but decent and caring.

You’ve said that you want younger fans to know what it was like when New York City was the center of the basketball universe. As someone who lived through it –what was it like?

In my interviews for the book, including many with fans of the Old Knicks, including the rich and famous, what I kept hearing was what I always felt whenever I stepped into the Garden for a game. That is, there was no other place I could imagine being at that moment. Maybe there was a great film you wanted to see at the time, or a Broadway show, an art gallery or a poetry reading. An Old Knicks game felt like all of that rolled into one. With their multiple personalities blended into one beautifully crafted unit, they seemed to provide something for every entertainment taste. Two or three nights a week from October through May, the thump of ball meeting Garden floor was the heartbeat of the city.

Besides win, what can the Knicks –or any team, really—do to recapture that essence of this time?

Each generation relates to its sports teams differently. While older folks may lament the lack of permanence or identification given the constant changes in personnel, younger fans are more comfortable in a attention deficit culture of change. That said, it is difficult for me to imagine another sports team capturing its time and place as the Old Knicks did. The Yankees have been a sensation for the last decade and a half but they represent half a fan base. Ditto the Giants and Jets. Not only were the Old Knicks the only pro basketball team that mattered in those days, they played a sport that was increasingly appealing to the population at large, from Manhattan’s movers and shakers to the heart of Harlem and on out to the outer boroughs and suburbs.

Is it fair to say that basketball as it is played now is becoming less of a team sport and more of a game marked by flashy superstars?

Not necessarily. The Dallas Mavericks won the 2011 NBA title with a brilliant display of team play and made a wonderful statement by overcoming the preening collection of superstars I like to call the Microwave Heat. The San Antonio Spurs won four championships in the now-fading Tim Duncan era with an inspired blend of talent and selflessness that in many ways reminds me of the Old Knicks. The difference may be less in what some players are doing and more in how we as a fan base react to them. The emergence of the shoe companies and their endless campaigns to promote the Next Jordan have done more to shape the perception of pro basketball – for better or worse and probably worse – than anything LeBron James has done. When media folks and even league officials (more quietly) harped on a preference for Kobe and the Lakers in the finals instead of Duncan and the Spurs, I always got the feeling they’d been brainwashed by the forces of corporate America. This may sound old-fashioned but when the game itself isn’t the primary draw, the sub-conscious message is that it must not be all that compelling, period. That’s one of the reasons why the NFL is so dominant in the team-sports market – the game takes a back seat to no individual.

What do you want to readers to take away from WHEN THE GARDEN WAS EDEN?

For older fans, I would hope reading the book would feel something like being in a time machine, allowing them to not only re-live those great times but life itself in New York and America during one of the nation’s most gripping and amazing periods. I would hope and expect they would return from the journey knowing much more about the Old Knicks – when they might have thought they already knew a lot. I would also hope and expect them to know why this team worked so well by better understanding the fascinating individuals who made the Old Knicks so much better than the sum of their parts. Younger readers will clearly see the markings of the modern NBA while reading this book because the Old Knicks laid the foundation for what the league has grown into as a commercial enterprise – mainly the blurring of the sports and entertainment industries. The Garden was Eden not only because of its brilliant basketball but because its location and a fan base were the perfect place for the love affair to happen. As Bradley said in the book, that love has lasted a lifetime.