OPINION:
All the attention on the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals has led to an examination of the history of the franchise.
In 2026, people aren’t particularly good at sports history. It often begins from the first day they watched ESPN or learned how to play NBA 2K.
That would explain the debate about whether or not Jalen Brunson would be considered the greatest player in franchise history if he leads New York to victory over Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.
“With the story behind him (Brunson), if he leads this Knick team to win the NBA championship?” ESPN basketball analyst Kendrick Perkins said. “The greatest Knick ever? Hands down. Don’t come giving me (Walt) Clyde Frazier and all that. No, no, no no, no. We are talking about this man sitting at the table with Isiah Thomas and Steph Curry.”
Kendrick Perkins gets paid for these kinds of opinions? No, no, no, no, no. Not possible.
Perkins is not alone. Fran Fraschilla, a former long-time college coach who, like Perkins, also gets paid by ESPN for his opinions, posted this on his social media account last week: “Hate to take Willis (Reed) off the Knicks Mount Rushmore, but it’s Clyde, Patrick (Ewing), Bernard (King) and Jalen.”
Fraschilla was around when Reed and Frazier were leading the Knicks to two NBA titles in 1970 and 1973. He should know better.
This was such a ridiculous notion — not just to reduce the status of the greatest player in franchise history, but to drop him from a popular measurement of greatness. Fraschilla later had a moment of clarity and backtracked.
I get that Brunson is the toast of the town and showed why he has become such a beloved figure with his impressive fourth-quarter performance Wednesday night in Game 1 to lead New York to a 105-95 win.
But this is among the worst sins of recency bias we have ever witnessed.
Let’s start with “The Captain” — Willis Reed. I know you’ve heard of him, because even in this era of limited attention spans, someone somewhere has compared an athlete who has shown courage in the field or play or an arena to Reed and his legendary Game 7 against the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1970 NBA Finals.
Reed suffered a severe torn thigh muscle during Game 5. He missed Game 6 and there were doubts he would play in Game 7. However, while both teams were warming up before the start of the game, Reed came out of the locker room and onto the court to join his teammates.
Madison Square Garden erupted, while the Lakers froze at the other end of the court. Limping, Reed hit his first two shots of the game, and it was over after that. Frazier — who, like Reed, is etched in stone on the Knicks’ Mount Rushmore — played perhaps the greatest Game 7 in NBA history, scoring 36 points with 19 assists for a 113-99 win and the franchise’s first NBA title.
In a March 2023 interview with The Athletic, Frazier talked about that historic moment.
“I’ll never forget, I saw Wilt (Chamberlain); I saw (Elgin) Baylor and (Jerry) West. When Willis came onto the court, they stopped doing what they were doing. They were so concerned. And I said to myself, ‘Man, we got these guys.’ And then he would come out and make his first two shots. The rest was history from there on, and that was Willis Reed, man.”
It remains the standard for courage on the court.
That is the icing on the cake of this legend. He won MVP honors for those finals, adding to the MVP award he captured for the season. Reed would win another NBA Finals award in the Knicks five-game series win over the Lakers in 1973. This is the award they give for clutch performances in the biggest moments. Big moments? In those 1970 playoffs, Reed averaged 25.9 points and 15.9 rebounds on bad knees in 16 games against Wes Unseld, Lew Alcindor (before he changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Chamberlain.
His teammates remain on that mountain — not just Frazier, but the forgotten man, Dave DeBusschere, an eight-time NBA All-Star and six-time All-NBA defensive team. DeBusschere became a player-coach with the Detroit Pistons at the age of 24. His trade to the Knicks in 1968 changed the franchise. Coach Red Holzman ran the defense. DeBusschere ran the Knicks offense on the court.
All three players were named to both the NBA’s 50th anniversary and 75th anniversary teams.
Ewing, an 11-time All-Star who never won an NBA championship, would occupy the last place on the Knicks’ Mount Rushmore. All in all, that’s a big mountain for Brunson to climb.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.
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