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oldie but goodie


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oldie but goodie intro

 

Looking back — as a now proud NBA junkie, thoroughly Knickotine dependent — growing up across the pond in the United Kingdom in the 1990s was like growing up in a desert. Nothing but sand and sky and soccer. Back then, NBA content was to be cherished as a rare and precious keyhole into a miraculous other land. For an 11-year-old British kid at the turn of the century, the NBA was Narnia. It was Atlantis. It was Slam magazine sporadically appearing on shelves in your local newsagents. It was finessing your way to a 1 a.m. viewing of one hour of hoops, once a week, on one channel — if you were lucky.

One of the better Christmas presents I was ever given as a youngster was a VHS tape (google it, kiddos) called NBA 2000: Stars for the New Millennium. Its contents glowed like a package in Pulp Fiction, 50 glorious minutes of NBA highlights and profiles, with a smooth cosmic baritone voiceover which made anything sound possible. It had quite the lineup, featuring Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Penny Hardaway, Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson, Stephen Marbury, Damon Stoudemire, Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Grant Hill, and Vin Baker. I watched that tape hundreds of times, and for a long time, those 50 minutes and 11 stars were my entire NBA universe.

 

https://www.thestrick.land/strick/how-a-2020-nba-draft-night-trade-makes-sense-celtics-knicks

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David Lee may have been unceremoniously pushed out the door when Amar’e Stoudemire came to town in 2010, but 14 years ago he etched his name into franchise lore with a game-winning tap in at the buzzer to beat the Charlotte Bobcats in double overtime.

 

The miracle at Madison Square Garden came on Dec. 20, 2006, during a meaningless regular season affair against the Bobcats. The victory put the Knicks record at 11-17 — they’d finish the season 33-49, missing the playoffs for the third straight season. Still, Lee’s game-winner will go down in history, because it’s actually quite difficult to score when there’s only 00.1 left on the clock.

 

 

 

In fact, a tip in is the only way a team can legally score with that amount of time left. The NBA used to allow players to catch and shoot the ball with 00.1 left, but changed its rules after Trent Tucker hit a buzzer-beating three to lift the Knicks over Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls on Jan. 15, 1990.

 

 

 

Speaking of MJ, his Airness was actually at the Lee game too, sitting courtside as owner of the Bobcats. Also in attendance were Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and John Starks, who sat together, according to the New York Post recap of the game. Will we ever see those three together and being friendly again?

 

Lee’s celebration, famously subdued, was explained by the power forward after the game, according to the New York Times recap of the game.

 

“I didn’t want to be one of those guys that celebrates and jumps all over the place and then they say the basket doesn’t count,” Lee said after his game-winning tip, off an inbounds pass from Jamal Crawford with a tenth of a second left.

 

The play was so miraculous that it inspired followup coverage from the New York Times, which explored how .01 seconds can be an eternity, depending on your perspective.

 

In the world outside sports, a tenth of a second is enough time for a beam of light to cover nearly 19,000 miles or for a hummingbird to flap its wings 10 times.

 

Wow. 10 whole flaps.

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