Former Knick John Starks reflects on undrafted ‘hunger’ mentality

On the 24th anniversary of the closest the Knicks came to a championship since Richard Nixon’s presidency, John Starks can say it with certainty: that shot was going in.

“Oh, for sure, definitely,” Starks told the Daily News on Tuesday. “I was on fire.”

Everybody remembers Game 7 of the 1994 Finals and Starks’ infamous stat line (2-for-18), but, three days earlier, during Game 6 against the Rockets, he nearly hit the biggest shot in New York basketball history.

It was also a moment created entirely by Starks, the underdog sparkplug, who scored 16 of the Knicks’ 22 points in the fourth quarter and had the ball in his hands with a chance to clinch the championship. Down by 2 points, Starks drew Hakeem Olajuwon on a pick-and-roll switch. He stepped back to behind the 3-point line, but Olajuwon, the two-time Defensive Player of the Year, jumped at the shot in anticipation.

“I thought I had cleared Hakeem. I thought I had enough room,” Starks says. “He juuuust got his finger tips on it. That shot felt good the moment it left my hand.

“Hakeem, he’s probably the only player I could think of that could have made that play because of his athleticism as a big man, to be able to get his finger tips on the ball, to be able to keep up with the move that I did — the little mini stepback. And for him to be able to get his finger tips on the ball he’s the only one I could think of possibly that could’ve done that except for the big man I played with, Patrick (Ewing).”

Starks pauses.

“And David Robinson.”

Rehashing Starks’ miss Tuesday was not in the context of failure, but rather to highlight just how significant he’d become for the Knicks as he neared another anniversary. Thirty years ago next Thursday, Starks went undrafted through three rounds and 75 picks of the 1988 draft.

The argument could be made that Starks had the second-best career of that class behind 5th overall pick Mitch Richmond (other notables include No. 1 Danny Manning, No. 2 Rik Smits, No. 14 Dan Majerle, No. 19 Rod Strickland and No. 53 Anthony Mason). But Starks, who was expelled from his first college and didn’t work out for any NBA teams ahead of the draft, watched it unfold on TV without one phone call.

Over the next two years, Starks went from playing sparingly with the Warriors to losing out on a training camp spot with the Pacers because of an injury (yes, he nearly played with Reggie Miller) to the Continental Basketball Association.

By the time he latched on with the Knicks in 1990, Starks had embraced the mentality of the undrafted — the fearless and resilient approach that drove him to dunk on Michael Jordan, to feud with Reggie Miller, to take over Game 6 of the NBA Finals and to keep shooting in Game 7. It’s an identity that made Starks the star in a Budweiser commercial that will air Thursday during the 2018 NBA draft, 30 years after he didn’t get a phone call.

The spot is called “Undrafted.”

“That’s the mentality that I had. I had to go in there and show coaches, the organization that, ‘Hey, I belong here.’”