THE 75 GREATEST
The Post celebrates anniversary by counting down best players, coaches and executives
T
HE CUSTOMS inspector took a quick glance inside the train car, and what he saw intrigued him to no end. This was the evening of Oct. 30, 1946, seasonably chilly and crisp at the Niagara Falls border between the U.S. and Canada. Looking around the car, he noticed all the occupants were much taller than normal. Was this a traveling circus? “What are you?” the officer asked. “We’re the New York Knicks!” Neil Cohalan said. “I’m familiar with the New York Rangers,” the inspector said. “Are you anything like them?”
Cohalan, the team’s coach, a man who’d made a local name for himself back in New York as a player and coach for the Manhattan College Jaspers, quieted.
“They play hockey,” Cohalan said. “We play basketball.”
Thus the Knicks — and the Basketball Association of America, which three years later would become known forevermore as the National Basketball Association — were born. The Knicks were steaming to Canada to play the Toronto Huskies that Friday, Nov. 1; the rest of the BAA would debut the next day, but there was no way a fledgling basketball league was going to knock a hockey game off Maple Leaf Gardens’ Saturday night marquee.
The Knicks would beat the Huskies in that inaugural game, 68-66. A perfectly respectable crowd of 7,090 curiosity seekers saw Toronto’s player-coach Ed Sadowski score a game-high 18, but the Knicks, led by Leo Gottlieb’s 14 points, took an early lead and held off the Huskies late.
A minute into the game, a former LIU star named Ossie Schectman took an outlet pass and zipped the ball to Gottlieb, nicknamed “Ace,” and filled a fast-break lane. Gottlieb faked his defender, fed the ball back to Schectman for a layup, and the Knicks led, 2-0. Those were the first two of the 12,838,829 points that have been scored in professional basketball through the 2020-21 season.
The Knicks were on the board.
“All I cared about,” Schectman told prolific basketball author Charley Rosen for his 2008 book, “The First Tip-Off,” “was that we were up two to nothing. I mean, it was just another layup.”
The NBA celebrates its 75th anniversary this season, and so do the league’s three charter teams: the Celtics, Warriors (born in Philadelphia before shuffling between San Francisco and Oakland and back again since 1962) and Knicks.
So it is appropriate that the Knicks will open their season Wednesday at Madison Square Garden against the Celtics, and equally proper they will visit Toronto on Nov. 1. It is unlikely the Raptors — NBA champs just three years ago — will need to invent a gimmick like the Huskies hatched 75 years ago when they offered free admission to anyone at the game taller than their tallest player, 6-foot-8 George Nostrand (nobody claimed the free ducat), or that they will match the ticket prices of 75 cents and $2.50.
It is also right that here, at The Post, to commemorate the Knicks’ 75th anniversary, we have assembled a list of the 75 Greatest Figures in team history — players, coaches, executives. I was joined in this mission by six others — Post sports editor Chris Shaw, deputy sports editor Mark Hale, Knicks beat writer Marc Berman, fellow columnist Ian O’Connor, longtime Post basketball scribe Fred Kerber and renowned Knicks historian Dennis D’Agostino.
Starting today and proceeding for the next seven Wednesdays, we will reveal this list 10 at a time, with our top 5 due to arrive in early December. We expect — and welcome — your feedback to any omissions, low rankings or bloated rankings. We had a blast compiling our list. We’d love to see yours.
And now … drumroll, please … numbers 75-66.
Check back next week for figures 65-56.