WALT ‘CLYDE’ FRAZIER
Guard (1967-77)
WE’VE seen plenty of transcendent big-moment performances in our town. We saw Reggie Jackson swat three home runs on three straight swings to clinch a World Series. We saw Eli Manning twice lead gamewinning fourth-quarter touchdown drives to win the Super Bowl. We saw Mark Messier’s natural hat trick a day after his guarantee.
They all battle for second place. They all grapple for runner-up status to the singular moment that big-moment New York has ever witnessed. No. 1, for now and for all times, belongs to Walt Frazier, “Clyde” to four generations of Knicks fans, who on the night of May 8, 1970, turned in a performance for the ages at Madison Square Garden in Game 7 of the Finals.
“It was one of those special, magical nights,” Frazier recalled a half-century later. “One of those moments that was surreal, but also all too real. We had to stand and deliver that night, and we did.”
None more than Clyde. Willis Reed
will forever be remembered for emerging from the tunnel and providing an inspirational lift for his teammates and the 19,500 who stuffed the Garden. But it was Clyde who delivered them, Clyde who scored 36 points (12-for-17 from the floor, 12-for12 from the line), added 19 assists and seven rebounds.
The game survives on grainy, hardto-follow video, but that makes no difference. Look it up on YouTube. There is no question who the best player on the floor is, and that game featured no fewer than seven Hall of Famers.
“Clyde is one of the best players who’s ever lived,” one of those immortals, Jerry West, said in 2000. “But on that night … you’ll be hard-pressed to tell me anyone was ever better in the moment than Walt Frazier was.”
That game clinched Clyde’s place in the New York sporting pantheon forever, and there has never been a more grateful celebrity. Even now, kids whose parents weren’t yet born on May 8, 1970, clamor for his autograph.
“It’s the greatest thrill, seeing how fans respond to me,” Frazier said a few years ago. “I’ve never taken it for granted, and it fills my heart with happiness every single time.”
Frazier collected 23 triple-doubles in his 759 games as a Knick, easily a team record. He is tops all time in assists (4,791) and would almost certainly be No. 1 in steals if that had been an official stat before 1974; as it is, he is 10th on the list with 589 steals. He’s second in points (14,617), games played (759), and minutes (28,995). He averaged 19.3 points, 6.3 assists and 6.1 rebounds. He entered the Hall of Fame in 1987, the same year he started broadcasting Knicks games.
It was Garden photographer George Kalinsky who helped popularize Frazier’s nickname when he took pictures of young Clyde in 1967 wearing one of his many Clyde Barrow-style hats. In 1973, Frazier co-authored a book that still sits on thousands of Knicks fans’ shelves: “Rockin’ Steady, a Guide to Basketball & Cool.”
Few have ever known either subject better.