WHEN THE STORM RAGED
A quarter century later, 1998-99 Johnnies who captivated city for a memorable winter remain reminder of what St. John's can be
THE NBA didn’t begin that season until Feb. 5, 1999, the result of a lockout. The Rangers were struggling and didn’t qualify for the playoffs. The winter of 1998-99 in New York City, instead, was all about St. John’s basketball.
Celebrities such as Jay-Z and Spike Lee frequented games at the Garden. The Johnnies were one of the top teams in the country, and eventually would go further in the NCAA Tournament than any St. John’s team since.
“It was rock-star status,” recalled team manager Anthony Doran, now a Manhattan College assistant coach. “That ’98-99 team painted the town red.”
That group remains the last great St. John’s team, a squad that received a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament and fell three points shy of the program’s second trip to the Final Four.
It was loaded, led by sensational sophomore Ron Artest (now Metta World Peace), fantastic freshman point guard Erick Barkley, sharpshooting junior college transfer Bootsy Thornton and future NBA player Lavor Postell.
It was a New York City-centric team that included stars from Queens (Artest) and Brooklyn (Barkley and Tyrone Grant). Only Thornton and Postell, among the foundational pieces, weren’t from the area.
The Red Storm played smallball before small-ball was a thing — the 6-foot-7 Grant was the team’s starting center and the 6-5 Postell was used as an undersized forward — and is still fondly remembered 25 years later by a starved fan base that hasn’t seen an NCAA Tournament win since 2000.
“I went to the bank the other day,” Grant, 47, said last month. “The bank president looked at my name. He said, ‘Are you Tyrone Grant from 1999 St. John’s?’ I might get reminded of that team until the day I die at this point.”
There was plenty of uncertainty entering the 1998-99 campaign. St. John’s had ended a five-year NCAA Tournament drought the previous season, but that was under Fran Fraschilla.
After a clash with the school’s hierarchy, Fraschilla was fired and replaced as head coach by Mike Jarvis. Barkley and Thornton were also new.
Jarvis was coming off a successful stretch at George Washington, where he had reached the Dance four times in eight years. He was known to be a disciplinarian with rigid rules, including a ban on facial hair. Grant had a talk with Jarvis shortly after he was hired.
“Your rules aren’t going to stick with a bunch of city kids,” Grant told him, “but we’re going to work hard for yo’ ass.”
After the first day of practice, Jarvis installed a curfew. But it was a big party night in Manhattan. Grant remembered everyone breaking the curfew. So Jarvis had everyone run at 6 the next morning. The entire team was there.
Jarvis remains a controversial figure among St. John’s fans. Some view his success as a product of Fraschilla’s recruiting, saying he won with his predecessor’s players. He was fired four games into the 2003-04 season, having carved out a 110-61 record in five-plus seasons in Queens.
It later came out that there were off-the-court issues in play. That included forward Grady Reynolds being charged with assaulting a
female student and center Abe Keita’s claims that a member of Jarvis’ staff paid him $300 a month across four seasons.
St. John’s placed itself on probation for two years and forfeited the 43 wins in which Keita participated, including the 2003 NIT title. Jarvis was faulted by the NCAA for not properly monitoring the situation, but was cleared of any other wrongdoing.
Players from the ’98-99 team, however, credited Jarvis for their success that season, thanks in large part to his ability to manage egos. Players routinely argued at practice about who should start. This was a group that included three future NBA players and headstrong city kids who were used to playing heavy minutes.
Jarvis had a way of keeping everyone happy, frequently inviting players over to his home for dinner. It’s a connection his players didn’t forget. Grant, who helped organize a recent 25-year team reunion, maintained that the former Johnnies players would not attend if their coach weren’t honored. And so Jarvis returned to St. John’s for the first time since his dismissal for the event.
“This is not happening unless Coach Jarvis is there,” said Grant, an entrepreneur who now runs Team First Inc., a non-profit organization that offers academic and social support to public schools in New York City.
Jarvis also had an ace in his pocket for his first season with St. John’s: assistant coach Dermon Player, whom Grant referred to as “probably the MVP of that team.”
Several members of that team — Grant, Barkley, Artest, Chudney Gray and Reggie Jessie — played for Player with the famed Riverside Church AAU program. While Fraschilla is recognized for putting the roster together, Grant said Player was the key behind them opting for St. John’s. They knew he would soon be joining the school while they were there.
“It made the transition easier for everyone,” Doran said.
For his part, Barkley credited Fraschilla with recruiting that team, and Player didn’t want to take much credit himself. Still, the relationship between Riverside Church and St. John’s was strong.
The fact that St. John’s didn’t have dormitories at the time weirdly gave the school another recruiting edge — instead, the players received housing stipends. Dorms were built starting in 1999.
“St. John’s was doing NILs legally with the housing money,” Player joked, referring to the Name, Image & Likeness deals upon which many elite programs now depend.
The Johnnies played a challenging schedule that season. They lost to No. 3 Stanford and No. 11 Purdue in the Preseason NIT before winning 13 of their next 14 games to set up a showdown with second-ranked Duke at the Garden in late January.
St. John’s lost in overtime, pushing a team that had lost one game to that point. Jarvis believed then he had a team capable of going deep into March.
“We have a Final Four team here, guys,” he told them.
In its next game, St. John’s went to the Carrier Dome and knocked off No. 17 Syracuse.
They finished with a 14-4 record in Big East play, and advanced to the final of the Big East Tournament before falling to UConn. Their résumé earned the Johnnies a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
They crushed No. 14 Samford by 26 points in the first round and routed Bobby Knight and No. 6 Indiana by 25 in the second round.
In the Sweet 16 they drew No. 2 Maryland and future NBA AllStar Steve Francis. Thornton was the best player on the floor that night in Knoxville, Tenn., keying a 14-point victory with 17 points and six rebounds.
“I don’t know if we ever played better than we did that night,” said Jarvis, now retired at the age of 78. “Bootsy Thornton did an incredible job at both ends of the court, and I think we won mainly because of his defense on Francis [who was held to 5 of 13 shooting with two turnovers].”
Up next was Ohio State, which featured a dynamic backcourt of Scoonie Penn and Michael Redd, who went on to play 12 seasons in the NBA.
St. John’s trailed by eight at halftime and 10 late in the second half, but staged a furious rally, getting to within one with 12.2 seconds left. With a chance to return to its first Final Four since 1985, St. John’s put the ball in Barkley’s capable hands. But as he drove, Penn stripped him from behind. The dream was over.
All these years later, the game still haunts many of those Johnnies. Barkley still believes he was fouled by Penn. Ironically, the two played together that summer in the World University Games in Spain and were roommates.
“Me and him became tight. We hung out every day,” said Barkley, who returned to school at St. John’s last May to finish his degree. “We laughed about the game, and he finally admitted it, the hand-check. I was like, ‘It’s all good, it’s all over with, but you know what you did.’ ”
Grant still wonders what could have been. In early January, he suffered a broken right wrist and missed a month of games. He re-injured it in the tournament and wasn’t himself. The last time he could even feel the ball in his right hand was the second-round win over Indiana. Grant remembers the Ohio State game as a blur because he was on so many pain killers. He was limited to 19 minutes and didn’t make much of an impact.
“I think about the fact that the team that wins usually is the team that deserves it and got it, but at the same time, that was a team that could’ve won the national championship,” Jarvis said. “If Tyrone Grant was healthy, I think we would’ve been playing in the Final Four. It’s unfortunate for the team and for him that he really couldn’t do what he normally would’ve done against Ohio State.
“I thought we should’ve beat them, and I still think we were the better team, but they were the better team that day and won.”
After that season, Artest entered the NBA draft, in which he was taken 16th overall by the Bulls. Grant was out of eligibility.
St. John’s won the Big East Tournament the next season, but lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to No. 10 Gonzaga as a No. 2 seed. It hasn’t won a tournament game since.
The 1998-99 team remains the last group of Johnnies to play deep into March Madness. St. John’s fans and alums are still waiting for another team like it, one that captured the city’s attention.
“That year,” Grant said, thinking back to 1998-99 fondly, “we were the hottest ticket in the city.”