‘We pushed back.’ A look back at the Heat-Knicks 1997 Eastern Conference semifinals brawl

The disdain had been brewing for years.

Then Miami Heat head coach Pat Riley was not even two years removed from spurning the New York Knicks when the teams faced off in the 1997 Eastern Conference semifinals. Both teams were constructed in Riley’s image — tough, physical and defensively minded.

The matchup reeked of Shakespearean suspense: the Knicks wanting to prove their former coach wrong, the Heat wanting to show they were no longer the middling team of the early ‘90s. Nobody came into the series looking for a fight. But neither team would back down if a challenge arose.

An overzealous boxout late in Game 5 lit the match. Each side would immediately blame the another — Heat forward P.J. Brown claimed Charlie Ward went for his knees while the Knicks guard argued he was just trying to protect himself — but there was no debating what happened next: Brown suplexed Ward into basketball history. A brawl ignited that would define the teams’ relationship for years. The subsequent suspensions, the Heat overcoming a 3-1 series deficit, the what ifs, the rivalry — they can all be traced to this moment.

On the 23rd anniversary of the Knicks-Heat brawl, we look back at the stories that detailed the events and the consequences that followed.

‘SWEET VICTORY SPICED WITH BITTER BRAWL’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 15, 1997

The Miami Heat’s Dan Majerle let go of the basketball, and his release felt good and right, so he kept his hand held up in that air, wrist limp, feeling so pretty. The ball found its home, nestling into New York as cleanly as a knife, and Miami Arena filled with a sweet, sweet noise.

Majerle’s shooting hand became a fist then — mirroring the transformation of his team on this night — and he whirled around and offered an uppercut. He took a couple more steps, the joy moving him, and he was at midcourt, at the center of the stage, when he just stopped and stood there, both arms raised, letting the waves of warmth wash over him.

The Heat’s season remains on oxygen today, after Wednesday’s 96-81 victory over New York, but the patient looks like it has taken a liking to living. You could see that in the final minutes, as an on-court brawl had the peace-seeking coaches bobbing about like boats in a stormy sea. Knicks guard John Starks, showing his distaste for South Florida, shot middle fingers at the hissing crowd, which subsequently showed its distaste for him by pelting him with garbage as he left the court, ejected and dejected.

Sort through the raucous rubble and this is what you have:

Maybe this series isn’t over.

No, no, no.

Maybe it’s just getting started.

“We pushed back,” the Heat’s Willie Anderson explained. “And now they’re frustrated.”

There are potentially two games left in this series. New York’s advantage is that it must only win one. The next game is Friday in New York, where Miami lost by only three points in Game 2, and a Game 7 would be played in Miami, making it the largest basketball game South Florida has ever seen. Rest assured of this much: John Starks does not wish to return here.

Crowd sentiment

At the end of the night, a sign bobbing amid the noise told you the feeling of Heat fans everywhere. It showed a picture of New York’s Larry Johnson with his tongue out, next to the words, “Put that thing away sucka! We ain’t licked yet.”

Tensions escalated when New York’s Charles Oakley plowed over the Heat’s Tim Hardaway and later tried to punch Alonzo Mourning in the face. Oakley was ejected but then, a few minutes later, the Heat’s P.J. Brown and New York’s Charlie Ward tumbled to the floor, triggering the melee that pushed into the west corner of the court and right into the crowd.

“Dirty bunch of guys,” Brown called the Knicks.

This might spill into the next game in more ways than one. NBA rules call for an “automatic one-game suspension” when players leave the bench to fight. Three critical Knicks players left the bench — starters Allan Houston, Larry Johnson and Starks, voted the league’s best bench player — while no one from Miami’s bench joined in. The Knicks claim they left the bench to stop the fight. If the NBA disagrees, Miami is going to have a huge advantage in the next game.

“We’re not dead yet,” Mourning said.

Unsightly first half

They looked like they might be early. Wednesday’s first half was just about the ugliest thing this sport has seen since Dr. James Naismith invented the game. The Heat somehow scored only 35 points, a truly terrible number. Sometimes, after he has had company and is cleaning up his living room, Michael Jordan will look under his sofa cushions and find 35 points. Of course, 35 points isn’t quite so awful when put in this context: The Knicks somehow scored only 34.

Salaries are always creeping into sports these days, souring celebrations, the dollar diluting, but this much must be said today anyway because it is becoming more obvious by the minute: Mourning, the Heat’s most expensive player, is not earning his money, is not even coming close. In fact, the way Mourning played Wednesday, Heat owner Micky Arison would have gotten a similar return on his investment if he had taken those $110 million, climbed atop the deck of one of his cruise ships and thrown it at the wind.

Watching and clapping

There are three ways to measure a player’s worth — the salary, the statistics and the scoreboard — and in this series Mourning has come up large in only one. With his team needing him, with the season on the edge of expiration, Mourning was like the other 15,000 people in this place — watching and clapping.

A slew of fouls placed Mourning on the bench, useless, a superstar only because his salary says so. When he picked up his fourth foul early in the third quarter, Mourning turned to the bench, put up his hands and asked Pat Riley to please, please let him stay in the game. Riley yanked him. Mourning walked past his coach slowly and said, “My fault, man.” Those three words were one of the few things he had right this night.

“We’ve got to play a lot tougher,” Hardaway said. “We can’t back down.”

They didn’t Wednesday.

You might even say they got back up.

— BY DAN LE BATARD

‘KNICKS, HEAT IN SUSPENSE FIVE N.Y. PLAYERS, BROWN MUST SIT’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 16, 1997

There is no more talk about the Knicks being a better team than the Heat. At least not for tonight’s sixth game of the Eastern Conference semifinals at Madison Square Garden.

That is because the NBA gutted the soul of New York’s lineup Thursday when it suspended the Knicks’ two leading scorers (center Patrick Ewing and shooting guard Allan Houston) and key backup point guard (Charlie Ward) for tonight’s game because of their involvement in the brawl late in Wednesday’s 96-81 Heat victory at Miami Arena.

Miami took a hit, too. Starting power forward P.J. Brown, whose body slam of Ward with 1:53 left after a made free throw by Tim Hardaway ignited the brawl, was suspended for the remainder of the series. Brown also was fined $10,000.

Said Brown before he traveled with the team to New York: “I definitely want to be out there. This team has won without Alonzo Mourning and won without a lot of guys. I’m sure they can win without me. I feel I had to defend myself.”

Ewing, averaging 21 points in this series; Houston, averaging 18; and Ward won’t be in uniform tonight. That’s not all. Should the Heat, trailing, 3-2, in the best-of-seven series, win and force a decisive Game 7 on Sunday in Miami (3:30 p.m.), New York guard John Starks, the NBA Sixth Man award winner, and starting power forward Larry Johnson will be suspended.

Even though the punishment seems heavily one-sided in favor of the Heat, Miami Coach Pat Riley was angry.

“I’m a little bit dismayed,” Riley said. “From what happened to P.J. I don’t think an incident, that was provoked by Charlie Ward, warranted two games. Nothing would have happened had not Ward tried to take out his legs. I thought that was a harsh penalty. I felt he would lose a game, but to take him out of the sixth and seventh game is too harsh.”

Starks and Johnson will start tonight. Should the Knicks win and eliminate the Heat tonight, Starks and Johnson must sit out Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Bulls.

Riley said the Knicks are paying the price for playing dirty. With the Heat starters on the floor against the Knicks’ reserves, at least one New York player screamed instructions to start trouble with the Heat, Riley said he was told.

“It was voiced to ‘hit somebody,’ “ Riley said. “That came back to us [Thursday]. The game is over with. Why would Charlie Ward try to do that? It was 15 points difference. Why make that kind of play at that point in the game unless you’re trying to instigate something?

“The game was over with, just like the game was over with in Game 4. We took our hit. We didn’t try to incite or instigate or walk over anybody and create any kind of posture mentality and that’s exactly what happened.”

Said Knicks General Manager Ernie Grunfeld: “I don’t pay attention to what that guy says.”

Players union lawyer Jeffrey Kessler said he would seek a temporary restraining order today to delay any suspensions until the union appealed the penalties to one or both of the NBA’s arbitrators: Ken Dam, a University of Chicago professor, and John Feerick, the dean of Fordham University Law School.

Ewing, Houston, Starks and Johnson were fined $2,500 for coming off the bench during the fracas, an infraction that automatically results in a one-game suspension. Starks was fined an additional $5,000 for making an obscene gesture to fans as he walked off the court after being ejected in the late-game melee.

The Knicks’ franchise was fined $20,000.

Ward, who went at Brown and then was flipped by the Miami forward — the incident that triggered the fight — was fined $6,000.

New York rookie Dontaé Jones, who hasn’t played a game this year, also rushed on to the court during the fight and will be suspended for the first regular-season game next year.

After the punishments were announced, Riley said: “This was borne out of [the Knicks’] lack of discipline.”

With the heart of the Knicks’ lineup sidelined tonight, the Heat is favored by two points.

But Miami appeared in good shape in the first round when Orlando’s starting front line of Horace Grant, Rony Seikaly and Dennis Scott went down with injuries. The Magic won two straight to force a decisive fifth game.

This time around, the Heat is a desperate team. Unlike with Orlando, the Heat trails in this series. Unlike the series with Orlando, New York’s best player will be watching from the bench.

With Ewing out, Heat center Alonzo Mourning, yet to get his game on track, still will be defended by power forward Charles Oakley. But he won’t have to worry about stopping Ewing, who has gotten him into foul trouble. He likely will be guarding Herb Williams or Buck Williams.

Minus Houston, the Knicks will start Starks, who scored 21 points each in Games 4 and 5. But if he gets into foul trouble, the Knicks have no backup and will have to resort to 5-11 Scott Brooks, Chris Childs’ backup at point guard, or use three- or four-forward lineups.

Miami’s loss of Brown cannot be sidestepped easily. The 6-11 power forward is Miami’s tallest player and its most reliable this series. The Heat can start Isaac Austin at his spot, or go to a smaller frontcourt with Jamal Mashburn at power forward and Dan Majerle or Willie Anderson at small forward.

The danger of playing Austin and Mourning together, especially early, is that both are foul prone. Their backups are seldom-used Ed Pinckney and Mark Strickland.

This report was supplemented by Herald wire services.

MISSING

The NBA suspended Charlie Ward, Allan Houston and Patrick Ewing of the Knicks and P.J. Brown of the Heat for tonight’s game. Here’s the breakdown of what each team will lose:

• Allan Houston: Second in scoring (18.2); most three-pointers (11); most minutes; best free-throw percentage (89.7).
• Patrick Ewing: Leading scorer (21.0); leading rebounder (10.4); most blocked shots (11); most offensive rebounds (15).
• Charlie Ward : Third in steals (9); second in assists (12).
• P.J. Brown: Fourth in scoring with (8.8); first in rebounds (10.6) and offensive rebounds (4.2); second in blocks (10); fourth in minutes (28.0).

— BY STEVE WYCHE

‘KNICKS’ B. WILLIAMS: RILEY THE ‘GUILTY PARTY’’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 16, 1997

Heat Coach Pat Riley came under attack by Knicks forward Buck Williams after the melee during Miami’s 96-81 Game 5 victory at Miami Arena.

“Coach Riley incited the fight,” Williams said. “It’s so unfortunate that the guilty party will not face any suspensions.”

Williams didn’t specify if he meant Riley got his players so riled up that they were eager to brawl, that he told them to start a fight or that his coaching tactics encourage players to rumble.

“I’m surprised he would make a comment like that,” Riley responded. “I think he looks at a warrior like P.J. Brown and both of them are cut out of the same cloth. I know exactly how Buck Williams would react if somebody would try to walk over him when he’s down.”

There is more from Riley, this time for guard John Starks, who was involved in the fracas and baited Heat fans by flipping them his middle finger after he was ejected. Starks, who drew a one-game suspension for Game 7 or New York’s next game, was bombarded by objects thrown by fans as he left the court.

“John brought it down on himself,” Riley said. “You challenge people in the stands in a highly energized game with a melee and start flipping people off like that . . . he brought it on himself. I don’t condone what happened, but in that situation, you’ve got to get out of there.”

Ike checks wallet, stays put

Heat reserve center/forward Isaac Austin, whose minutes will increase tonight with the suspension of Brown, jokingly said the reason he did not get off the bench to join the melee was simple.

“I don’t make enough money to be getting up to go over there,” said Austin, who will earn $320,000. “The way the fines are this year, and the way they changed everything, there’s no need in getting up.

“Now if Alonzo [Mourning] came over to me and whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll take care of you and your fine,’ hey, you never know.”

WQAM’s Rose on Starks

Heat fans threw cups and plastic bottles at Starks, but WQAM sportscaster Joe Rose said he would have thrown something more symbolic.

“A hot dog with mustard,” Rose told listeners on his Thursday morning radio show.

Rose, empathizing at length with Heat fans still fuming over Starks’ gesture, then went suddenly quiet on the subject.

Rose told listeners that station owner and manager Greg Reed had called, telling him, in so many words, to end the diatribe.

What precisely did Reed say? Reed could not be reached.

Rose acknowledged the comment that prompted Reed’s call, then said, “No comment.”

— BY STEVE WYCHE (Herald sports writer Ken Rodriguez contributed to this report.)

‘WRITERS’ VIEW’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 16, 1997

They found the sentence excessive, which was only 50 percent right. On one level, the Knicks got an impossibly raw deal Thursday. On another, they got exactly what they deserved.

It will go down as the worst trade in NBA history, P.J. Brown for Charlie Ward and four past, present or future all-stars. In this space on Thursday, we blamed Pat Riley for this dastardly deal, for encouraging a style of play in New York and Miami that runs into the same disturbing conclusion, over and over.

The opinion stands. But if Riley was guilty of dirty pool, the Knicks were guilty of terrible judgment. They have been around long enough to understand the consequence of their actions. Across the years, over so many seven-game series, the Knicks have led the league in shoving first, thinking second. Wednesday night at Miami Arena, they advanced the trend.

It cost them five of their top eight players. It may have cost them a championship.

Riley knows basket-brawl

It doesn’t take Detective Columbo and a magnifying glass to find Pat Riley’s footprints on both sides of the court in this case. It wasn’t just the fifth game of this playoff series that revealed it; it wasn’t this season; it was the time it was demonstrated that a team with inferior talent could render a team with superior talent ineffective.

Muscle and a snarl could be the great equalizer. So the New York Knickerbockers could leap to the top of the division when Riley became their coach. So the Miami Heat could leap to the top of the division when Riley became its coach.

Knicks self-destruct

It should have been another mismatch. Instead, it wound up being another mess.

The Knicks did themselves and their chances -- however slim -- of unseating the Bulls a terrible disservice Wednesday night.

First, they seriously damaged their chances of beating the Bulls in the Eastern Conference finals by losing to the Heat in Game 5 of the series. Then, they went themselves one better.

The ugly, artless, meaningless brawl they perpetrated with 1:53 left -- when there was really nothing left to fight about -- blew a huge hole in their chances to even get to the finals.

So much for the Knicks’ edge in poise, experience and composure on this one.

Even without the fight, the Knicks’ performance in Wednesday’s 96-81 loss was shameful.

Include the fight and you must add self-destructive to your list of adjectives.

N.Y. teams can get shaft

There is the quaint notion in some corners of the world that New York teams receive preferential treatment from all the league headquarters located in New York. Gotta get that gigantic TV audience into the next round.

Paranoid theories about New York will not work today. The National Basketball Association -- located in Olympia Tower on Fifth Avenue in the heart of Manhattan -- has whacked the Knicks with a very heavy rule book against their very thick noggins.

The Knicks have shown a pugnacious side over the years, and they may pay for it dearly this time. They lost their heads -- and now they could lose a playoff round with Miami.

NBA takes biggest swing

We don’t get many of these legal fiascoes, so how to describe the NBA’s action, in which it suspended the New York Knicks’ top four scorers in the middle of the playoffs for their parts in a penny-ante scrum?

Draconian? Looney Tunes?

A bunch of macho lawyers on a power trip?

As usual, the answer is D), all of the above. This wasn’t a case of the punishment fitting the crime. In this case, the devastating punishment dwarfed the puny crime.

— BY IAN O’CONNOR (New York Daily News), STEVE JACOBSON (Newsday,) WALLACE MATTHEWS (New York Post), GEORGE VECSEY (New York Times) and MARK HEISLER (Los Angeles Times)

‘CAN’T WE ALL AGREE? HEAT WINS ON ITS OWN’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 17, 1997

The home team lost here Friday night; on that we all can probably agree. Beyond that, it gets murky. The way I saw it, for example, New York appeared to lose to the Miami Heat. The way most New York fans saw it, New York was beaten less by the Heat than by a damnable conspiracy of David Stern, Pat Riley, the NBA and its cheatin’ refs.

This is the sad thing about the Heat’s immense 95-90 triumph over the Knicks that sets up a Game 7 ultimatum.

Miami never will get enough credit for it.

Even if the Heat wins Sunday back in Miami to advance in these playoffs -- after once trailing, 3-1 -- the “yeah-buts” still will dog Riley’s team, right into the record books. So many people will forever attach an asterisk to this wild series because the Heat was beating a suspension-depleted team: the Semi-Knicks.

It ain’t fair, folks.

The Heat came from behind, in an angry Madison Square Garden, to earn this victory that came on the wing of Alonzo Mourning’s 28 points and Dan Majerle’s late three-pointers. “Dan broke their back,” summed up Riley, the coach who endured game-long derision from Knicks fans -- a booing and chanting not perfunctory this time, but shouted with palpable venom.

Afterward the drone continued.

“Well, we’ll just go down there and kick that butt and go about our business,” Larry Johnson whined.

Funny thing. Johnson won’t even play Sunday.

He and John Starks will serve their league suspensions that game. Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston and Charlie Ward served theirs Friday -- all richly deserved for their roles in the brawling late in Game 5.

The Knicks remain supremely confident, nonetheless.

Said Chris Childs: “One game and somebody’s season will be over. And it won’t be ours.”

The fact New York’s suspensions were merited is another reason why diminishing Miami’s victory would be unfair.

The Heat didn’t get a break. The Knicks broke themselves.

New York fans can claim, “We wuz robbed!” But they wuzn’t. They wuz dumb, the Knicks were, for leaping off their bench in direct violation of very specific NBA rules that mandated the suspensions.

The league did itself and the sport proud, actually, with a remarkably dispassionate decision. Any feeling about an anti-Miami bias from Stern (remember Juwan Howard?) is close to gone now. And any thought that King TV rules the sport (willing a Knicks-Bulls series) is lessened.

Not that Knicks fans would agree.

This city’s feeling about the league’s action was reflected by the World War III headline in Friday’s New York Daily News:

OUTRAGE!

So many Knicks fans actually, seriously blame Riley for the ruckus that begat the suspensions. Should New York lose again Sunday, New York fans also will claim to have seen a young Pat Riley on the grassy knoll. He also will be blamed for Mad Cow Disease and diminishing rain forests.

What happened to the Knicks is no outrage. It’s justice.

It makes for the perfect New York story, one of crime and punishment, with a dollop of persecution thrown in.

Deal with it, Knicks Coach Jeff Van Gundy.

“We had more than enough to win with,” you said.

Well, apparently not.

“We should have won the game,” you said.

Well, apparently not.

Deal with it, New York.

It was Ward’s knee-level play on the Heat’s P.J. Brown and Brown’s subsequent tackle of Ward that sparked the whole mess. (Nobody yet has been able to answer my question: Does Brown get credit for a quarterback sack?)

New York might also have been without Starks on Friday, not on account of suspension but because he contracted food poisoning, spent the night hospitalized and was said to be questionable until just before game time.

If you ask me, it serves Starks right for having his meals catered by the Pat Riley Cafe.

— BY GREG COTE

‘BELL RINGS ...’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 18, 1997

1 game separates elation, vacation.

When they stare eye-to-eye just before the ball is tossed for the opening tip today, centers Alonzo Mourning and Patrick Ewing will look into each others’ eyes, searching for tomorrow.

New York’s Ewing, so desperate to crown his magnificent 12-year career with a championship, certainly will play like a man clinging to life. Mourning, eager to prove those who doubt his value to his team, won’t concede to his one-time idol without a tenacious fight.

This final game of this Eastern Conference semifinal between the Heat and visiting Knicks today at 3:30 is so much about pride and perseverance that nothing can quell its magnitude.

The two centers, rivals and friends, symbolize the importance of this clash. Mourning, like his team, is the upstart contender trying to overcome the established Ewing and Knicks, who once led this series, 3-1.

If the Heat wins, it would be the sixth team to overcome such a deficit.

“I think he looks at this, somewhat, as one of the last opportunities he’s going to have,” Mourning, 27, said of Ewing, 34. “I’m sure he looks at it like that.

“I won’t go into the game thinking that this is probably my last opportunity, but I feel there is a sense of urgency in a situation like this. Why not take advantage of it?”

Ewing, who has been dominant in the five games he has played this series -- averaging 21 points and 10.4 rebounds -- returns after serving a one-game suspension Friday for leaving the bench during a late-game brawl in Game 5 Wednesday in Miami.

“He’s going to be fresh, he’s going to be ready to go,” Heat point guard Tim Hardaway said of Ewing. “He’s had three days to rest.”

New York lost Game 6 at home to Miami, 95-90, and Mourning played his best game of the postseason, scoring 28 points, grabbing nine rebounds and committing just two turnovers.

That Heat victory was its first on the road this year in postseason and its second straight over the team that owned it until that point.

Now everything is at stake. The winner packs for Chicago where it will open the Eastern Conference finals against the defending-champion Bulls. The loser packs for the summer, left to wonder how and why its season ended.

“The pressure is on both teams,” Hardaway said. “They had us down 3-1. We had home court, they took it away, we got it back.

“We’ve played two Game 7s to get here, the real Game 7 is [today].”

Besides Ewing, the Knicks will get back the services of 6-6 shooting guard Allan Houston, who has averaged 18 points this series, and backup point guard Charlie Ward. Both, along with Heat forward P.J. Brown, were suspended after Wednesday’s fight.

Brown, responsible for guarding Ewing for much of the series, will not be in uniform as he serves the second of his two-game suspension for flipping Ward, which triggered the melee. New York’s starting power forward Larry Johnson, averaging 12 points and, John Starks, the NBA’s Sixth Man award winner, will serve their one-game suspensions today for coming off the bench during the fight.

The player losses will affect both teams, but as Heat Coach Pat Riley said, it’s not a matter of who won’t be playing, but who will.

The Heat will start Dan Majerle at small forward and move Jamal Mashburn to power forward, as it did in Game 5 Friday. New York rookie John Wallace to replace Johnson.

The Knicks will have a size advantage, especially with Ewing, 7-0, being guarded by the 6-10 Mourning. But the Heat will have an edge in frontcourt quickness with Majerle, 6-6, who will pull Wallace, 6-9, to the perimeter.

With Houston back, the Knicks have a versatile shooter who can create off the dribble. Miami’s Voshon Lenard, along with backup shooting guard Willie Anderson, must be effective at both ends to neutralize him.

“It’s the seventh game and it’s something we’ve got to deal with,” Riley said. “We got ourselves here and we’ve got to win it.

“Our guys can not and should not look at it any other way than how they felt prior to Game 5 -- on the brink of elimination. We can’t exhale.”

The onus for Miami, fair or not, will fall on Mourning, who, because of Brown’s absence, will have to guard Ewing. He will have help because, he said, no player can guard Ewing one-on-one. Mourning will get relief from reserve center Isaac Austin, whose defense in Game 6 propelled Miami’s comeback victory.

Neither Mourning or Austin can get in foul trouble, though. The Knicks’ first option will be to pound it inside to Ewing and Charles Oakley, who has been the biggest thorn for the Heat.

Riley said Ewing also will be burdened by having to guard Mourning at times, although Oakley, primarily, will guard Miami’s center.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes for us to win,” Mourning said. “It’s not about scoring points, it’s about doing what it takes. I think people lose site of that. But it’s not just me. It’s going to have to be a collective team effort. Guys are going to have to step up like they have all year long.”

— BY STEVE WYCHE

‘IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY TO BE A SPORTS FAN’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 18, 1997

On these rarest of days, the game is a sporting event, something transcendent, a small treasure. Your ticket will buy a memory that will be yours forever, and you know that going in. It’s a promise.

On these rarest of days -- when your team and your dream are one in the same -- professional sports, with all its irritating baggage, somehow seems worth the effort again. The commercialization of it all, of spoiled athletes at the intersection of Crass and Cash, seems to peel away and leave behind only a raw emotion that is sort of marvelous, electric and gripping.

Welcome to one of those days, South Florida.

It is a beautiful day to be a sports fan, or, perhaps, to discover what all the fuss is about.

Today. Miami Arena. Heat-Knicks. Game 7.

Be there . . . or lie and say you were.

This afternoon’s deciding NBA conference semifinal game sends the loser home for the off-season and the winner to play Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. Never have two basketball teams fought quite so hard for the right to face their guillotine, but that’s the beauty of it. Heat-Knicks has become a sort of championship series of its own, with all its own rewards.

The view may be a tad parochial, even a shade myopic, but I see no more intense rivalry in the NBA right now than Miami-New York, with its fan-to-fan animosity and its charismatic lightning rod in Pat Riley.

The brawling that occured late in Game 5 here and the resulting league suspensions of five Knicks and one Heatnik only heaped kindling on a bonfire.

Today’s game sold out in minutes Saturday as hundreds more fans queued in the rain outside the Arena, hoping to buy tickets that had disappeared. The franchise’s best efforts at alienating fans -- abruptly raising playoff ticket prices more than 100 percent last week -- have failed under the weight of momentum from these past two valiant Heat victories.

That today marks the biggest basketball game in South Florida’s history is a given. It’s like saying Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon was a big day for NASA. Besides, this is sports, after all, where good players are called “superstars” and great games are called “classics” -- sports, where hyperbole is king -- so let’s have at it . . .

Today should make anybody’s short list of our biggest home games ever, in any sport. The mix of anticipation, stakes and bitter blood demands that.

Only a handful of home games have wrenched our collective emotion like today’s will. My picks:

• There was that December Monday in 1985 at the Orange Bowl, when the Dolphins, cheered on by their ‘72 alumni, defeated a 12-0 Bears team to protect Miami’s distinction of having had the only perfect season in NFL history . . .
• There was the Hurricanes’ 20-14 national-championship victory over fellow-unbeaten Oklahoma in a 1 vs. 2 showdown at the OB on New Year’s Day 1988 . . .
• There was the Marlins’ very first Opening Day in 1993, when Charlie Hough’s knuckler danced to the plate and unwrapped a present many of us never thought we’d get: Big-league baseball . . .
• There was last June’s final Stanley Cup game, that epic 1-0 loss to Colorado that ended at 1:06 a.m. in the third overtime. Fans wept and thundered applause for a playoff run that shocked hockey and coalesced South Florida . . .

On these rarest of days, spirits might fly and hearts might break. The only guarantee is that you will leave the game utterly drained, too spent to realize then that you will never forget what you have just seen, and felt.

— BY GREG COTE

‘NOW IT’S TIME TO GO REALLY CRAZY’

Published in the Miami Herald on May 19, 1997

Here’s what you do:

Go to your front door and open it. Now poke your head outside and listen. Do you hear that faint, high-pitched, nasal sound off in the distance?

That sound is coming all the way from New York. It’s millions of Knicks fans, whining that they wuz robbed.

Go ahead, take a few minutes to enjoy it. But then put it out of your mind. Because now it’s time for all of us, as Heat fans, to get mentally prepared for the next round of the playoffs. We must be alert; we must be focused; and -- above all -- me must remain totally calm, because THE HEAT IS ABOUT TO PLAY IN THE EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS AGAINST THE CHICAGO FREAKING BULLS FEATURING MICHAEL FREAKING JORDAN!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!!!???

I’m sorry. I’m still a little worked up. It has been a wild few days -- which is strange, when you consider that just a week ago the Heat was down three games to one, and the games had been about as exciting as watching Al Gore floss. The series had been what the sports commentators like to call “a classic defensive struggle between two physical teams,” which is another way of saying “both teams missed most of their shots.” There were stretches wherein I could have sworn that both teams actually had fewer points at the end of the quarter than at the beginning.

But then it happened: The Incident.

It was Game 5, late in the fourth quarter, with the Heat’s Tim Hardaway shooting a foul shot. I was in the Arena, sitting with the sports writers, and I will never forget what happened. What happened was, all the sports writers turned to each other and said: “WHAT HAPPENED? DID ANYBODY SEE WHAT HAPPENED?” Sports writers never see anything that happens late in a game, because by that point they’re all busy staring at their computer screens as they write authoritative first-person accounts of the game.

Of course, we’ve seen hundreds of replays of The Incident, so we know exactly what happened. What happened was two completely different things, depending on whether you are a Heat fan or a Knicks fan. Here are the two versions:

KNICKS VERSION: Charlie Ward, who is 4 feet tall and 87 pounds and has only one arm, was bending over to read some Bible verses written on his socks when P.J. Brown, who is 8 feet 5 inches tall and 792 pounds and probably connected to the World Trade Center bombing, suddenly, with no provocation whatsoever picked Ward up and slammed him down head-first on some widows and orphans. Various Knicks players, whose only concern was to restore peace and prevent harm to innocent people, came rushing off the bench bearing flowers, greeting cards, treaties, etc.

HEAT VERSION: Nobel Peace Prize winner P.J. Brown was standing there innocently, thinking about whether to continue playing professional basketball or accept Mother Teresa’s offer to take over her mission, when suddenly, with no provocation whatsoever, Charlie Ward, a suspected Castro sympathizer, viciously attacked Brown’s knees with a machete that he had been concealing in his shorts. Brown, in a reflexive and involuntary and totally defensive gesture, flinched and accidentally threw the cowardly Ward about 35 feet, whereupon Brown was attacked by dozens of Knicks players who illegally left the bench, and who at one point hit Brown with the bench.

So we will never know what happened. But that’s not the point. The point is that, because of The Incident, the series was suddenly exciting, because now the Miami and New York fans, instead of passively watching the games, had a chance to participate in an activity that is the true essence of sports fanhood: pointless arguing. And these two cities LOVE to argue. They are cities that would MUCH rather argue than, for example, build cars.

The Miami and New York fans argued passionately and relentlessly about The Incident for four solid days. If you turned on sports-talk radio, blood gushed from your speaker. It was great, and it really unified Miami. I mean, we may all hate each other down here, but by gosh we came together this past week and agreed unanimously that Charlie Ward should have received, at minimum, the death penalty.

But now it’s time to put The Incident behind us. It’s time to look ahead to the Chicago Bulls. They will be tough. They’re very good, and they’re also well-rested, having dispatched their 1997 Eastern Conference semifinal opponents back in about 1983. So this will not be an easy series. But whatever happens, let me just make two points, as a fan:

1. I am very proud of the Heat for getting this far; and
2. I cannot WAIT to see how far P.J. can throw Dennis Rodman.

— DAVE BARRY

Some of the articles were edited and condensed for clarity.

C. Isaiah Smalls II

Miami Herald

302-373-8866

C. Isaiah Smalls II is a sports and culture writer who covers the Miami Dolphins. In his previous capacity at the Miami Herald, he was the race and culture reporter who created The 44 Percent, a newsletter dedicated to the Black men who voted to incorporate the city of Miami. A graduate of both Morehouse College and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Smalls previously worked for ESPN’s Andscape.