When the Garden Was Eden
Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks
Harvey Araton
This book is available for download with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device, and with iTunes on your computer. Books can be read with iBooks on your Mac or iOS device.
Description
The late 1960s and early 1970s, in New York City and America at large, were years marked by political tumult, social unrest—and the best professional basketball ever played. Paradise, for better or worse, was a hardwood court in Midtown Manhattan.
When the Garden Was Eden is the definitive account of how the New York Knickerbockers won their first and only championships, and in the process provided the nation no small escape from the Vietnam War, the tragedy at Kent State, and the last vestiges of Jim Crow. The Knicks were more than a team; they were a symbol of harmony, the sublimation of individual personalities for the greater collective good.
No one is better suited to revive the old chants of “Dee-fense!” that rocked Madison Square Garden or the joy that radiated courtside than Harvey Araton, who has followed the Knicks, old and new, for decades—first as a teenage fan, then as a young sports reporter with the New York Post, and now as a writer and columnist for the New York Times. Araton has traveled to the Louisiana home of the Captain, Willis Reed (after writing a column years earlier that led to his abrupt firing as the Knicks’ short-lived coach); he has strolled the lush gardens of Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s St. Croix oasis; discussed the politics of that turbulent era with Senator Bill Bradley; toured Baltimore’s church basement basketball leagues with Black Jesus himself, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe; played memory games with Jerry “the Brain” Lucas; explored the Tao of basketball with Phil “Action” Jackson; and sat through eulogies for Dave DeBusschere, the lunch-bucket, 23-year-old player-coach lured from Detroit, and Red Holzman, the scrappy Jewish guard who became a coaching legend.
In When the Garden Was Eden, Araton not only traces the history of New York’s beloved franchise—from Ned Irish to Spike Lee to Carmelo Anthony—but profiles the lives and careers of one of sports’ all-time great teams, the Old Knicks. With measured prose and shoe-leather reporting, Araton relives their most glorious triumphs and bitter rivalries, and casts light on a time all but forgotten outside of pregame highlight reels and nostalgic reunions—a time when the Garden, Madison Square, was its own sort of Eden.
Publishers Weekly Review
© Publishers Weekly
Customer Reviews
Why?
Good question. If you are of a certain age, grew up a vintage Knicks fan, and need a stroll down memory lane to feel good about your former obsession with Reed, Frazier, DeBuschere, et al, this might be for you. The author takes curious detours to recount his life (who cares) or spends far too much time highlighting obnoxious celebrity Knicks fans (no, not just Spike), which I found distracting. However, interviews with present day vintage Knicks were a revealing contrast to present day overpaid celeb-letes.
If you don't fit the above, don't bother. You'll never understand why or give a $#%T.
Magic garden
Those were the days, trying to emulate Barnett's jumper (left handed) while practicing in high school, and then listening in May 1970 while driving through the Alps at night when West heaved the shot 3/4's the length of the court to tie game!
When garden was Eden
Must read if basketball
and Knick fan!!

- $11.99
- Category: Basketball
- Published: Oct 18, 2011
- Publisher: Harper
- Seller: HarperCollins
- Print Length: 384 Pages
- Language: English
Discover and share
new apps.
Follow us on @AppStore.
Discover and share new music, movies, TV, books, and more.
Follow us @iTunes and discover
new iTunes Radio Stations
and the music we love.