It was hard to be Spike Lee.

On one hand you're in commercials with Michael Jordan calling him the greatest ever.

Meanwhile the star in your own hometown is the one who nails all the last-second shots with his team down by one.

Eighty-two games a year, playoff series after playoff series, and one or two little lucky dunks from Michael Jordan and Scottie "The Real Knick Killer" Pippen and suddenly Ewing is an also-ran. It was only a few inches from all being different for Oh-So-Many-Rings Ewing, Air Starks, and Derek "Magic" Harper.

Patrick Ewing joined the Knicks in 1985-86 and had Bernard King and Trent Tucker, but the Celtics had Larry Bird in the 1986 season. Psssst. NEXT!!!!

In 1987, they didn't even win a single game. They went 0-82. Or at least might as well.

In 1988, Mark Jackson joined the team and now here we go. This guy was a good shooter and a FANTASTIC play maker. Suddenly it was fun to watch the Knicks. And Mark Jackson and Ewing had this Stockton and Malone thing going on.And they had Kenny Walker who was fun to watch, he'd jam and keep his legs completely straight so it looked a giant broomstick was dunking the ball, and I really thought the Knicks had a chance. But they had NO TOUGHNESS. And this was during the rise of Detroit Piston ghettoball in the Eastern Conference, there was Showtime in Atlanta?! Yes, Atlanta. They were like the Lakers on the fast break -- Kevin Willis was like A.C. Green, he'd get the rebound. Out to Spud Webb who'd dash down the floor, and then an alley-oop to Dominique. Boston would beat Atlanta EVERY SINGLE YEAR. You ever watch those old shows on ESPN where they talk about Boston Garden? You ever wonder how those Boston fans in the 80s could always be so CONFIDENT that the creaky Celtics could take the Lakers? It was because Atlanta and L.A. to them looked like the same exact team.

In 1989, the Knicks won like 23 in a row at one point. They got Charles Oakley and boom...there's enough toughness for three or four teams right there. Oakley was my favorite player was I was a kid. And I couldn't believe that the Knicks actually got beat by Michael Jordan in the second round of the playoffs especially after Trent Tucker hit that four-point-play out of the corner to tie Game 6 in Chicago. But the Bulls won.

In 1990, the Knicks again got to the second round of the playoffs but had to play Detroit. You might have thought that the Pistons would have mobbed Ewing and that this account would even be ugly. Not so. Detroit put James Edwards on old Patrick and it did the job for four of the five games in the series. Pistons advance to Round 3 and Knick fans go home pissed.

In 1991, the Knicks were weak and they were the eighth seed and Stu Jackson said "Patrick...you stay right under the basket so Pippen can use you as a ladder to score his baskets, okay? Be a good friend."

But that was enough. Enough was absolutely enough. No more of this Stu Jackson Stockton to Malone nonsense. It wasn't working. The Bulls were capable of walking on our very heads. Right on top of Ewing's head. Right in front of his fans at Madison Square Garden. In front of all the GIRLS, MAN!!! THE FREAKING GIRLS!!! In the thousand dollar seats, I'm not saying all fine women are rich and all rich women are fine but I'll bet anything there would be some FINE women in those expensive seats where they can see you up close, Patrick! What do you think they think of when Pip dunks on your head like that? They're cheering, yeah, they ain't cheering for you, man!!!!

And Pat Riley understood this. He had been watching Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and A.C. Green and James Worthy get exposed time and time again as the Lakers Showtime coach. Every time the Lakers would play at home in the playoffs they'd be awesome, Hollywood. Show-stoppers. Movie stars. They'd then go on the road and it would always be the other team's power players that stopped them, so they looked almost feminine both on the floor and in the press. So Pat Riley knew what it was like to watch what happened when you don't have help up front. When you don't bang people around once in a while. So he went and got Xavier McDaniel and Anthony Mason, got rid of Mark Jackson for Charles Smith and Doc Rivers (Clippers), drafted Greg Anthony from UNLV who banged people all the time, and we beat the Pistons in Round 1. They got in a stare down the whole game. There were multiple separations. James Edwards and Anthony Mason, Bill Laimbeer and Xavier McDaniel, Xavier McDaniel and Isiah Thomas, Charles Oakley and Bill Laimbeer (yeah Laimbeer you should win that one PWWWWWW).

So the Knicks beat the Pistons. Great. The Pistons in 92 with their walkers and bifocals and hip pointers, and everyone's like, so? We gotta play Chicago now. I didn't even watch the first game. Nobody did. It's probably at this point I should remind everyone I'm not perfect.

The Knicks WIN GAME 1!!!!! I'm like duh...of course they'd win game 1. If I didn't watch the game, and Crappy Carl wouldn't learn about it until waking up the next morning and watching SportsCenter, what makes you think Jordan and the great Scottie Pippen would have really given them any preperation? Didn't we just watch Jordan dribble around 5 guys on the Heat and dunk on Rony Seikaly?

So we went into Game 2 fully ready to see the Bulls tie the series. And it happened. That home court is like a god damn magnet in the NBA. The home team wins like 676% of the time.

You know, I've noticed that Chicago sports fans are serious pessimists. They had the 85 Bears and that's their God. That's THEIR magnet. They're the pride and joy of Chicago, and they can never do any wrong. Meanwhile the Bulls win 6 titles and there's billions of excuses -- a waterdown league, expansion, everyone was injured, they don't believe it happened. They don't believe...that those Chicago Bulls could have ever actually beaten a great time in their prime. They don't believe that my Knicks were a serious and viable threat. They saw them as thugs who would eventually get overcome by simply being more aggressive with their acrobatics. There's faschism when you come down on the Bulls harder then the Cubs.

So the series switches to Game 3, and SURE ENOUGH, there are those signs of Michael and Pip simply going at the hoop as HARD as they can...and Ewing flipping GRABBED MICHAEL'S ANKLE WHILE HE WAS IN THE AIR!!!!!!! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!!!! ALL THE TIME I EVER SPENT DEFENDING THE GREAT CLUTCH PERFORMER OF OUR TIME PATRICK EWING?! HE WAS LIKE A FREAKING SKYSCRAPER WITH HEART!!! WHY PATRICK WHY?!

And then Starks freaking tried to take Pip's head off it's like STARKS?!!!!! NO!!!!!

You see in New York City, all teenage boys loved Scottie Pippen. You don't hurt Pip and Mike and get away with it amongst the New York City children. They were big time pig time those two. I had like five Jordan and Pippen jerseys, when they came out with the black one in 96 I opted instead for the new Jordans which were dope as HELL. Remember those? They look stupid at first but then you watch Michael play in them and they look good I was...okay, anyway...

I was pissed off at the Knicks, and mad as hell at Pat Riley. This might seem like blasphemy, coming from Mister Knicks and Lacerations, but nobody in the world thought the Knicks were actually going to win this series, and in the meantime the Knicks are doing everything they can to just destroy my dudes!

But then the Knicks tie the series at 3.

GAME SEVEN SUCKAS!!!!

Oh the X-Man was just dominating Horace Grant. Poor Horace. The guy who would be the reason that the Epcot center in three years had blue goggles on it was at a distinct disadvantage due to Pip and Michael's athleticism stealing all the attention. I remember when Crappy Carl and I went to McDonalds and we're sitting there in front of the place mats that have the all-star ballots on them. Horace Grant's on there. What happened next was a debate that rages on to this day --

"HORACE GRANT'S NOT EVEN A STAR ON THE BULLS AND NOW HE'S AN ALL-STAR NOMINEE I THINK NOT HELL NAW!"

"Na man," I say. "He wuz good."

"WHAT?!" Crappy Carl insists. "You telling me there's one god damn Knick you'd trade for Horace Grant? Who? Na na...I mean one of the big six or seven. Which one? Mason? Starks? Jackson? McDaniel?"

I had no answer.

These were our Knicks, and I loved them all.

And so Pat Riley decided that since the X-Man wouldn't outright punch Jordan in that seventh game where that shmuck (Michael) thought he was gonna stare him down like that I would whomped his...maaaaaaaaaan OOOOOOO...And then Michael what the hell...SLAPS the X-Man on a lay-up and Marv Albert's flipping out going "IT'S A CLEAN BLOCK?!"

WHAT?!!!! A clean block of cheese in Matt Goukas's salad dish there, Marv? I just saw Jordan slap the hand that McDaniel wasn't even using. Before David Stern, that was a foul.

So we lose and I'm proud of these guys. Game 7 wasn't even close, but boy did we look forward to next year.

Sure enough, next year we won 60 games, number 1 seed, beat Indiana because Starks had to headbutt Reggie Miller in an attempt to make him more attractive to have to look at for four boring games.

Then we had to play the Hornets and we take both games in New York, and then lose a 2 OT game in Charlotte because little Muggsy Bogues was just cheating his ass off. No he didn't but I was mad cuz I had to get up the next morning and I was up until like 1 A.M. waiting for that crap to end.

So we win in five and Muggsy wastes our time.

And now it's the Bulls again. In the Eastern Conference Finals.

I was so nervous I barely slept the night before Game 1.

The Bulls looked so depleted on paper, but so did the North Carolina Tarheels before they played the Fab Five just a month before. Trent Tucker and Darryl Walker were both old and on their bench, we had Charles Smith instead of the X-Man because they had Mason and Bonner and Oakley and no mobility. It was the opposite of the situation in Detroit with the Bad Boys where they failed to protect Rick Mahorn in the expansion draft and so Minnesota took him and then wondered why they had to have Rodman in the starting lineup. This team had TOO MUCH strength. Who would have ever guessed...that Charles Smith would end up in a situation where he would fail four times to do what the X-Men did 20 times a game on both the offense and defensive end?

There's alot of finger pointing still today when it comes to 93. One theory I heard was that the Knicks lost because Oakley, due to being his friend, wouldn't give Michael Jordan the hard foul. Uh...no he wouldn't, dickheads. You see what he did to Shaq in 2001? He'd go to god damn prison giving a hard foul to Jordan. Please.

Another theory is that Doc Rivers kept going off to help Starks with Michael and leaving B.J. Armstrong open. That is a theory I'm down with. B.J. Armstrong was always always always open. These NBA players would normally, if unguarded at a health club, always always hit the shot. If you don't guard them in a game, that's what happens.

So Charles Smith's first attempt under the basket is a Pippen block.

Smith gets the rebound.

Jordan knocks it out of his hands. Nice foul call there.

Smith gets the rebound.

He does a wise head-fake, very good.

He refrains from passing to god damn Ewing who's standing there with his hands out calling his name.

He put it up, and Pippen's just been standing behind him watching the ball. He blocks it.

Smith gets the rebound.

He puts it up again...

Pip stuffs him again!!!! Three blocks in one sequence for Pip!!! YEAH!!! And NO!!!!!!!

And the ball goes out to B.J. who, again, they leave Anthony Mason to have to deal with. New York Pricks.

And then they don't even try in Game 6.

You didn't hear a god damn word spoken in New York City for the rest of the summer. Except the girl who was telling me she had a boyfriend and thus wouldn't give me any booty.

Then Jordan retires and pisses off 20,000,000 New Yorkers at once, talking about how we're no longer a challenge, that we'll never grow to his level, oh my god man. And we had to suffer the competitive indignity of not getting to play Michael Jordan again until our whole crew with Starks and Ewing was old. They were like the Atlanta Braves of the NBA. In 96 against the Bulls, it was an old timers game. The Knicks had no chance. Not even a little.

But in 94, we could have done it. We had it. New York took the first two games from the Bulls in MSG and then went to Chicago, and Jo Jo English of the Bulls picked a fight with our best player at the time, new edition Derek Harper. The two start wailing on each other until Harper BODYSLAMS Jo Jo English into the bleachers. They're about three rows down from where David Stern is sitting. It was brilliant on the part of the Bulls if that was intentional, because both players got ejected and suspended, Harper for two games, Jo Jo one, meaning that while they lose a scrub in Jo Jo English for Game 4, we lose OUR BEST PLAYER IN GAMES 4 and 5!!! It was like Hue Hollins knew the injustice of letting Pippen beat us all by himself because all the Bulls were LAUGHING at us. They're like -- ha ha, we might have lost Michael, but now you lost Derek Harper, it's even now suckas. And to add to this, Pippen gave Patrick Ewing the most vicious facial I've ever seen. It was all Pippen's power dominating Ewing's, the two went at each other like football players and Pippen won. He put the ball in Ewing's face, and shoved Ewing out of the way to make sure this big idiot didn't end up breaking Pip's fall and twisting Pip's ankle. I love that. That's the way you treat big idiots. Sorry Patrick. Pip's the man. Of course, Hue Hollins and Steve Kerr were both far too incompetent for any good to come out of all this for Chicago, and we BEAT THE BULLS!!!

But then we had to play the Pacers who I didn't even know existed. Spike Lee famously taunts Reggie Miller so much that Reggie torches us, but then we win in Indiana and then in Game 7, Pacers go up 1 on a great pass inside from Haywoode Workman to Dale Davis. Then Starks misses the layup but EWING puts it in!! And then Starks, the Broadway star that he is, flops to give Reggie a flagrant foul, it was so awesome. And the KNICKS WENT TO THE FINALS!!!

How did we lose to Houston? They were five wussies. We had not a single matchup problem. I'll tell you how we lost. Because whoever gets the MVP that year is entitled to always getting close calls in the clutch or travelling whenever they feel like it. That's why Pistons and Knicks and such don't get to be MVP no matter how good they are -- the league doesn't want to let THOSE people have free calls. Uh-uh. A frantic whistle is what keeps those guys from killing the others. So anyway, Olajuwon got away with everything. That's how they won the stupid 1994 NBA FInals. I've never seen two people just un-dress two other guys the way that Starks and Harper did to Vernon Maxwell and Kenny Smith. And it didn't matter. Smith can shoot, and he doesn't leave the three point line, and if they hard fouled any of these Rockets, they'd be suspended for half the series the way Harper was when we attacked English. It probably wasn't good to attempt, considering that Kenny Smith is like Houston's Jo Jo English.

In 1995, the Pacers took advantage of Miller shoving Starks once again and scoring Game 1's last 8 points in the last 30 seconds. After that, if you get all the calls at home, you'll probably go up 3-1 with 2 out of 3 games in your building. But the officials were cool to Patrick Ewing. He got away with a mad travelling call in Game 5 and it kept the series alive. All the referee help in the world though can't help you when you don't put the ball in, and they lost Game 7 on a rare -- a RARE -- Patrick Ewing miss in the final seconds down one.

In 1996, Bulls took 'em.

In 1997, a rebuilding process started as Miami stole Pat Riley from us. But we'd get them back...over and over again...and with a team that was really, really, REALLY cool. Like Fab Five cool.

Click below to learn about them!

http://hubpages.com/hub/SCREWED-Tonights-Episode-The-New-York-Knicks-of-the-1990s-Part-2-of-2

http://hubpages.com/hub/SCREWED-Tonights-Episode-The-Knicks-of-the-1990s