Michael Jordan made life miserable for the Knicks for years, but Dave Checketts still remembers one night at Madison Square Garden as the low point: a playoff game against Chicago that didn’t even come close to selling out.
Checketts, the former Knicks president, revisited the 1991 first-round series during an appearance on the Portfolio Players podcast, and he said the mood in New York had already turned after the Bulls buried the Knicks by 41 points in Game 1. That loss, a 126-85 beating in Chicago, remains the worst playoff defeat in franchise history.
“We sold 6,000 seats in the Garden for Michael Jordan in that playoff series, 1991,” Checketts said. “It was embarrassing.”
The Garden holds more than 19,000, so the empty seats told the whole story. By the time the series shifted to New York for Game 3, the Knicks had already been knocked back hard. They did open that game well, leading 31-25 after the first quarter, but Chicago took over and finished off the sweep with a 103-94 win.
The Bulls weren’t flawless in Game 2, either. New York hung around and even carried a 63-61 lead into the fourth quarter before Chicago closed strong and won 89-79. Still, the series felt over almost as soon as it began.
Checketts said the reaction in New York taught him something fast.
“New York is very sensitive to losing,” Checketts said. “… It’s Michael Jordan coming to play Game 3, and they just yawned and looked the other way.
And that’s when I realized what I was up against. That was my first year at the Knicks.”
The Bulls and Knicks met again in the playoffs the next year, and that one looked very different. In 1992, the teams battled all the way to seven games in the Eastern Conference Semifinals before Chicago advanced.
“But of course, the next year we got good,” Checketts said. “It became a seven-game series in the second round.
The Garden was crazy. I feel like if Michael had never been born, I’d have four rings.
Two with the Jazz and two with the Knicks. At least.”
Checketts was the president and general manager of the Utah Jazz from 1983 to 1990, and Jordan’s Bulls later beat Utah in the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998. He also later ran the Knicks, serving as president in 1991 before moving into the president and CEO role at MSG, where he stayed until 2001.
There were a few bright spots for New York during his run. The Knicks beat the Bulls in seven games in the 1994 Eastern Conference Semifinals, though Jordan had retired in 1993 and was not in the series. After Jordan returned in 1995, Chicago went right back to handling New York, beating the Knicks in six games in the 1996 Eastern Conference Semifinals.
The Bulls also beat the Knicks in six games in the 1989 Conference Semifinals and in the 1993 Conference Finals, making the matchup a recurring problem for New York. Over 27 playoff games against the Knicks, Jordan averaged 33.1 points, 6.4 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 2.1 steals and 0.9 blocks per game.
For the Knicks, that was the nightmare. For everyone else, it was just Michael Jordan being Michael Jordan.
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