Two of the best teams of the Eastern Conference during the 1990s were the New York Knicks and Miami Heat. The Knicks were an established power in the East at the time, even reaching the 1994 NBA Finals, while the Heat were an ascendant squad. But these teams didn't become bitter rivals just because they played a few exciting games.
This is a rivalry that intensified after one of the game’s greatest coaches left one team to join the other, and only got more bitter afterward. It reached its peak when the teams met four straight times in the playoffs from 1997-2000, with New York winning three of the four meetings.
The teams became fixtures in the playoffs, and their battles provided some lasting moments, from bench-clearing brawls to cardiac finishes to a game-winner that served as the rivalry’s climax. Here are three of the most savage moments from the Knicks-Heat rivalry.
3. Pat Riley leaves the Knicks for the Heat in the coldest way (1995)
Michael Jordan famously announced his return to the NBA through fax, while Pat Riley did the exact opposite in a surprise move to Miami. In the summer of 1995, after four seasons of coaching the Knicks, Riley wanted to leave:
“I got tired of being used, manipulated, promised, ignored, threatened and eventually, I got tired of somebody not living up to his word,”
— Pat Riley on leaving the Knicks, via the New York Daily News
Riley reportedly wanted more control of the team, which the Knicks wouldn’t give him. But he did find one willing taker in Heat owner Mickey Arison. So Riley left New York to go to Miami, which had a young team on the rise. But the five-time champion coach with the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t just leave the Knicks to go to a potential rival in South Beach. He also did it by sending them a fax informing them of his resignation, sowing the seeds to what would become one of the best NBA rivalries of the 1990s.
2. P.J. Brown flips Charlie Ward on the baseline (1997)
Two years later, Pat Riley had transformed the Heat into playoff contenders, and the teams were in the midst of the first playoff meeting in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. The Knicks had taken a 3-1 series lead after winning Game 4, but the Heat were in control in the final minutes of Game 5 and looked poised to cut New York’s series lead.
During a battle for the rebound, things got heated between Heat big man P.J. Brown and Knicks guard Charlie Ward, resulting in Brown flipping Ward like a rag doll, triggering a bench-clearing brawl:
The altercation was a costly one for the Knicks, as it resulted in the suspensions of Ward, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Larry Johnson, and Allan Houston for the next two games of the series. New York would lose both those games, and the Heat became just the sixth team to come back from a 3-1 series deficit. The teams’ playoff battles only got more testy in the years that followed.
1. Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson trade punches, Jeff Van Gundy is caught in between (1998)
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the Heat-Knicks rivalry happened a year later, when the teams met in the first round and went the full five games. In Game 4, with the Knicks clinging to a five-point lead in the dying seconds, Heat center Alonzo Mourning and Knicks big man Larry Johnson got entangled near the baseline.
The players, who used to be teammates with the Charlotte Hornets, shoved each other and then traded punches as players and coaches tried to intervene.:
One of those who tried and failed to get between them was Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy, who tried to pacify the Heat big man but ended up falling and holding on to his legs as he continued to exchange punches with Johnson, all while Charles Oakley tried to get in the middle of it as well. The Knicks went on to win the game and the series, upsetting the second-seeded Heat. The image of Van Gundy under Mourning and Johnson remains an indelible one many years later.
Follow Us
Subscribe