Dispatches: A fan’s requiem for a hardwood hero

DISPATCHES by Hank Kalet: Remembering a basketball legend.

By: Hank Kalet
   The back page of the New York Post May 15 said it all:
   "Death of a legend: DeBusschere was final piece to puzzle in Knicks’ glory years."
   And, man, they were glorious years.
   My heart sank when I heard the news on the afternoon of May 14 that DeBusschere, power forward on the Knicks two championship squads, died of a heart attack earlier that day. He was 62.



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   The next day I went out and bought the three major New York newspapers. I had to. It was the only way I could commemorate one of the great New York sports legends, a hero of mine from my youth, a man considered the glue to the greatest, most mythical of all basketball teams.
   I’ve been a Knicks fan for as long as I can remember. And DeBusschere, one of the NBA’s finest defensive players, if not its finest, is one of the reasons.
   When I was a kid I read everything I could about that first championship team, that amazing 1969-70 title team. I knew all the players — the five starters (DeBusschere, Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dick Barnett — and the bench — Dave Stallworth, Mike Riordan, Cazzie Russell, Donnie May, Nate Bowman, Bill Hosketh and Johnny Warren). I knew the numbers of each of the starters, their nicknames, their scoring averages. I even remember the colleges that most of the players attended.
   I read Marv Albert’s book, "Crazy About the Knicks," and Phil Berger’s, "Miracle on 33rd Street" — still the best book on basketball I’ve ever read. I read Willis Reed’s biography and Walt Frazier’s and used to cherish those Friday nights when the Knicks were on channel 9 and the folks were out bowling and I’d get to watch the games on the TV in their bedroom.
   My favorite players on those teams were probably Willis Reed, the captain, and Clyde Frazier — and yet I think it’s fair to say I didn’t have a favorite. They all were my favorites. They were the New York Knicks.
   I admit I was too young to remember much about the first title team — it’s not likely I watched or understood much about what was going on.
   Two years later, when I was 9, I was committed to the Knicks. I may not have understood the game or even realized how good the team was or just what this magical collection of players brought to the court, but I developed a lifelong passion for basketball — and the Knicks in particular.
   What stands out most about that time, for me, was the team’s defense, that it was a team effort. DeBusschere and Frazier were annual members of the league’s all-defensive team (DeBusschere the only six times he was eligible and Frazier seven times). And during that first championship year, the pair was joined by the captain, a testament to that team’s commitment to shutting down their opponents.
   Phil Berger wrote about the basic strategy, the way Walt Frazier would attack the ball, followed by Barnett to take the other team off its game, disrupt it, the slick backcourt stars knowing they had Reed and DeBusschere behind them.
   DeBusschere could guard anyone — the papers last week were full of stories about how he shut down Dr. J, Julius Erving, during an exhibition game. Erving, then in his prime, was the most dynamic offensive player on the planet at the time and DeBusschere was nearing the end of his career.
   I don’t have any specific memories of DeBusschere the player, aside from an appearance he made on a kids’ sports TV show on which he demonstrated how to shoot a jump shot. For weeks afterward, I practiced shooting jump shots like him, placing my hands the same way, bringing the ball above my head in the same manner.
   DeBusschere was a great jump shooter, liked to launch what now would be 3-point shots from the top of the key. Like each of his Knick teammates, he could dominate a game, but often didn’t need to, doing what was necessary in each game to secure the victory — and that meant shutting down opposing forwards and — and along with the captain — taking control of the glass.
   It’s important to note here that DeBusschere was maybe 6 feet, 6 inches tall — smaller than most guards these days — and he sometimes was asked to defend players more than a half-foot taller than him.
   Ira Berkow, in his New York Times column on May 15, offered the best description of DeBusschere as rebounder:
   "Burly, rock-jawed, his thighs so muscular they seemed cast in marble, he could be a force in what the players called ‘the butcher shop,’ the rebounding area under the basket where welts sprouted and blood spilled and, as Kipling might have said, you had to be a man, my son," he wrote.
   That willingness to lay it all on the line, whether banging with Wilt Chamberlin and Nate Thurmond, diving for a loose ball or busting through a screen to stay with his man was the trademark of those great Knick teams.
   I don’t know that there is a current player I could compare to DeBusschere, certainly no one on the current Knick squad. He was Charles Oakley before there was a Charles Oakley, a man willing to bang, to sacrifice his body for the good of the team. He was Kevin McHale with Dan Majerle’s jump shot and an ability to put the ball on the floor and take it to the hole.
   His game wasn’t flashy and sometimes you might not notice what he was up to until the game was over and he’d popped for his 16 points and snatched 11 boards and the man he had been guarding had just ended the night shooting 4-12.
   We never think of the sports heroes of our youth as getting older, as passing on. But they do. Their hair turns gray and their bodies break down. They are perpetually young in our memories.
   Because of the news of DeBusschere’s death, I feel a little bit older today than I did last week.
   But at least we all have the memories — and the video clips — of those heady days when watching the Knicks was like listening to the perfect jazz quintet, all the parts fitting together making glorious music.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and the
Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail at
href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected].