This was the comedic prelude to the wonders to come. This was the final night of the 1999 regular season, Heat in town to play the Knicks. Both teams were already in the playoffs in that lockout-shortened 50-game schedule, but there was much intrigue because both teams, truth be told, wanted to lose. Even if neither team would dare say “we want to lose.”
The Heat were locked at the 1 seed, the Knicks at 8. If the Knicks lost it would stay that way no matter what. If the Knicks won, and the Sixers lost to the Pistons in Philadelphia, the Knicks would sneak past Philly into the 7 spot. That would be a good thing for the Heat, who wanted no part of a first-round war with the Knicks (smartly, as it turned out).
And it would be a bad thing for the Knicks, because it would mean having to play Reggie Miller and the Pacers in Round 1. And in those years, the Knicks would take the Heat over the Pacers in playoffs 100 times out of a hundred.
The Knicks sat Patrick Ewing and Chris Childs. The Heat sat Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway. Jalen Brunson’s old man, Rick, played enough to collect 12 assists and post a plus-14. But that wasn’t the most intriguing bit of … well, intrigue.
It was this: the scoreboards didn’t work all night.
No, let’s rephrase that. The scoreboard didn’t show scores all night. And this wasn’t an accident. Oh, even in those relatively primitive days, Knicks players and Heat players on the bench kept asking the sportswriters at courtside — and forgive me for a weep, briefly, at the nostalgia of those three words prior to the long dash — for updates from NBA.com.
So did Jeff Van Gundy — who presumably ordered the scoreboard dark, and when he was given a less-than-encouraging partial score, even he summarized his feelings as succinctly as possible “[Bleep] me.”
Afterward, Chris Dudley cackled, “Did they really whack [the scoreboard] out on purpose? I thought it was just malfunctioning.”
Ah. Memories.
Twenty-four-and-a-half years later, inquiring minds were told that the scoreboards would, in fact, be operational Tuesday at the Garden for the Knicks’ matchup with the Hornets, the final game of pool play in the NBA’s In-Season Tournament. Tom Thibodeau, who was seated next to Van Gundy back in ’99, admitted he’d be kept appraised about what was happening elsewhere. Though he had other priorities.
“We need to focus on what’s most important,” he said, “and that’s to win the game.”
Still, the Knicks’ fate in this tournament was entirely reliant on what happened elsewhere and also on whether the Knicks could not just beat the Hornets but do it by a sizable amount. Thibodeau did his best to keep a straight face when asked if that might affect his approach should he have a big lead in the fourth, mostly because there isn’t another coach who frets more to the very end of even the most one-sided wins.
“I love what the Cup has done,” Thibodeau said. “It’s added a lot of interest and the players are excited about it.”
It’s still to be seen how the general public feels about this. But assuming this is the way it’s going to be going forward, here are four thoughts on how to make it even better:
1. And this is the biggie: Give the champion a tangible reward besides the half-mill in prize money. Make it so the champion is guaranteed no lower than a seven seed. Look, most teams good enough to win the tournament are good enough to make the playoffs handily. But injuries happen. Circumstances happen. In the event a key player misses time after the tournament and a team scuffled, having two guaranteed home games in the play-in is a fair cushion.
2. Add one more tiebreaker ahead of the points differential, and that’s to give each team one point for every quarter it wins, the old Continental Basketball Association rule. If a tiebreaker beyond that is needed, then points it is.
3. Use international rules. Maybe that would affect the integrity of seasonal stats, but this is a tournament that is already going to require two teams to play an 83rd game that wound count in the standings or the stats. And it’s never a bad idea to practice the international game.
4. A pet wish of mine that has no prayer, but what the hell: Add a bonus stripe, that runs from sideline to sideline at an arc 42 feet from the basket, and introduce the 4-point shot, just for tournament games.
