The New York Knicks are enjoying their best season in nearly a decade, as they’ve clinched a playoff berth for the first time since 2012-13 and may be able to still get themselves into 4th for homecourt in their first round series.
This season and that 2013 season are the high points for the once proud franchise over the last two decades, as things haven’t gone well for the team from Manhattan for some time now. As such, the Knicks of the 90s are looked back on incredibly fondly by New York fans, who still think back to those teams led by Patrick Ewing and John Starks and Charles Oakley when seeking their best memories of Knicks seasons gone by. The good news for Knicks fans is that the great Chris Herring of Sports Illustrated (previously at ESPN and the Wall Street Journal) is working on a book all about those 90s Knicks, set to come out in early 2022.
On Wednesday night, Herring did a live episode of The Dunker’s Spot with Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones, and offered a little peak at the kinds of stories you’ll get from his book. Herring offered up a sensational story of the late, great Anthony Mason refusing to get out of the team limo for a kid’s basketball camp unless he got more money (and got it in cash), and then once that happened he proceeded to break a kid’s nose in the camp to the delight of the child who had him sign his bloody shirt.
As mentioned on the live stream last night, @Herring_NBA‘s book – “Blood on the Hardwood: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks” – is aiming for a Jan ’22 release.
Chris was kind enough to give us a preview with a story about Anthony Mason hosting a basketball camp. pic.twitter.com/HZtCjoXPkk
— Nuh-KY-us Duncan (@NekiasNBA) May 13, 2021
It is an incredible story that is also extremely on-brand for one of the Knicks’ great enforcers, who as Herring said, simply couldn’t turn it off when he was on the court and busted open a kid’s nose. That this was the story Herring was willing to part with as a tease for the book is an indicator of how much incredible stuff is going to be in Blood on the Hardwood: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks and Knicks fans and basketball fans in general should be very excited about its impending release.