Who is a Leader, Who is a Hero

The passing of Willis Reed, former New York Knicks star, Basketball Hall of Famer, New York legend, is in many ways more painful than the loss of my boyhood idol, Tom Seaver. Reed is a character we at Culture in Sports would have to create if he didn’t really live, the dignified, compassionate, diverse leader.

I loved Tom Seaver unabashedly, the way a kid does. I learned to admire and consider Willis Reed a hero because of who he was, the strength he represented both as a man and as a leader, the way the Knicks were never quite as good without him- and still haven’t been, they way he brought together a team that was in every way a metaphor for the only city where his broad frame comfortably fit- the greatest city, all beneath the yellow and orange spokes of the “new Garden” ceiling, now 55 years old. That ceiling is iconic because of what Willis Reed did under it and he became my hero as I learned more about both what heroes were and should be by watching his example.

We will tell stories, we Knick fans who saw Willis not just play but inspire and will all of us, not just his teammates, to be a bit better, more than the sum of our parts or of our collective limitations. These will be, and already are, Paul Bunyan or John Henry-sque tales, about how Willis Reed dug the East River, or strung the cables that hold up the George Washington Bridge, how he made Madison Square Garden the most famous arena in the world, the Knicks the team to watch, how he limped from a dark tunnel to face Goliath and bring home victory. Some of these will be true and some fanciful exaggerations that will cause us to squint and say in agreement, “yeah, Willis Reed could do that.”

Long after Dimaggio, just after Mantle, and for those who would never accept upstart Mets or Jets like Seaver or Namath, the answer to the question “who was the most admired New Yorker?”

It was easy. It was Willis Reed. He was the Captain. Imagine that in 1970, his greatest season, the easily most admired man in New York was a man of color, a sharecropper’s son from Louisiana, and he was that because of his leadership, his work ethic, his endurance and his character. It was unquestioned. All other alpha’s in New York since are hollow comparisons to Reed, now that is equity, diversity and inclusion. Even in recent years his image has been evoked in political ads as symbolizing the greatness of New York.

In reality, his accomplishment was leading a cadre of uniquely talented teammates to be so much more together, than they were separately. Individually, they were a sharecropper’s son from Louisiana, an auto worker’s son from Detroit, the Ivy-educated son of a banker from Missouri by way of Oxford, a lanky kid from Indiana who kicked his feet up when he shot, the child of evangelicals from North Dakota with a hippy tinge, the coolest of Atlanta city kids, and they were later joined by a phenom from Philadelphia who had been dubbed “Black Jesus,” but who really was a pearl and an All-American from a place so all American it is called, Middletown. Of course I am speaking of the two Knicks teams, Reed led to NBA titles, and Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, Dick Barnett, Phil Jackson, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, and Jerry Lucas. Still the only New York teams to claim NBA titles. Collectively the perfect metaphor for this city that always looks upward, toward the basket, or the ceiling of MSG, or to the height of our greatest aspirations. We will always look upward toward you, Willis Reed, but then again, we always have.

I’ll add one personal postscript to this, I am hardly a focal point figure in the New York sports milieu. I mean I work in sports, I know people, but I am not a journalist, I am not a league executive, I am just a guy who’s “in the business, some.” I never personally met Tom Seaver. I haven’t met Joe Namath either, despite having both a New York and Alabama connection. Jacob DeGrom, Matt Harvey loved to watch them pitch, meet them? Meh. But I did meet Reed, passed DeBusschere often on the street with a nod, have shaken Bradley’s hand on several occasions, have talked to Jackson, Frazier, Monroe Barnett and Lucas. This is why Reed’s Knicks will always be New York’s team, that they were always out among us. Oh and read Harvey Araton obituary in the New York Times, he’s a real writer and among the best very chronicler’s of those great Knick teams.