The Knicks were on what looked to be a magical run and Michelle, in her subdued way, was exultant. If anyone had ever doubted her sincerity, her passion, they only had to check her travel itinerary during that playoff season. With her business thriving and her work commitments made well in advance, she juggled frantically the many demands on her time to ensure that she would be courtside when the games tipped off. In her 1994 Christmas letter, she offered insight into the logistical chaos her passion for the team required:
The playoffs are a different breed. They cannot be scheduled until mere days ahead due to the outcome of the final standings & the preceding series, home-court advantage, NBC, TNT & TBS. I made them all, minus one. A Herculean effort. One trip, racing back from California to make an Eastern Conference final (Game 2 vs. the Pacers was booked on four different airlines from two different cities into two different states and three different airports). Some direct flights, some connecting flights. All to ensure that bad weather, missing hub connections and/or mechanical aircraft problems would not keep me from making it to Madison Square Garden by game time.
For those riveting spring months in 1994, going to work was a privilege, an invitation to chronicle history, punctuate the Riley saga I was convinced I’d be retelling—like Ziegel with his old Ali tour stories—deep into old age. The Knicks just needed to win four more games.
Like the Knicks, Houston was built around a star center, Hakeem Olajuwon. Neither team had an established second star. The series was predictably tight, deadlocked at 2–2 going into Game 5 on a sweltering night, June 17, in New York. It was a game Ewing dominated, furiously swatting away shots, outplaying Olajuwon, finally living up to the early Bill Russell defensive comparisons and leaving the Knicks one victory shy of a championship. But just their luck, and in keeping with the star-crossed nature of Ewing’s career, most of the country and even a fair number of New Yorkers hardly noticed or cared.
That night, the most consequential shot was the one O. J. Simpson—holding a .357 Magnum to his head in the backseat of white Ford Bronco—never took. But O. J. on the loose, his friend Al Cowlings at the wheel and the California Highway Patrol in full pursuit, made for gripping viewing. It was reality TV before its time, and who could resist a chase that was far more compelling than the Knicks’ then-twenty-one-year quest for a crown?
At courtside, the white Bronco initially appeared on the NBC telecast in a box inset at the top of the television screen sitting on the press table during the second quarter. Then came a split-screen and finally a complete cutaway from the Garden, even as the NBA commissioner, David Stern, pleaded at courtside with NBC’s Dick Ebersol to stay the basketball course.
Near the Knicks bench, on a small press row set, we kept one eye on the Bronco motoring down the 405 while fans scrambled around the arena in search of a screen. Michelle, of course, didn’t have far to go. During stoppages in the action, she practically set her chin on my right shoulder for her O. J. updates. “You paid how much to watch this while your team is playing for the championship?” I asked. She laughed at the absurdity of it all, real life intruding on her world of fun and games. Meanwhile, I was facing another frightful deadline, trying to make sense of the madness while the Garden fans chanted, “One more, one more.”
Game 5 wound up as the lowest-rated Finals game in fifteen years. The O. J. chase outdrew that year’s Super Bowl. But by night’s end, he was in handcuffs. The Knicks didn’t have time to worry about ratings, or O. J. Game 6 was less than forty-eight hours away. They would soon be on their way back to Houston, and within hours I would be heading there, too. At the final buzzer, I hit the send key on my deadline column and rose from my seat for another fire drill of interviewing and late-night updating, only to be met by Michelle.
“When are you leaving?” she said.
“For where?”
“For Houston, where else?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I’ve been sitting here for twenty fucking years and I’ll be damned if they’re going to win the championship without me being there.”
You would have thought that a four-plus-hour flight would be the last thing a woman who spent as much time traveling for work as Michelle did would have volunteered for. I suspected she was overreacting to the moment and would soon go home and remember how comfortable her living room couch was. But the next morning, she called to say that she had indeed tapped a Garden source and secured tickets to Game 6 and, if necessary, Game 7. She had rearranged her work schedule and booked her flight. She just needed to know which hotel I would be staying at, and she would be set. Like Spike Lee—only without cameras recording her presence—she was going to Houston, going the distance, deep in the heart of Texas.
The following night, the Knicks played valiantly and had a fine chance to end the series in a tensely fought Game 6. Olajuwon, however, switched off on Ewing to deflect John Starks’s three-point shot at the buzzer—a play originally designed
