I do have one keepsake from your condo: the photo taken of us at NASA’s Space Center gift shop in Houston during the 1994 Finals. It hangs in my home office now. When I look at it, I invariably find myself thinking about the night of Game 7—the Starks shooting nightmare—and recalling how you surprised me when you rejected Riley’s winning-and-misery maxim and insisted you would have no lasting regrets that the Knicks had lost. If others preferred to cast blame and be bitter, you, conversely, were inclined to applaud them because they had, as you always put it, shown up every night, just as you had. That, you said, was invariably all you could ask—of them, and especially of us.
I also have to tell you that I returned to the Hall of Fame in Springfield in early September 2019 to support Marc Stein, who was the recipient of the same Curt Gowdy Media Award I’d received two years earlier. Even though he’d only been at the Times for a fairly short while after a lengthy run at ESPN, the editors graciously bought a table, as they did for me. His speech was excellent—polished, smart. But wouldn’t you know it? He had the benefit of a teleprompter! No complaints, though. I know I had a better guide to help me get through my speech without screwing it up. I had you! I was blessed.
In the final analysis, I guess we all have the glass-half-full option in any subjective evaluation. Thank you for helping me to understand that, for making me think harder about my work and my world. For all the laughs and life lessons. For the lasting reminders to live each day with purpose. To focus on the gift of each day. To appreciate, above all, the special people.
Of all the great things that happened for me at Madison Square Garden over the past four decades, and there were many, our friendship was truly the best and most profitable of all. And if I didn’t clearly see that, I would have to have been closed to the core, blind in the worst possible way.
With love and appreciation, always,
Harvey
The aspiring sports journalist apprenticing at the Staten Island Advance in the early seventies, taking it easy between fielding local results by phone.
After graduating from Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, a youthful Michelle returned to her home state and the University of Connecticut to add a teaching degree.
Michelle with her five young children, born within less than a decade, striking an idyllic pose that belies turbulence at home.
During the celebrated Patrick Ewing era of the nineties, the Knicks could always count on Michelle (visible between John Starks and Greg Anthony) to stand tall behind them and, on occasion, to earn some promotional back-page fan cred in the process.
Michelle and her friend Drucie De Vries had their view of the court partially obstructed by the striking visage of Pat Riley, but had less trouble seeing over the shorter, less coiffed Jeff Van Gundy (left) after he became head coach.
Despite making frequent use of her lucky orange playoff towel from the late nineties, Michelle (center) had her twenty-first-century championship hopes for the Mike D’Antoni–coached Knicks forever dashed by the James Dolan–inspired acquisition of the volume-shooting Carmelo Anthony (lower right).
Oblivious to all around her, Michelle preps for a game by reading a column in the New York Times sports section—hopefully mine—as if it were a detailed scouting report.
Through the decades, Michelle cultivated an authoritative courtside presence. Here, she points out something that requires the attention of a Knicks trainer, Tim Walsh.
Hanging with Michelle at her front-row seat, in my early days on the beat for the New York Post. I don’t remember whom she was talking to outside the frame, but she was seldom without an opinion to deliver as she held court behind the Knicks bench.
For many of my years covering the Knicks, the press-row seat was steps away from Michelle’s, allowing me more time to make a new friend and cultivate a well-placed source.
Inside the Madison Square Garden club for elite ticketholders, Michelle was a celebrity who attracted others to her pregame table, including, on occasion, the great Walt Frazier.
Lori Hamamoto (left) grew close to Michelle while working as the Knicks’ director of media relations. Charles Oakley (center), the team’s beloved lunch-pail enforcer in the nineties, told me he considered Michelle “the Oak Man of Knicks fans” for how she showed up every night, through thick and thin.
With the Knicks one win from the 1993–94 championship, Michelle dropped everything and flew to Houston to watch the Knicks lose Games 6 and 7. Between games, we visited the NASA Johnson Space Center and this photo, taken in the gift shop, paid tribute to our friendship in the workout room of her condo.
Michelle’s ninety-five dollar playoff ticket for the 1993 Eastern Conference Final game—in which John Starks famously dunked on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls—was put on permanent display at the renovated Madison Square Garden, with an accompanying plaque inscribed with her name.
Michelle was a hopeless hoarder of basketball-related memorabilia, including her personal Knicks framed jersey.
The Knicks paid tribute to the absent Michelle on opening night of the 2018–19 season by placing a bouquet of flowers on the seat where her many friends counted on finding her night after night over four-plus decades.
Acknowledgments
On several occasions, Michelle and I discussed my writing about our love of the game through the prism of our decades-long friendship. In later years, we even recorded a few of our marathon dinner conversations. We never actually thought such a project would happen, if only because books are so much easier to conceptualize
