BOSTON — Earlier this month, ESPN basketball analyst Jay Williams rhapsodized that New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson was possibly the best player in Knicks history.
At the time, Williams seemed to be the classic prisoner of the moment. Brunson had been spectacular in a first-round closeout game against the Detroit Pistons. He scored 40 points and handed out seven assists as the Knicks eliminated Detroit on the road.
Brunson has followed that performance up with a pair of catalytic road performances against the defending champion Boston Celtics. On Monday, the Knicks overcame a 20-point deficit and defeated Boston in overtime 108-105. On Wednesday the Knicks once again overcame a 20-point deficit and defeated Boston 91-90 to take a shocking 2-0 lead in their Eastern Conference semifinals series. The Celtics and Knicks meet in Madison Square Garden on Saturday for Game 3 (ABC, 3:30 p.m. ET)
The benchmarks are astounding. Brunson has outscored the entire Celtics team 17-13 in the final five minutes of both games combined. He scored all six Knicks points in the final two minutes of Game 2, including the go-ahead free throws with 13 seconds left. With Wednesday’s performance, Brunson became the first player since 1997 to score at least 83 fourth-quarter points through the first eight games of two different playoff runs (2024 and 2025). Only two NBA players — Kobe Bryant in 2008 and Stephen Curry in 2023 — accomplished this feat, and they only did it once. Of course, Curry and Bryant won multiple NBA titles, but we’ll get to that later.
The point is that Williams may not have been as big a prisoner of the moment as originally thought. The fatal flaw in his logic is that he leapfrogged Brunson over Walt “Clyde” Frazier.
You cannot leapfrog history.
Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
The greatest Knick? Brunson may be close.
Walt Frazier close? That’s another matter. Frazier was not only a great player, but like baseball legend Willie Mays, Clyde is a state of mind.
Determining the greatest Knick is a matter of taste and generation. There is a sea of great Knicks players: Bernard King, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Latrell Sprewell. The thread that connects them all, however, is that none of them has brought New York an NBA championship. Frazier has won a pair of championships, and, in our business, — the business of sport and play — championships matter and legacy building begins with winning championships.
On May 8, 1970, the New York Knicks won their first NBA championship, defeating the Wilt Chamberlain-Jerry West-Elgin Baylor Los Angeles Lakers 4-3. That was the series where Frazier cemented his legacy, not only as a Knick but as one of the greatest players in NBA history.
Game 7 of that series is remembered as the game when Knicks center Willis Reed heroically walked out of the tunnel at Madison Square Garden after having his torn right thigh muscle injected with a painkiller. Reed famously made his first two shots and played solid defense on Chamberlain. But Frazier had an amazing performance: 36 points, 19 assists and seven rebounds.
Frazier, who turned 80 in March, would become known for his stylish clothes, cool demeanor and ultra-urban lifestyle, but the runway for his becoming an icon was winning.
During an interview for “City Game,” a book about basketball in New York City, Frazier told me that winning a championship in New York set the table for the legend of Clyde.
“Winning is the key in New York City,” he said. “Winning allowed me to become Clyde. Before we were winning, I was dressing well but nobody focused on it. As a rookie I wasn’t playing well so to pacify myself I used to go shopping, go out and buy clothes. I wasn’t playing well but I still looked good. Nobody focused on that until we started winning. Winning is the catalyst. When you win in New York City the people never forget you. I can go to any grade school there’s going to be one kid at least who knows who Walt Frazier is or Willis Reed or who has heard of us. Fifty years later, people are still talking about the team and what we did.”
Brunson is not only up against Frazier’s on-court performances, he’s also up against a cultural icon who was the product of a particular time and place in New York City and the country. Frazier was maybe the first NBA player to develop what we now call a brand. His brand was fashion and style, and a certain cool associated with Blackness.
In those days, we as young African Americans were attempting to break out of negative psychological cages and focus on building positive Black-is-beautiful castles. Out with processed hair. Some of us wore dashikis and natural hair. Some of us flaunted luxury cars and custom-made suits. All of it was designed to project a positive winning image of Blackness.
Among Black athletes there was a strain of defiance between 1966 and 1970, illuminated by boxer Muhammad Ali, and track stars Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics. Curt Flood defied the norms of Major League Baseball and led the push for free agency.
Clyde was born in the South, but he was not a firebreather. He chose to express his defiance and independence quietly, through his audacious style.
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These types of prisons are unthinkable to today’s NBA and WNBA players. Everyone is encouraged to be their authentic (Black) selves. Brunson wears braids that are a blur of twists and shouts as he maneuvers on offense.
Frazier wore bright colors and wide-brimmed hats. The Knicks trainer, Danny Whelan, began calling Frazier “Clyde,” after the protagonist in the 1967 hit movie Bonnie and Clyde. The name stuck.
As a player, Frazier — like Brunson — was not a high-flying dunker, or the fastest. But like the jazz pianist Thelonius Monk, Frazier possessed an impeccable sense of timing — he knew when to go for the steal, he knew when to make the pass and to whom, he knew when to score.
Timing.
During halftime of Wednesday’s game, I asked legendary sports columnist Bob Ryan what he thought about the Brunson and Clyde comparison — more what he thought about Frazier. Ryan remembered the Knicks 1970 championship-clinching game. He was there, in his first year on the beat for the Boston Globe. Ryan, now 79, felt that Frazier was an iconic first.
“Walt Frazier was different because he had an alter ego,” Ryan said. “You know, there was Walt Frazier and there was Clyde, and he played and he promoted that. He wanted people to know about him off the court with the wardrobe thing, which still lasts until this day. And so, he created a character. So that puts him apart from virtually everyone. I’m trying to think of a comparable NBA player in my experience that you could say that about, and the answer is nobody. He set himself apart…”
Ryan was in the Knicks’ locker room in 1970 when the players finally arrived from their on-court championship celebration. “Clyde comes in, and his first words were, and I quote verbatim. ‘Man, I need a beer.’ That was my lead,” Ryan said.
Filmmaker Joe Brewster and his wife Michele Stephenson are completing a documentary on Frazier and his cultural importance to New York and to the Black and white communities in the tumultuous 1970s. During that time, there was an incredibly tense atmosphere with the residue of racial turmoil, the aftermath in New York of a hostile teacher strike, a garbage strike and deep divisions over the Vietnam War.
Four days before the Knicks won the championship, four white students on the Kent State University campus were killed and nine were wounded by the Ohio National Guard on campus. The students were killed during a rally opposing the United States’ expanding involvement in the war.
In New York and throughout the country, the killings only intensified divisions over the war.
“The times were so different and tumultuous,” Brewster, 70, said during a phone interview. “People were looking for a savior. Clyde was a guy who was revered in the Black community because of his Blackness and revered in the white community because of his proximity to whiteness — and Blackness. He was not loud, he was not angry. He was what white people needed at the time to feel safe. The combination of all these factors made him bigger than life.”
AP Photo/Charles Krupa
With Black and white stars, the Knicks were a perfect team for the time.
“Walt would not like this if he heard it, but he was ‘acceptable’ by both populations,” Brewster said. “But his game and his way of life was as Black as anyone’s, from his Dandyism to his individuality within the collective.”
Brewster was reluctant to say that Frazier was “non-threatening.”
“That sounds pejorative,” he said, “and it doesn’t really acknowledge how important he was for bringing the city together.”
Frazier understood the team’s significance. During the same interview for “City Game,” he told me that he and his Knicks teammates knew that the Knicks were a much-needed salve for the city.
“We provided an outlet for people on Tuesdays and Saturdays,” Frazier said. “Fans could forget about what was happening in the world and go and cheer for the Knicks. Everything stopped on Tuesdays and Saturdays when the Knicks were playing. Our team was integrated; the fans didn’t see color. We had [Dave] DeBusschere, we had [Bill] Bradley. But Frazier and Reed were the most popular guys on that team in New York City.”
Today, New York City is torn apart by conflict. This time the war in Gaza has created deep divisions over the brutal loss of life. Some lay the bloodshed at the feet of the Israeli government, which they accuse of genocide. Defenders say that Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas. I can only assume that some factions on each side of the conflict will be Knicks fans.
Madison Square Garden may be the only space in the city where two sides can have the semblance of a truce.
Frazier never publicly threw himself in the political fray during the Knicks’ championship runs in the 1970s, and I suspect Brunson will not take sides during the Knicks’ current championship run. After Wednesday’s game in Boston, I asked Brunson if he had given any thought to the potential unifying impact the Knicks’ success was having on the city.
He had not.
“I want to say that we’re aware,” Brunson said. “We see obviously what happens after games, after home games with what the fans do, but I’ll let them do them and we’re going to focus on this.”
Brunson has all the qualities the Knicks like to ascribe to the franchise character: mental toughness, clutch performances. Can Brunson become the Knicks best player? Possibly. Can Brunson ever eclipse Frazier? That’s a much steeper challenge.
The reality is if you don’t win a championship in New York, you’ll simply become another face in the crowd.
