No championship, no selection for NBA History's 50th, and even disqualified from the Smith Basketball Hall of Fame due to a sub-par number of games (874), but he is more qualified to be called "King" than LeBron James because his last name is "king", he turned madison Set Garden into a stage for his personal performance 25 years before Cameron Anthony came here, his scoring methods are more diverse than Kevin Durant's, and his experience is more tortuous than Tracy McGrady. Also more inspirational, he is Bernard King.
One Man's New York Derby
Bernard King, a black man in a no.30 jersey with a crown and a red shirt on his shirt, is known not only because he has a king in his name, but because he deserves it. He was the hottest scorer in the NBA in the 1980s, and his name was played in New York, where players were quite harshly evaluated.
In 14 seasons of his career, he averaged 20+ points per game in 11 seasons, and he became the team's number one attack point in his rookie season with an average of 24.2 points per game, in addition to the gorgeous teaching of averaging 9.5 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game, and became the league's top scorer with an average of 32.9 points per game in the 1984-85 season. His style of play is not flashy, but his comprehensive scoring methods ensure his high efficiency, as a small forward with a height of 2.01 meters, his professional shooting percentage has reached a terrifying 51.8%, and he has interpreted the feud between the two teams on both sides of the New York River in his own unique way.
The New York Nets (the predecessor of the New Jersey Nets) received gold in 1977 with their seventh overall pick in the first round, and he was named to the NBA's NBA Rookie First Team that year. King still showed strong momentum in his second season, averaging 21.6 points per game. But surprisingly, the Nets decided to send the rising star away. The reason was simple: Kim wasn't having a good time there. Born in New York, he made his name in the Manhattan neighborhood, and he was also contaminated with bad habits on the street, and the team could not tolerate his vices off the court. So, on June 10, 1979, the Nets sent King and John Chianelli and Jim Boylan to the Jazz in exchange for Richie Kelly. There's no doubt that it's a free deal: Kelly's kind of coolie, which is on par with Bernard King, let alone added a lot of money.
It was then that feelings of revenge began to grow in Kim's heart. After a brief drift between Utah and San Francisco, on October 13, 1982, the Warriors renewed Kim's free agent status, and nine days later, he "signed first and then changed" to the Knicks, and Kim really began the peak of his career and began to become the real king of basketball McGara Madison Square Garden. This crazy scoring machine maintains that trademark serious expression as long as it is on the field. On Christmas night in 1984, he appeared on the court with such a face to face the Nets, an expression that was more frightening than ever.
He does often really scare people. King, then 28, was at the peak of his career, the eighth year of his career, when he averaged 26.3 points per game in the previous 1983-84 season, and the same winter, Kim scored 50 consecutive points against San Antonio and Dallas, was selected to the All-Star for the second time (four times in his career), was also named to the league First Team, and in 12 playoff games, with two injured fingers, he averaged 34.8 points per game and eliminated the Pistons 3-2 ( Four games in five games scored 40+ points, with the remaining one 36 points, including 23 consecutive points in the second game of the series), and then pushed Boston into a seventh game.
Six months later, the University of Tennessee graduate from Brooklyn is about to take his leading scorer trophy at the end of the season. That scoring title was extraordinary: first, it was the only scoring title in Knicks history (with the exception of Anthony in 2012-13); Second, before Michael Jordan retired in 1998, he had 10 scoring champions in 13 seasons, including 64 injury stops in 1985-86 and only a small half of the games in 1994-95, which meant that only Kim actually stole the scoring champions from Jordan.
So when King wakes up this morning, he's not just thinking about what gift Santa Claus has put under the Christmas tree, and when he faces his old owner Nets again, a vengeful massacre is inevitable.
Christmas Eve miracle
King has said that playing at Madison Gardens in New York isn't just a game but a show. Especially on Christmas Eve, when there are a lot of fans who don't usually watch the ball or rarely watch the ball, as well as many league players and coaches who watch their performances on TV. 'We started well in that game and it was very important for me. "I keep scoring, and even with a team as good as the Nets, they don't have a defensive system that can stop me from scoring," he said. I don't remember how many people defended me, but I do remember them constantly defending me in the rotation. From Buck Williams to Mitchell Ray Richardson, to others. Usually, against the Nets, it was my brother Albert who would have been playing in this position for a long time, but he didn't play that night due to injury. ”
King was right that New Jersey used five men to take turns defending him in the first half, but that didn't affect his scoring posture in the slightest, with he already scored 40 points by the time the midfield whistle went up, and New York widened the gap to 16 points twice. "At half-time, I looked at the technical stats and Bernard had scored 40 points."
Nets coach Stan Albek said, "The rest of the Knicks only got 2 or 3 points, so we just wanted to try to get Bernard out of the ball in the second half. After trying all the cards in his hand, before the start of the second half, Ahlbeck said to George Johnson, a 12-year veteran who rarely played: "Get ready!" With more than 5 minutes left in the third quarter, Johnson came on to keep an eye on Gold. Under some entanglement, Although Kim did not score as many points as in the first half, he finally scored 60 points. So far, no one has been able to score higher than that in the Christmas war. At the same time, the 60 points in a single game also broke the Knicks' record for scoring (57 points) — the highest single scoring score in an NBA game since the scoring battle between David Thompson (73 points) and George Gervin (63 points) on April 9, 1978 — and it was also the highest scoring record in Madison Gardens until February 2009, when Bryant scored 61 points here. The only regret is that New York didn't win the win.
That is to say, in the eyes of most people, even cutting 60 points is just an ordinary game for Bernard King, but only a few more points. This idea is also confirmed by their teammate Louis Orr. "I've never seen a ruthless scorer like Bernard." Orr said that no matter who came to defend him, he could always shoot the ball he wanted to shoot, and no one could get him. ”
That's why whenever he mentions this game, Kim brushes it up with a tone he doesn't care about. "I wanted me to just get 10 points and my team won. We controlled everything and lost the game, which was frustrating. Even now, Kim said, the stinging is still there, "There's no doubt that considering we lost, my performance that night didn't mean so much to me." We didn't get the win, so I simply couldn't have enjoyed the 60 points well that day.
How many times can it come from
As you can see, no matter who takes stock of those famous attackers in history, Bernard King will not forget. But aside from his exuberant attacking firepower, another fascinating reason for King's career is that he always seems to be able to get back to the top in nearly impossible circumstances.
No matter how good you squeeze your memory, I'm afraid most fans will be at a loss when answering this question, but this award does exist, just as real as the 1.70m Spartan Webb won the dunk championship. Six years into the 1980-91 season, the NBA set up the "Best Comeback Award" to encourage the best performers after the comeback — in 1986, NBA officials came up with new ideas, so the "Most Improved Player Award" replaced it — the first person to eat a crab was Bernard King.
In fact, a large part of the reason the Nets traded him bitterly was alcoholism. One Nets staff member at the time recalled, "He was going crazy drinking." Sometimes, at half-time, he also has to come a little bit and then play the second half with a drink. "Even when he got to the Jazz, King still didn't change his bad habit of alcoholism, and he was imprisoned by the Utah Jazz, playing only the first 19 games of the season, averaging only 9.3 points per game." I realized that if I continued drinking, my career would be ruined and most likely my life would be over, and you would have nothing more to say after that. A few years later, Kim spoke his mind. The Jazz were forced to exchange him for the Golden State Warriors' unexpected remorse, and kim turned into a downward tiger, averaging 21.9 points and 6.8 rebounds this season, taking the debut award of "best comeback". But in fact, another comeback of King is truly worthy of this award
In this fabulous season of a miraculous Christmas Eve 60, King suffered a horror movie-like ending — he fell heavily on the pitch on March 23 against Kansas City, severely tearing the ligaments in his knees. It was a serious injury that caused King to miss the entire 1985-86 season, and all but the last six games of the 1986-87 season. If this ends here, it is almost another New York Broadway drama of "great scorers blooming to the worst but withering from injuries". But his fate staged another script. In the only six games in two seasons, Kim is still able to average 22.7 points per game, proving that he is still the original "king".
But even though the Knicks had no interest in him and abandoned him at the end of the 1986-87 season, the focus of the league was on Kim, who returned from injury. He played for the Washington Wizards for four seasons, starting with an average of 17.2 points per game in 1987-88, and his scoring increased in each of the following seasons (20.7 and 22.4), until the 1990-91 season, when the 34-year-old Kim rejuvenated and averaged 28.4 points per game, ranking third in the league after Jordan and Carl Malone, and of course he played in the All-Star Game that season.
It was the biggest span of transformation in history: King changed his previous style of playing to accommodate his knee injury. Most of his scoring comes from the inside forced singles, and then near the bottom line or in front of the basket to stop jump shots to score, the new style of Kim became a player with a strong ability to score points, often relying on a quick and wonderful turn to send the ball into the basket, he completely became an inside player: tentative steps, fake moves, foot positioning, breakthroughs... In his later years, he hardly relied on speed, but was purely a product of consciousness and rhythm.
King not only saved his knee and his career, but also transformed him from a supposedly trouble-ridden Brooklyn genius into a thoughtful basketball superstar. He later said, "I'm going to do something big in my life, and I always feel like I'm going to do my best." That feeling has been following me and giving me motivation. I knew I needed a lot of courage to get back on the pitch, but I knew I could do it. I'm just going to prove that I can not only come back, but also come back as an All-Star. "Obviously, he did.
In an attempt to write a glorious apocalyptic glory for the end of his career, King underwent knee cartilage removal surgery before the 199192 season, but this operation cost him missing all the games of the season and being laid off by the Washington Bullets in January 1993. As Bernard King's "first love" in the league, the Nets accepted him tolerantly in early 1993.
When King returned to the place where his dream began, everything including him was already human, the Nets had already moved from New York to New Jersey, and although King himself was no longer involved with alcohol and drugs, two serious knee injuries completely gnawed away at the aura of this great scorer, and he also entered the wind and candle-like career.
In his 32 games, King averaged just 7.0 points, 2.4 rebounds and 0.6 assists per game, all three of which were career-lows. Subsequently, Bernard King retired with a career total of 19,655 points and an average of 22.5 points per game.
Some media once asked him: Why do you have to undergo surgery at the age of 34 to recuperate in order to continue to play in the NBA? The former "king" told everyone that his biggest regret was not to get a championship ring as a player, and at the same time, the ups and downs of the horror scorer did not enter the "20,000 point club" - in his NBA career, he scored a total of 19655 points. Because of this, in the year he retired, he left the famous sentence: "Do you know what I will do?" Before winter comes, I will take the time to go to my backyard and throw in 350 points so that I can fulfill my wish. ”