Summer of Dreams, Then and Now

It was a summer filled with uncertainty, danger and great promise, all at once. It was a summer that was long anticipated, one in which the past would be firmly left behind, and the future faced with a bold new outlook. It would be, quite simply, one of the franchise-defining offseasons in Knicks history.

Sound familiar?

We could just as easily be talking about 1996 as about 2010. In fact, we are.

You don’t have to look all that far back to find a summer that shook the Knicks franchise down to its very foundation, in the same manner the current off-season – which officially began at 12:01 a.m. on July 1 -- has the potential of doing.

The 1995-96 Knicks won 47 games, a 10-game dropoff from their Eastern Conference title season two years earlier. Jeff Van Gundy went 13-10 in his baptism as an NBA head coach, taking over for Don Nelson. That season was salvaged with a strong playoff run --- a decisive first-round three-game sweep of Cleveland followed by a hard-fought five-game loss to the eventual champion Chicago Bulls. But those within the Knicks’ inner circle knew that changes had to be made.

And the man at the top knew that the summer of ’96 would provide a perfect storm. . .a bushel of top-notch free agents were available, and the Knicks, after years of strangling under the weight of the NBA’s Salary Cap, now had room to maneuver. Lots of room.

“What I tried to do was remain very competitive for a championship, and at the same time get younger and rebuild,” said Ernie Grunfeld in 2003. “We traded away some guys who were on the last year of their deals, and we wanted to get cap room. And we did; we had about $10 million in cap room that summer. . .We rebuilt on the fly. We got a lot younger, we got more talented, and we didn’t miss a beat as far as the Playoffs were concerned.”

Grunfeld, then the Knicks’ president and general manager and now president of the Washington Wizards, knew that he had three cornerstones: future Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing and perennials Charles Oakley and John Starks. But everyone else, make no mistake, was in play.

It all happened in less than a month. The bell rang on free agency on July 1, 1996, and by July 26 the makeover was complete. It was so swift, so decisive, that when the 1996-97 season opened, only five players – Ewing, Oakley, Starks, Charlie Ward and Herb Williams – remained from the 1996 Playoff roster.

And these were the new Knicks who arrived during that frantic July:

Allan Houston --- After flirting with longtime Knick-killer Reggie Miller (somewhere, the legendary mockup of Reggie in a Knicks uniform may still exist), Grunfeld’s biggest free agent signing was a sharpshooting fourth-year guard who had averaged 14 points a game for the Pistons, including nearly 20 per game the year before.

Chris Childs – Grunfeld’s other multi-year free agent contract went to a hard-nosed, defense-first point guard, who was coming off a career season with New Jersey and who’d been hardened by five years in the CBA. Larry Johnson – This was the stunner. Announced on the same day as the Houston-Childs signings, the Knicks sent Anthony Mason, a symbol of the early ‘90s teams, and backup center Brad Lohaus to Charlotte for a two-time All-Star forward with an insatiable hunger for victory.

Buck Williams – The third key free agent signing came at the end of the month. A three-time All-Star, Buck had already logged 15 years with the Nets and Blazers, and his days in a starring role were behind him. But he was a born leader and a true professional in every sense of the word.

“When we focused on who we wanted to go after, it was always with the mindset of Patrick being the focal point of the team and building around him,” said Grunfeld in ’03. “We already had Starks and Oakley, so those guys were really the three building blocks. But we also wanted to get more size and shooting ability, and Allan Houston fit that bill real well. Then we were able to get another point guard in Chris Childs.

“And I always loved the way Larry Johnson played. He was such a team player. For him, statistics didn’t show the whole story. He could play power forward or small forward; he was a great low-post player, very unselfish.”

To get, the Knicks had to give. In addition to sending Mason and Lohaus to Charlotte, the Knicks – on the same day, July 14 – renounced negotiating rights to seven free agents, including Derek Harper, the floor leader of the ’94 East Champs. A little more than a week later, Hubert Davis was sent to Toronto.

It would be the third time the Knicks would be built -- and re-built – around Ewing. First came the full-court-pressing Rick Pitino Knicks, with inherited talent such as Trent Tucker and Kenny Walker and then with key acquisitions like Mark Jackson, Rod Strickland, Kiki Vandeweghe, Sidney Green and, ultimately, Oakley. Then came the half-court-minded, defense-first Pat Riley Knicks with Starks, Mason, Harper and Doc Rivers. The summer of ’96 marked the birth of the Jeff Van Gundy Knicks and the most extensive makeover of all, one that would be complemented two years later with the acquisitions of Latrell Sprewell, Marcus Camby and Kurt Thomas.

The events of July 1996 would reverberate for years to come. Williams lent his steadying influence to the Knicks for the final two years of his storied career. Childs would be a lockdown defender and clutch scorer for five Knicks seasons. LJ, freed of the expectations that followed him in Charlotte, became the ultimate team player, achieving near cult-hero status in five years as the spiritual leader of the Knicks. And in nearly a decade in orange and blue, Houston would become one of the greatest players in the club’s history, twice making the All-Star team, commandeering the team’s all-time career lists and, with Johnson and Childs, leading the unlikely, emotion-laden march to the 1999 Eastern Conference title.

Now Houston -- player then, executive now – serves as a link to potentially the same kind of summer. This time around, the stakes, the money, the names, the dreams, are all bigger. The Knicks never had a summer quite like 1996. Except, perhaps, for this one.



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