The New York Knicks have been dubbed a ‘poverty franchise’ by many fans around the NBA for a while now. The team has tried to make big moves, but they always end up settling for the worst. This has happened a lot in the past 20 years or so, but it seems like the Knicks got used to this a long time ago.
Back in the 70s, they had the chance to land two of the most memorable players in NBA history in consecutive years, but the team decided to ignore these offers and ended up missing out on two players that would have made it a huge dynasty.
These two stories happened a year of difference, which makes them more curious. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became a legend on the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers, while Julius Erving did the same with the New Jersey Nets and then Philadelphia 76ers.
New York Knicks Missed Out On Opportunities To Land Kareem Abdul-Jabbar And Julius Erving
Well, before they joined a second team in the association, these two were linked with a move to the Knicks, but the franchise decided to take a different route. First, they were offered Kareem after the player revealed his desire to leave the Milwaukee Bucks. The Knicks were one of the teams believed to land KAJ, but they didn’t want to take him.
Via The Athletic:
It was also one of the first instances of two long-lasting trends across NBA history: a superstar exerting his power to leave one franchise for another, and the Knicks coming up short in pursuit of him.
In Abdul-Jabbar, the Knicks not only lost out on a hometown star who wanted to return to New York City, but were later haunted by a legal quirk that made their inaction even more painful.
“I wanted to go to New York and play in New York,” Abdul-Jabbar said on the day he was introduced as a Laker. “That’s always been kind of a dream of mine since I first started playing basketball, to play for the Knickerbockers.”
One year later, the team had a similar opportunity with Julius Erving. The Nets had offered Dr. J to the Knickerbockers, but they rejected the small forward.
Via Sportscasting:
During that time both teams shared the city of New York, and that was never really an issue until the Knicks realized that the Nets would not only share the same backyard with them but also play in the same league. The New York Knicks were so upset that they demanded close to $5 million from the Nets for invading their NBA turf as an indemnity payment. Roy Boe, the Nets owner at the time was forced into offering Dr. J’s services to the Knicks to cover the indemnity. The Knicks refused, and this is to this day considered as one of the worst decisions in their franchise history.
The Knicks are a team accustomed to missing out on big opportunities. They couldn’t land Michael Jordan in the 90s, then they couldn’t get LeBron James, and more recently, they saw Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving pick the Brooklyn Nets over them in the 2019 NBA free agency.
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