Dave Checketts was a few months into his job as Knicks president in 1991, having just pushed through his seismic hiring of Pat Riley. He was dining with agent Bill Pollak in Manhattan, with the purpose of negotiating an extension for Pollak’s client, Charles Oakley.
When the conversation shifted to Patrick Ewing, Checketts learned about Golden State’s plot to poach his All-Star.
Pollak explained that his other client — Chris Mullin — was urged by the Warriors to restructure his contract so more money was guaranteed on the front-end. Ewing was the reason. Because of a unique contractual clause, New York’s center would become a free agent if he wasn’t among the NBA’s top-4 highest-paid players for the 1991-92 season. Ewing’s deal left him at No. 4 in salary, behind only Cleveland’s John Williams, Houston’s Hakeem OIajuwon and Chicago’s Michael Jordan.
Mullin’s salary was ranked fifth, but a restructured deal would push Ewing into free agency.
According to Checketts, Ewing desired a relocation to Golden State and his power agent, David Falk, was pulling the strings. Mullin agreed to participate but was apprehensive.
“Pollak was basically saying, ‘Look, Mullin is from New York, he doesn’t want to cooperate, he doesn’t want to be the reason Ewing gets to leave New York,” Checketts said in an interview with the Daily News. “But he’s in this tremendous conflict situation. Because if he makes it happen and you have Mullin, Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Patrick Ewing on the Warriors — they’re winning a bunch of titles.”
Checketts, a Mormon from Salt Lake City, then turned New York tough on the Warriors, threatening owner Jim Fitzgerald and team president Dan Finnane with ruin.
“I gave them both the same speech,” Checketts said. “I just said, ‘Gentlemen, I know what you’re doing, I get it completely, I understand why you’re doing it, and I’m telling you if you do it, I have 17 lawyers at Madison Square Garden without much to do.’ I’m telling them, ‘If you do this, I’m going to sue you for contractual interference.’
“’And I know exactly what you’re doing. And I have all the witnesses. If you do one thing to Chris Mullin’s contract to trigger Patrick Ewing going into free agency, there’s going to be a lawsuit to end all lawsuits. You won’t be able to play basketball for as many years as I can possibly make it. Because the bad faith you’re going to generate in the league among ownership will be devastating for you.’"
“I was like, out of mind,” Checketts chuckled. “I was like making it up as I went.”
The Warriors never signed off on Mullin’s new contract, and the Knicks won an arbitration case against Ewing to ensure the center’s prime was spent at MSG. It was a fitting introduction to a high-octane position for Checketts, and his early victories over the Warriors and Falk were prescient. For a decade as a head figure at MSG, Checketts oversaw a golden age for Knicks basketball and Garden business. He was the ruthless negotiator, corporate shark and charming family man who was ambitious and smooth in the spotlight — pretty much the opposite of the carousel of Knicks executives from the last 20 years.
Time has been tremendous for Checketts’ Knicks legacy. Since he was ousted by James Dolan in 2001, the franchise owns the NBA’s worst record and its highest payroll.
“Bill Parcells said it best, you are what your record says you are,” Checketts said. “I subscribe to that theory, to that statement. I believe it completely and fully. And I always said, and I learned this early in my NBA time with Frank Layden with the Jazz — it’s always about results. It’s all about winning. And it has never been about winning since a bunch of us got out of there. I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t know what drives them. I don’t know what they think. But it’s not about winning. It couldn’t be. And that’s the only thing that drove us.”
Checketts’ first moves toward winning were securing Riley and Ewing in the ’91 offseason. That transitioned to a frustrating rivalry with the Chicago Bulls, a largely one-sided battle highlighted in ESPN’s wildly popular “The Last Dance” documentary. Checketts’ opening season, for instance, ended with Jordan dropping 42 points on the Knicks in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semis.
Xavier McDaniel had been a revelation for New York during its 1992 postseason run, representing a physical nuisance to Scottie Pippen, in particular. But Checketts was advised to refrain from offering McDaniel a multi-year deal in free agency, and the hated Celtics scooped up the power forward to the chagrin of Knicks fans.
“The doctors were telling me you got to be crazy to give him more than a year guaranteed because they just didn’t believe his knee would hold up,” Checketts said. “And they also thought he couldn’t endure Pat’s hard practices. Pat was known for having great conditioned clubs. And they just didn’t think the X-Man was up to that.”
Checketts was correct. McDaniel regressed and was hooping in Europe by 1995. Checketts and GM Ernie Grunwald, searching for offense, pivoted to acquiring Charles Smith and Doc Rivers from the Clippers in a trade for Mark Jackson.
“[Smith] was coming up on an unrestricted free agent year and he made it clear the Clippers weren’t going to re-sign with them,” Checketts said. “And Larry Brown was coaching the Clippers and he was in love with Mark Jackson. So we knew that and we made the trade.”
The Knicks won 60 games in 1992-93, which has been accomplished only twice in franchise history, and captured the East’s No. 1 seed. They held a 2-0 series lead over the Bulls in the conference finals, but a newspaper article somehow shifted momentum. Dave Anderson from the New York Times became the antagonist after reporting that Jordan spent a night gambling in Atlantic City instead of preparing for Game 2.
The backlash and criticism fueled Jordan.
“I said to Dave, I saw him the next day, ‘Do you have any idea what you just did?’” Checketts recalled. “And he was actually so giddy about it. He was so happy he had gotten that story because it was such a major story and of course everybody is piling on, saying Michael doesn’t care enough to be really a captain, so let’s stop calling him Magic Johnson or Larry Bird since he doesn’t care enough.’ And Michael announced he was no longer talking to the press. I knew we were in trouble.”
Jordan was two rebounds short of a triple-double in Game 3, then dropped 54 points in Game 4. The Knicks essentially surrendered when Charles Smith missed four straight layups in the final seconds of Game 5. They blew it.
“Charles is a friend of mine. Not a better guy on the planet,” Checketts said. “But is it a Bill Buckner moment? Yeah. I think it probably is for the people in New York.”
Jordan won his third title that year and retired to dabble in baseball, a move that disappointed Checketts because, “I knew if we got by the Bulls, it was only because he wasn’t there.” The Knicks continued as a contender but Checketts revealed there were issues between Riley and Anthony Mason.
He said Riley even flirted with leaving Mason off the ’94 playoff roster.
“It’s easy to say that Mase was very important to that team, but boy he was tough to coach,” Checketts said. “And there were a couple of times where Pat said, ‘I don’t want him on the playoff roster, I don’t want him on the club.’
“And I’d bring [Riley] and Ernie [Grunfeld] together and we’d have an adult discussion, and then I would say to [Riley], ‘Your job is to take the players we give you and to win.’ If you think your chances are better without Mase, then we’ll leave him off.’”
Checketts determined that removing Mason was Riley’s call, but warned the coach he’d have to live with the results and implications.
“There was a pause that felt like 10 minutes. It was a long time,” Checketts said. “And Riles finally said, ‘Put him on the roster.’”
With Mason coming off the bench, the Knicks finally toppled the Bulls in the ’94 playoffs, albeit with Jordan on a baseball diamond and a Game 5 victory tinged with controversy. The key play was a foul on Pippen in the final seconds, which the Bulls argued was bogus because shooter Hubert Davis wasn’t touched until well after his release.
Chicago assistant coach Jim Cleamons was fuming afterwards, according to Checketts, who was nearly forced into a scuffle inside the Garden tunnel.
“[Cleamons] was standing in the tunnel with a bunch of guys around him. And he was just going off on how Scottie never got close to him and it was the worst call in NBA history, and how the league should be ashamed of itself,” Checketts said. “And I walked up to Jim and said, ‘Jimmy, after all the games you guys have won on stuff like that, are you really going to go off on this?’ I thought we were going to fight. He prepared. He pulled his fists up like we were going to fight. I said, ‘I’m not fighting you.’”
The Knicks lost in the ’94 Finals to the Rockets, then dropped a heartbreaking series to the Pacers in the following year’s Eastern Conference semis. Riley had been secretly negotiating with the Heat during the Pacers series, and famously faxed his resignation to the Knicks after accepting Miami’s robust offer to become its team president.
Checketts and the front office continued to revamp the Knicks’ roster by acquiring Allan Houston, Larry Johnson, Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby. The roster concoction produced a second run to the Finals in 1999, and a new, more rewarding rivalry against the Heat.
The era’s symbolic finish was Ewing being traded to the Sonics for Glen Rice and peanuts in 2000. Checketts said he made the move as a reward to a franchise player who requested a relocation.
“A lot of people look back on it now and say that’s where the downturn of the Knicks started, but if you’re going to blame trading Patrick Ewing at 38 years old for starting the mess, you’re completely uninformed,” Checketts said. “Did we do a good deal? No. Did we have a good deal on the table to do? No. But I felt — and this is me — I felt that we owed Patrick Ewing something. The guy had gone hard the whole time he was with us. He had done everything we could possibly ask of him, and now he was sincerely saying to me, ‘I want to go. I don’t want finish my career in New York. I don’t want to be under the microscope. I don’t want the New York press calling for me to sit out. I want to be somewhere else.’ And his choice was Seattle, and that’s the team we made the deal with.”
Years later, Ewing returned the favor and the appreciation. The Hall of Famer insisted Checketts and Jeff Van Gundy were present at his jersey retirement ceremony at MSG, even though neither were originally invited. Both sat courtside that night in 2003.
Checketts bounced around sports and businesses after leaving MSG in 2001. He owned Real Salt Lake of MLS, and the St. Louis Blues of the NHL. He became the managing partner of a private equity firm and was briefly a consultant with the Detroit Pistons.
These days, Checketts, 64, resides in London as the mission president for the Mormon Church in England. It’s different than presiding over a marquee NBA franchise, but undoubtedly rewarding in other ways.
No matter how the future shakes out, Checketts and the Knicks will always have their successful — and eventful — 1990s.