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Author Paul Knepper takes us back to the 1990s, a time when the New York Knicks, led by Patrick Ewing, perennially made the playoffs and once came within a game of winning it all. Boasting a bruising, physical style that’s long since disappeared from the league, these Knicks are remembered fondly by New Yorkers who pine for a respectable basketball team (the Nets obviously don’t count for Knicks fans) again. In “The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All,” Paul adeptly tells the story of these Knicks, and lucky for us, he’s here to provide the highlights of the narrative.

*Due to dynamic advertising, time stamps may vary:

6:17-6:53: “You get so immersed in this topic. It’s like writing a dissertation. It’s all I thought about for a couple years, and I’m just so heavily involved in [it]. So there’s these little nuggets of information or details that I pick up that I find really fascinating maybe, but I have to question: Is someone who’s not immersed in this topic like I am, are they going to find this stuff interesting, these little details? And these little details, can I make them work within the flow of the book?”

18:17-18:59: “If you give me a choice between talking to Patrick Ewing – especially Patrick Ewing, who’s very guarded – and talking to five to 10 people who knew Patrick Ewing well about Patrick Ewing, I’ll take the five to 10 people any day. I think they offer different perspectives. I think they are probably more honest than Patrick might be. I just think they see him in a different light. … So you start to paint the picture through all those different sources.” Continue reading