Willis Reed, who won two NBA championships during his legendary career with the Knicks, has died, according to the National Basketball Retired Players Association. He was 80. More:
in Game 7 of the NBA Finals that day at Madison Square Garden in the hopes of winning the franchise's first-ever championship. Reed -- who had missed Game 6 with a severe thigh injury -- wasn't expected to play.
"Willis Reed was the ultimate team player and consummate leader. My earliest and fondest memories of NBA basketball are of watching Willis, who embodied the winning spirit that defined the New York Knicks' championship teams in the early 1970s," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement."He played the game with remarkable passion and determination, and his inspiring comeback in Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals remains one of the most iconic moments in all of sports.
Harvey Araton, the author of"When the Garden was Eden," a book on those 1970s Knicks, said those values were summed up to him when, as part of the reporting for the book, he left Reed a copy of a video of Game 5 of the 1970 finals -- one that Reed had told Araton, prior to watching it with him, he'd never seen before.
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