When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks

In the tradition of The Boys of Summer and The Bronx Is Burning, New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton delivers a fascinating look at the 1970s New York Knicks—part autobiography, part sports history, part epic, set against the tumultuous era when Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, and Bill Bradley reigned supreme in the world of basketball. Perfect for readers of Jeff Pearlman’s The Bad Guys Won!, Peter Richmond’s Badasses, and Pat Williams’s Coach Wooden, Araton’s revealing story of the Knicks’ heyday is far more than a review of one of basketball’s greatest teams’ inspiring story—it is, at heart, a stirring recreation of a time and place when the NBA championships defined the national dream.
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The late 1960s and early 1970s, in New York City and America at large, were years marked by political tumult, social unrest—and the best professional basketball ever played. Paradise, for better or worse, was a hardwood court in Midtown Manhattan.

When the Garden Was Eden is the definitive account of how the New York Knickerbockers won their first and only championships, and in the process provided the nation no small escape from the Vietnam War, the tragedy at Kent State, and the last vestiges of Jim Crow. The Knicks were more than a team; they were a symbol of harmony, the sublimation of individual personalities for the greater collective good.

No one is better suited to revive the old chants of “Dee-fense!” that rocked Madison Square Garden or the joy that radiated courtside than Harvey Araton, who has followed the Knicks, old and new, for decades—first as a teenage fan, then as a young sports reporter with the New York Post, and now as a writer and columnist for the New York Times. Araton has traveled to the Louisiana home of the Captain, Willis Reed (after writing a column years earlier that led to his abrupt firing as the Knicks’ short-lived coach); he has strolled the lush gardens of Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s St. Croix oasis; discussed the politics of that turbulent era with Senator Bill Bradley; toured Baltimore’s church basement basketball leagues with Black Jesus himself, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe; played memory games with Jerry “the Brain” Lucas; explored the Tao of basketball with Phil “Action” Jackson; and sat through eulogies for Dave DeBusschere, the lunch-bucket, 23-year-old player-coach lured from Detroit, and Red Holzman, the scrappy Jewish guard who became a coaching legend.

In When the Garden Was Eden, Araton not only traces the history of New York’s beloved franchise—from Ned Irish to Spike Lee to Carmelo Anthony—but profiles the lives and careers of one of sports’ all-time great teams, the Old Knicks. With measured prose and shoe-leather reporting, Araton relives their most glorious triumphs and bitter rivalries, and casts light on a time all but forgotten outside of pregame highlight reels and nostalgic reunions—a time when the Garden, Madison Square, was its own sort of Eden.

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“Slicing through decades of overgrown folklore, Harvey Araton recaptures what the Knicks of the 1970s meant to their sport, the city, [and a] country in turmoil . . . Ambitious, unrelenting, and with an uncommon eye for detail, WTGWE is the perfect antidote to the malaise of present-day Knicks’ fans.” - Bethlehem Shoals, founder of FreeDarko.com

“Brilliant . . . smartly written, featuring tons of interviews with the Knicks of the Phil Jackson-Clyde-Reed era.” - New York Magazine

“Beautifully titled, wonderfully written . . . When the Garden Was Eden is a book about the assembly, success and failures of the Red Holzman-coached early ’70s Knicks. But with the then-ongoing Vietnam War and general social unrest serving as the backdrop, it’s actually about so much more than that.” - SLAM magazine

“Younger fans, who have watched the Knicks excel only at ticket prices, front-office chaos and the decibel level of the Garden’s public-address system, may find the idea of the Knicks as the embodiment of intelligent, disciplined, unselfish play ludicrous. They would be well advised to pick up Harvey Araton’s When the Garden Was Eden. It will give them a clear picture of what made the Knicks so endearing, as well as a taste of how overwrought that affection could become.” - New York Times

“Araton is the perfect writer for the job. . . . [ When the Garden was Eden] a must for basketball fans and a super-must for New York sports nuts.” - Kirkus Reviews

“The coming NBA season may not happen due to labor strife. This book will help fans weather the storm by celebrating basketball at its very best: five players working as one, sharing the glory and achieving the ultimate success.” - Booklist (starred review)

“Harvey Araton, one of our most cherished basketball writers, has evocatively rendered the team that New York never stops pining for—the Old Knicks. More than a nostalgic chronicle . . . it’s a portrait of a group of proud, idiosyncratic men and the city that needed them.” - Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentleman, the Bronx is Burning

“I wasn’t there when Clyde and Willis and Dollar Bill were lighting up the Garden, let alone barnstorming Philadelphia church basements, but after reading When the Garden Was Eden I now feel like I was courtside with Woody and Dancing Harry.” - Will Leitch, founding editor of Deadspin

“Harvey Araton, who writes the way Earl the Pearl played, has made the Old Knicks new again. I learned so much and I was there.” - Robert Lipsyte, author of An Accidental Sportswriter

“ As the preeminent voice on pro basketball, Harvey Araton delivers the book he was born to write. When the Garden was Eden is a brilliant and poignant story of the great New York Knicks champions who transcended basketball in a changing world, and a changing game. Magnificent work.” - Adrian Wojnarowski, author of The Miracle of St. Anthony