One of the best eaves with the most scoring ability in the NBA, if you had to call in someone who had a deep love for basketball, it was Bernard King, who was in several league teams, but I'm going to put special emphasis on his season with the New York Knicks, which was classified as his dream season.
King the favorite son of Brooklyn, the king of the suburbs, in his glorious time in New York, which also marks history for the franchise. Get record records, such as scoring 50 points with 90% success rate or being one of the few players capable of scoring 60 points (the highest score in the history of the Knicks). To review the historic series of playoffs that pitted the Knicks against the Pistons, a Pistons that included Thomas, Long. In that series he becomes the first player in history to score more than 200 points in a series of 5 games, with a chilling average of over 40 dpi. It is said that coach Hubbie Brown only respected Bernard King in that team.
His first season with the Knicks averaged 23 points per game, and in his second season he nearly snatched the MVP from the legendary Larry Bird, averaging 26 points per game. The king's problems seemed to disappear and his famous "party face" was a sign of this.
In 1985, Bernard King, showing his best potential, led the league with 32.3 points per game.
Like everything else in the sport, there is the pinnacle of glory and there is also the fall that can be caused by injury. On March 23rd of the same season, the Knicks were fighting for the playoffs against the Kansas City Kings and suddenly, with 1 minute and 34 seconds to go and 37 points to go, King suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in Kansas. That injury was the end of any athlete at that time, the kingdom of Bernard King was filled with darkness.
The usurper to the throne was none other than a torn cruciate ligament of the knee, the sentence was clear, the reign of Bernard King was coming to an end.
Bernard King decided to take a risk and tried an experimental technique that consisted of removing tendons from his hip in order to implant them in his knee and speed up his recovery. Two years later, in the 86-87 season, the king returned to the Madison with cheers and applause, but everything had changed in New York. The Knicks had not made it into the Playoffs due to King's absence and had made it to the draft with a Patrick Ewing, losing interest in King. He was transferred to the Washington Bullets shortly after the following season, Bernard King began a new stage where, against all odds, he performed at a high level, although many believe that he never managed to caress the crown again.
Bernard King retired in 1993 because of his battered knees. In all, he spent almost four years without being able to play basketball because of his various problems. In 2013 the NBA did him justice and granted him the privilege of being able to enter the U.S. Basketball Hall of Fame, yet many still wonder and even claim that Bernard King was the king who could not rule.
"Basketball kept us away from a lot of bad things around us. One day I remember I won a trophy playing basketball and went enthusiastically to show it to my parents, but on the way home I got punched and robbed, that was the atmosphere around me," Bernard King said.
The NBA is a world with many stories, players who have achieved great success, players with great potential who have not been able to develop it, stars who shone but could not finish their careers successfully, is the scene where the best athletes in basketball leave aside other aspects, to concentrate on the highest level of competition.
In New York and the whole world basketball family there was a time when they were in love with Bernard King's style of play and his precise midrange shooting.
Perhaps the respect King earned for himself is one of the reasons why the Knicks still have many fans around the world.
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