FEBRUARY 2022 55despite the fact that he enjoyed a career-best scoring average
against the Rockets, and despite Starks’s arctic spell—his
teammates wondered whether the exchange with Riley
had something to do with it. Blackman wondered, too.
“I don’t know if that caused some interior backlash or
played a role in [Riley’s] choice,” says Blackman, who
hadn’t played in the series prior to Game 7.
As the fourth quarter wore on, and Starks continued to
miss, the drumbeat only grew louder. A jumper he front-
rimmed so badly that it bounced out of bounds into the
arms of a cameraman sitting along the baseline. A pull-up
three in transition that hit the back iron and resulted in a
Houston fast break and dunk. A great look from the left
corner that bounced out.
Starks would score on a putback to trim Houston’s lead to
78–73. But the make would be his last. With just under two
minutes left, and the Rockets up, 80–75, Vernon Maxwell
hit a three over a hard-closing Starks that forced a timeout
and had Houston all but tasting champagne.
There’d be no merciful ending for Starks. Seemingly
just as lost as he’d been trying to get home that day from
school initially, Starks would miss his last four shots of
Game 7—the last of which fell about 4 ∏ feet short of the
basket. He’d finish 2-for-18 from the field and 0-for-11 from
three, still among the worst performances in a game that
would decide an NBA championship.
Houston won, 90–84, and the team’s celebratory
screams pierced the visiting locker room walls.
All of which made it even harder to hear Riley’s post-
game speech, one that no one remembers. The entire group,
sensing the opportunity it’d missed, was too crestfallen
to absorb anything. “You’re seeing him talk, but you just
aren’t hearing him at all,” assistant coach Jeff Nix recalls.
Guard Derek Harper—who’d played so well that he’d pre-
pared an outline for a speech in case he earned Finals MVP—
then walked into the shower in his full uniform, wailing.
Herb Williams kept his shower short, not wanting to stay
at the arena any longer than necessary. He left before the
team bus, opting to walk back to the hotel alone.
Blackman showered slowly, letting the suds wash away
the disappointment of not getting a chance to sub in for
Starks. Before the shower ended, he knew he’d played in his
last NBA game. (Over the years, Riley—who’d later call not
subbing in Blackman “the biggest mistake I ever made”—
has sent a number of handwritten letters to Blackman.
But Blackman says he’s never written Riley back.)
Understandably, Game 7 cut Starks deep. He showered
for an hour, so long that most newspaper reporters gave
up on waiting for him, realizing they’d miss their print
deadlines. “We literally had to pull him out of [the shower],
he was in there so long,” assistant Jeff Van Gundy recalls.
Starks’s anguish and insomnia persisted for days once
he made it back to New York—a city that never sleeps,
and a basketball town that, with a nearly 50-year NBA
title drought, figures to be restless until it can experience
that championship feeling again someday.front of the group before, but also because of Riley’s terse
response to such a respected veteran.
To an almost comical degree, Riley was a staunch believer
in being either in or out as far as his teams were con-
cerned. During his first training camp with New York, he
overheard a phone conversation between team president
Dave Checketts and Checketts’s wife, Deborah, who was
purchasing an SUV. When she f loated the idea of getting
a green Chevy Suburban, Checketts said that was fine. But
it wasn’t fine with Riley.
“She can’t buy a green car, Dave. Green is the Celtics,”
Riley said.
Checketts began laughing, thinking Riley was making
a joke. But Riley was completely serious.
When Checketts relayed that green wouldn’t work, his
wife suggested red as an alternative. Again, Checketts was
fine with that. And again, Riley wasn’t. “What? Red is the
Bulls,” Riley said.
Checketts finally relented, telling his wife not to bring
home anything other than a blue Suburban. But that was
how Riley was wired. You were either in or you were out,
down to the color of your car.
So when Blackman never got subbed into Game 7—
DREAM ON
Finals MVP Olajuwon shut down Ewing,
holding him to 36.3% shooting in the
series, which forced Starks to keep firing.