Knicks’ run is missing one thing: The Captain, Willis Reed, enjoying it with his friends – The Athletic
The Athletic has live coverage of Spurs vs. Knicks in Game 5 of the 2026 NBA Finals.
Gale Reed was sitting there during the comeback Wednesday night, right there in the same row with Bill Bradley and his daughter and Earl Monroe and his wife. Her late husband, Willis, had told her all about the time he limped through the Madison Square Garden tunnel to face Wilt Chamberlain in Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals.
“I’ve never heard a roar like that before, like the building was just rumbling,” the man known as “The Captain” of the New York Knicks assured his wife.
“And now I know,” Gale said Thursday. “Now I know that sound.”
She heard the same roars as the Knicks attacked the San Antonio Spurs’ 29-point lead in Game 4, and as OG Anunoby went flying through the air in the final seconds to tap in the biggest shot in franchise history — or at least the biggest since Reed made the Knicks’ first two baskets on one functional leg the night they claimed their first title.
Fifty-six years later, Gale Reed wore Willis’ signed jersey to Game 4. A fan on a hotel elevator had asked her earlier whether the jersey was authentic. Gale told him why she was 100 percent sure it was the real deal.
“No way, no way,” the man replied. “You aren’t The Captain’s wife.”
That fan ended up sitting directly behind Gale at the Garden. She was there to represent her beloved husband, the two-time champ and Hall of Famer who wouldn’t have been shocked the Knicks fought back from the brink of a blowout to seize a stunning 3-1 series lead.
“Willis always said the playoffs were a totally different ballgame, a totally different beast,” Gale said. “He told me that you never write anybody off in the playoffs.”
Willis and Gale Reed attend the Great Sports Legends Dinner at The Waldorf Astoria in 2016 in New York City. (Joe Russo / Associated Press via imageSPACE)
And yet it was even hard for Reed’s wife to keep the faith. The Knicks were getting completely humiliated by the Spurs. Though in her mind Gale kept hearing her husband say what he’d said about trailing postseason teams, she was watching the Spurs drain shots from all over the place.
The finals seemed certain to return to San Antonio as a 2-2 proposition. But then the Knicks did what they have so often done with forbidding deficits, launching a record-breaking finals charge that had all of Reed’s living teammates, including Monroe, Bradley and Walt “Clyde” Frazier, acting like they were out on the court with Anunoby, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.
“I just wish Willis was here to see it,” Gale said.
Every Knicks fan of a certain age feels the same way.
As a nurse at Beth Israel in New York some 45 years ago, Gale met Willis at a nightclub near Shea Stadium that was owned by former Mets outfielders Tommie Agee and Cleon Jones. She was a fan of college basketball, not the pros, and didn’t know the retired Reed used to play for and coach the Knicks. “We struck up a conversation and went from there to marriage in 1983,” Gale said.
Willis lived the traveling life as an NBA and college coach, and later as the chief of basketball operations for the New Jersey Nets and New Orleans Hornets, which moved to Oklahoma City after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, two years before Reed retired from the business. He settled back into the country life not far from where he grew up in Bernice, La., and from where he attended college at Grambling State. An avid outdoorsman who made hunting trips with friends, Willis loved to fish in the three ponds on his idyllic 60-acre property atop a hill in Ruston.
Reed talked basketball with his wife, and inevitably the conversation turned to 1970, Game 5 against the Los Angeles Lakers, and the hip and thigh injury suffered before the Knicks rallied from a 16-point deficit (because of course they did) to take a 3-2 finals lead, and before they punted a Game 6 in Los Angeles that the 6-10 center missed.
Willis Reed goes down with a leg injury in Game 5 during the 1970 NBA championship as Lakers big man Wilt Chamberlain stands and watches. Reed left the game in the first quarter and didn’t return — until Game 7. (Bettmann / Getty Images)
The Captain took shots of Carbocaine and cortisone into his severely compromised right leg before Game 7. “The needle was so long it was ridiculous,” he later told Gale. As the team leader, Reed felt he had no choice but to drag that leg through the tunnel and take the floor.
“If Willis didn’t come out,” Frazier said, “we knew we weren’t winning.”
After Reed was greeted by that standing ovation, he told himself, “This is a hell of a predicament to be in. Now I’ve got to face the greatest offensive center (Chamberlain) to ever play the game and do it on one leg.”
Reed made the game’s first basket, a foul-line jumper, because the Knicks always hit the open man and, well, he was open. As he limped back on defense, Reed thought, “I can’t f—ing believe I made that shot.” The center made his next attempt, too, his final basket of the night, before Frazier finished off the Lakers with his 36 points, 19 assists and five steals.
For good reason, that night isn’t remembered as Frazier’s finest nearly as much as it’s remembered as Reed’s badge of courage.
“When Willis was playing,” Gale said, “you’d have to have two broken legs not to go out there. You did your job, and you didn’t take time off for anything. Willis came from humble beginnings, so he knew what it took to make a dollar and to make it honestly.”
After 40 years of marriage, Gale lost Willis in 2023, at age 80, to heart issues and complications from amyloidosis, she said. Today, she wishes everyone could experience the sweet and loving bond they shared.
Gale said her husband was unlike a lot of celebrities who need to be seen or heard. Willis never once bought a new luxury car, for instance. He had his Ford pickup for his hunting and fishing expeditions, and that was good enough for him.
“If he wasn’t so tall, you would never know that he had anything going for himself,” she said. “He was just so humble.”
Willis Reed shoots over the outstretched arm of Wilt Chamberlain as Dave DeBusschere (left) and Elgin Baylor jockey for position. Willis’ 37 points led the Knicks to a 124-112 victory in the series opener in Madison Square Garden. (Bettmann / Getty images)
Even when Reed worked for other NBA teams, he remained loyal to New York, the only franchise he played for. Willis thought his old team, holding a 3-2 lead over the Houston Rockets in 1994, was going to win it all, and repeatedly told Gale after the painful defeat he never thought the title drought would last as long as it did.
Today’s Knicks are one game away from ending the drought. Gale Reed is staying in New York for a potential Game 6. On truth serum, if you guaranteed her the Knicks would win the title in the Garden on Tuesday night, she would admit a Game 5 loss in San Antonio wouldn’t be the worst thing.
Either way, Gale adores this team and Brunson’s captaincy, and the constant comparisons to Reed’s team and captaincy back in the day. “I’ve seen how close these players seem to be,” she said. “Just the way Willis, Clyde, Dick Barnett, Earl, Bradley and Dave DeBusschere used to be.”
If the Knicks win a title, Gale wants a picture with Brunson and Towns because they remind her of Clyde and Willis. “Though I think Willis was a better player than KAT,” she said (half) jokingly.
Willis Reed’s banner is lit up at Madison Square Garden in 2023. (Wendell Cruz / USA Today)
Gale has a stronger connection to these Knicks after witnessing the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history. On Wednesday night, she looked up into the Garden rafters to gaze at Willis’ retired No. 19 as she does at every game she attends.
It was a reminder of the only thing missing from this Knicks run to a potential parade.
The Captain himself, Willis Reed, sitting courtside with Walt Frazier, so thrilled to see his team finally back in the business of conquering all.
