March 23, 1985: Bernard King's Injury

March 23, 1985, 40 years ago: The man who may have been the best player in the NBA at the time sees that status came to a most painful end.

Bernard King and his brother Albert King came out of Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn to become basketball stars. Bernard had starred at the University of Tennessee, Albert at the University of Maryland. Each began his NBA career with the New Jersey Nets, but Bernard was 3 years older: By the time Albert arrived with the Nets, Bernard had been traded to the Utah Jazz.

In 1982, Bernard was traded to the New York Knicks. In the 1983-84 season, he caught fire. He scored 50 points away to the San Antonio Spurs. The next day, he scored 50 again, away to the Dallas Mavericks. He averaged 34.8 points per game in the Playoffs, helping the Knicks reach the Eastern Conference Semifinals.

On Christmas Day, December 25, 1984, the Knicks lost to the Nets, 120-114 at Madison Square Garden, but Bernard scored 60 points. At the time, he was only the 10th player in NBA history to do so. His brother Albert was still with the Nets, but was injured, and did not play. Micheal Ray Richardson, whom the Knicks traded to get Bernard, scored 36; Mike Gminski scored 27; and Kelvin Ransey scored 24.

'Nard kept going in that 1984-85 season. He was leading the league with 32.9 points per game, at a time when it had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, George Gervin, Isiah Thomas, and a rookie named Michael Jordan. But the Knicks themselves were struggling, especially with injuries. 

They were 24-46 when they went into the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, just on the Missouri side of the State Line with Kansas, to play the Kansas City Kings, who were not much better at the time, going 27-43. Only 4,554 fans bothered to show up for a game that started with little meaning, but ended with a tremendous amount of meaning for the Knicks, and Bernard in particular, going forward.

The Knicks were trailing with 1:34 left in the game, and Bernard already had 37 points. Reggie Theus of Kansas City attempted a dunk. Bernard jumped to try to block it. But as he jumped, he yelled, "Oh!" As he came down, he yelled, "Oh, damn!" He crumpled to the floor, and started slapping it, in an immense amount of pain.

Knick broadcaster Marv Albert said, "Look out! King hurt himself as he gave the foul!" The crowd was small enough, and shocked into a level of sound so low, that not only the sound of Bernard shouting, "Oh, damn!" but the sound of his hand slapping the court was picked up by the MSG Network microphones. Hubie Brown, then the head coach of the Knicks, actually heard the injury, saying in an interview years later, "You could hear the crack. It was like a gun sound."

Ernie Grunfeld, who had been his teammate at Tennessee (where the media called them "The Bernie and Ernie Show"), and now was again with the Knicks, said, "It was devastating. My heart stopped, and I think everybody else's heart on the bench stopped, also."

The Kings won the game, 113-105, but hardly anybody cared. The most exciting player in the NBA was diagnosed with a broken tibia, a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), and torn knee cartilage. No player, in any of North America's "Big Four sports," had ever come back from an injury like that before. As far as anyone could tell at the time, Bernard King, only 28 years old, was done.

The game was the 1st of 12 straight that the Knicks lost to close out the season. It put them into a much better position to win the NBA's 1st-ever Draft Lottery. They did -- and there are still people who believe this was fixed, to give the New York team the advantage and the NBA better TV ratings -- and selected Georgetown University center Patrick Ewing. Ewing kept the Knicks relevant as they climbed back up into the NBA's elite, and took them to 2 NBA Finals, but lost them both.

The Kings were not so fortunate. At the end of the season, they left Kansas City, and moved to Sacramento. The Kemper Arena was renamed the Hy-Vee Arena, and, though it still stands in 2025, was replaced by the Sprint Center in 2007. That building has been renamed the T-Mobile Center. The NBA has never returned to Kansas City.

But Bernard King returned to the NBA. He missed the entire 1985-86 season, and, through a lot of hard work by himself and the medical professionals around him, finally returned on April 10, 1987, a Knick loss away to the Milwaukee Bucks. He played just 6 games that season, and was released by the Knicks.

He was signed by the Washington Bullets, and played 69 of a possible 82 games in the 1987-88 season. He played all but 1 game in 1987-88, all but 1 game in 1988-89, and all 82 with the 1989-90 Bullets. He missed 1991-92 due to injury, then played out the string with the Nets in 1992-93, and retired.

He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, and it's not clear that he would have made it had he retired right after his injury. He is now 68 years old, a studio analyst for the Knicks and for NBA TV, and remains beloved in Knoxville, Washington, and especially New York.