NEW ORLEANS — Hubert Davis was holding it together while everyone else inside Madison Square Garden had lost their minds. This was the night of May 18, 1994, and the second-year guard from North Carolina was about to take two of the biggest free throws in New York Knicks history.
The Chicago Bulls were leading by a point in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semis, with the series tied. Michael Jordan was off playing minor league baseball and unavailable to do any tormenting and conquering, which meant a couple of clear-cut things:
1) The Knicks had no choice but to win this series.
2) Hubert Davis had no choice but to make these foul shots.
Scottie Pippen had famously fouled him on his wayward jumper with 2.1 seconds to go, at least that’s the way official Hue Hollins saw it. Pippen went crazy over the call and his coach, Phil Jackson, went crazier, later standing in the Garden hallway and screaming at Hollins from outside the refs’ dressing room.
So much time and energy was spent on whether that post-release touch foul on Davis’s right arm on that jumper is one that should have been whistled, especially against a future Hall of Famer. Not enough time and energy have been spent on what went down after that call.
Davis, a part-time starter, hadn’t been to the line all night. He had played only 14 minutes. Though he was an established dead-eye shooter, and though he had made 84 percent of his free throws that year, Davis had every right to be a nervous wreck a day after his 24th birthday.
He stepped to the line with the ball in his hands. “Nothing was on my mind other than making those two free throws and putting us one game closer to the Eastern Conference Finals,” Davis recalled Friday at the Superdome, where he will coach North Carolina against Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke in a Final Four clash for the ages.
Actually, Davis did think a bit about the shooting lessons taught by his father. He took a deep breath, lowered his shoulders to his bent knees, and then rose up and released the ball with a textbook follow-through. Swish, and the Garden crowd roared. Jackson called a timeout to force Davis to ponder his second attempt with the score at 86-86.
It didn’t work. With Riley looking relaxed on the bench, his left leg crossed over his right as if waiting for a bus, Davis repeated the routine and gave the Knicks a one-point lead. The Bulls called another timeout, and then watched in horror as Pete Myers threw an errant inbounds pass to give the Knicks the game and, ultimately, the series.
His No. 44 jersey looking too big for his 6-foot-5, 183-pound frame, Davis skipped down the tunnel pumping his right fist. A reporter asked him that night if Patrick Ewing or anyone else had talked to him before his free throws. “No one did,” he said. “I told everyone just to leave me alone. I didn’t want anyone to tell me to concentrate or not to be nervous. I just wanted to be left alone and let me try to do the job.”
Not blessed with high-major athleticism or physicality, Davis had made himself a high-major star in Chapel Hill, and made himself a first-round draft choice (No. 20 overall) of the Knicks in 1992. Dean Smith believed in him and so did Riley, a hell of a daily double. And when the rough-and-tumble Knicks started to get to know him, Davis stood out for his commitment to 24/7 professionalism.
“On our team of street fighters,” said Riley’s old assistant, Jeff Van Gundy, “he was our milk drinker.”
This wasn’t to say that Hubert Ira Davis Jr. was soft — no, no, no. He just didn’t have time for extracurricular nonsense, or for rooming next to teammates who didn’t keep his kind of quiet late-night hours.
“He lived every day with his game,” Van Gundy said. “When he took those free throws, you knew the thing wasn’t going to be too big for him. He put in the work, and from successful repetition comes confidence. Hubert had an incredible quiet confidence about him.
“Toughness comes in different forms, and Hubert had some of the greatest mental toughness we had on that team. I think the one thing he did so well this year, when Carolina was struggling early on, he never wavered and that didn’t surprise me. Through his ups and downs in his playing career, he was the same guy. You could count on him to be the same guy under the spotlight.”
As a first-year head coach with a storied program, the successor to Roy Williams, Davis has handled the spotlight with the greatest of ease. He weathered some humiliating early- and mid-season losses, then connected with his team in time to ruin Coach K’s home farewell in Cameron, to win 10 of 11, and to beat everyone in the NCAA Tournament from defending champ Baylor to zillion-to-one shot Saint Peter’s to reach the Final Four in Year 1.
“Hubert’s been terrific,” Krzyzewski said. “I just thought he always had poise and he has great humility. … He’s run his own race. He hasn’t tried to be Dean Smith or Roy or anybody else. He’s been himself in that culture.”
Davis was himself in New York, too, playing with Ewing and the rest. He said Friday that he wished he stayed with the Knicks his entire NBA career, not just for four seasons.
He made a lasting mark in the big city anyway. With those two free throws to beat the Bulls a long time ago, Davis proved he would never fear his first Final Four or his last dance with Coach K.
