Today is Reggie Miller‘s 47th birthday, a day both Pacers and Knicks fans lived for back in his heyday of the mid-90s. Pacers fans celebrated his biggest moments while the best the Knicks could do was know the eventual Hall of Famer was one year older. Of course, you can’t mention his biggest moments without noting their crossover with the Knicks. What’s the best? On his birthday, of course it’s one of his games where he tortured Spike Lee.
Miller simply buried the Knicks in Game 5 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals with 39 points, which is in elite company by itself. Since 1985 only 51 performances have gone for 39 or more in a conference finals, done by 23 guys. (Of note: Did you realize there were an absured seven games of 39 points or better in 2009?’s conference finals alone? LeBron James had three of them.) This is Miller’s only entry on that list. Thirty-nine isn’t the point here, though. It’s 25 that Knicks and Pacers fans remember. Watch the clip of his destruction and you can hear the frustration in the post-Reggie bucket cries of the Madison Square Garden’s faithful. The 25 that Miller poured in during the fourth quarter was all but 10 of Indiana’s fourth-quarter points, and nine more than all of the Knicks combined in that quarter. He went 6-of-11 on triples — and had zero turnovers in precisely 39 minutes, 0 seconds of playing time. On the game’s biggest stage, Miller delivered the drama.
The Knicks got them back, winning the final two games to come back from 3-2 down, and winning the series. But Game 5 was Reggie’s day, a crazy moment that seems to always seems to resurface on Reggie’s birthday. Sorry, Knicks fans.
What was Reggie’s best performance?
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