Marv Albert has called some of the greatest moments that the game of basketball has ever produced. He provided the backdrop for Michael Jordan's most legendary games, including The Flu Game in the 1997 NBA Finals. He amplified the Reggie Miller-Spike Lee rivalry so that us at home could enjoy all the goings-on to the highest level. And his announcing during one of my favorite displays of athletic greatness ever, regardless of the sport, is forever ingrained in my head.
Naturally, with these unforgettable moments, the crowd at said event goes bonkers just as we do at home, thanks in part to Albert's ability to hype us up and make us feel like we're there. But one crowd's explosion stood out above the rest during Albert's long career, and with retirement on the horizon, he looked back on the loudest in-arena memory with Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley on "The Steam Room," available on Audacy.
"The loudest crowd I ever heard was, I go back to 1970 in my early years when the Knicks did win that first championship, and Willis Reed was not supposed to play," Albert recalled. "At the last moment, the warmups had just finished up, the players were still out on the court, and Willis limps out from right below our broadcast booth. And the Lakers just stopped. I remember Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West — they just stared in disbelief to see that Willis was going to play.
"The crowd went crazy, and I never heard that kind of sound. I mean, there were a lot of loud crowds around the NBA, but I never heard that volume, that decibel level."
It's cool to hear that this was the case, since you can hear an uptick in the fan noise at MSG through the video but the quality doesn't allow for us to realize just how insanely loud it was. As a -27-year-old at the time of the game — I was born in 1997 — my familiarity with it had been through highlights and retellings from my grandpa, a huge Knicks fan. But these reflections, like Knicks season ticket holder Stanley Asofsky saying that "the decibel was outrageous," and fellow season ticket holder Phil Suarez saying that he'd "never heard that kind of roar, an uplift in the Garden, ever," make it all the more epic.
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