If the 1990s Knicks were one player away from getting over the top, who would that player have been?
The team was ready to see if Magic Johnson could be the difference-maker, according to a newly resurfaced newspaper report from 1996.
Magic to the Knicks was more than just idle speculation, Johnson told the New York Daily News in February 1996 -- until the Lakers shut it down.
"I wanted it to be (with the Knicks), but we couldn't work it out," Johnson said, according to Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. "It was a little bit more than just talk. We had talked about it, what would it take, the whole thing and the Lakers said no. And that was the bottom line."
At that time, Johnson was in the midst of one of several comeback attempts after he famously retired in 1991 -- with plenty left in the tank at age 31 -- following his positive test for HIV.
"Pat [Riley] always thought that I could add the leadership, bringing the team together, that whole thing," Johnson told the Daily News, according to Vorkunov. "And he thought I could make some passes to Ewing because of my size, and then add something down low, another scorer down low. If you go back to that [Houston] series, if they had one more scorer, they win that series. That's what he was looking for the one guy to give him that 15-17 points, but, from the inside, that could make everybody else better. He was trying to win."
In 1996, the Knicks were still a title contender and gearing up for a second round of clashes with the Chicago Bulls, led once again by their newly returned superstar Michael Jordan after his sabbatical in minor league baseball.
Of course, Johnson never arrived, and the Knicks stalled out again in the postseason against Jordan and others in the coming years.
