The tickets were up in the old blue seats at the Garden. This was opening night for the Knicks, Oct. 27, 1984, and we had taken the train in to scream like Beatlemaniacs for Bernard King, to heckle the hell out of Isiah Thomas, Kelly Tripucka, Kent Benson and the rest of the Pistons.
Bernard was Bernard, dropping 34 on his way to the scoring title, and the Knicks won the game, 137-118. But all we talked about on the train home was one guy: Eddie Lee Wilkins, sixth-round rookie from Gardner-Webb, making his debut, only playing because both Marvin Webster and Bill Cartwright were hurt.
Eddie Lee scored 24 points that night, grabbed 10 rebounds, had the Garden chanting his name for most of the second half. We were sure a folk hero was born that night, if not a superstar. But the Knicks only won 24 games that year. Eddie Lee never scored as many points in any of his other 321 NBA games.
Years later, I was talking to the great Dick McGuire, who watched more Knicks games than anyone, and I mentioned that night to him.
“Eddie Lee!” he beamed. “You want to know the truth? I was here the night Bill Bradley made his Garden debut, in ’67. I was here when Patrick [Ewing] made his. The gym got pretty crazy both nights, but can I tell you something? It wasn’t as crazy as it was when Eddie Lee Wilkins went nuts that first night. Honest to God, it was something.”
So, yes, the Garden has fallen hard before, and it hasn’t always been for Clyde or Earl the Pearl. This is the building’s special province, and the sport’s. We just saw how smitten the city can get with a football team, and we know how besotted it can be with the Yankees and the Mets when we get a good baseball summer to sink our teeth into.
But there is more quiet desperation among Knicks fans because this is our game, and our sport, it is the city game, and we are constantly on the lookout for a savior to fall out of the sky, since he rarely arrives through the draft or a trade. It always been that way.
Remember, as great as Ewing was, the most popular characters on his best teams were John Starks and Anthony Mason, two vagabonds in glass sneakers whose illogical, improbable journeys captured not only the Garden’s attention but its imagination.
Now, we have Jeremy Lin, and he has strung together three games that have injected passion and energy and — most important — fun into a Knicks season that 15 minutes ago seemed like it was careening into the harbor. He has burned up Twitter, inspired dozens of banners, probably saved coach Mike D’Antoni’s job for now.
It’s easy to get carried away, sure. But even after you chisel away the hyperbole, you have to be intrigued at how Amar’e Stoudemire will play alongside someone so precociously proficient at the pick-and-roll. You have to believe that Carmelo Anthony — who is no dummy — understands he has to buy into the new look Lin brings to the offense, and likely is relieved to shed the burden of being a play-making forward.
Do you find yourself having to stand on the brakes once in a while? Of course you do. There are few secrets and fewer surprises in basketball. Logic screams there has to be a reason everyone in the league whiffed on Lin.
But again: This is basketball in this city. These are the Knicks. At the Garden tonight are the Lakers, and even the proudest New Yorker will cop to envying the hell out of them, out of their unbroken string of excellence from West to Wilt to Kareem to Magic to Shaq to Kobe, and everyone else in between. That’s what New York craves.
What we’ve gotten, too often, are too many patches of ice and darkness, too much haplessness and hopelessness, so much that sometimes you can confuse Eddie Lee Wilkins with Moses Malone. Hoping — always hoping — that someone really will fall out of the sky one of these days and be the real thing.
Or maybe just make the drive down from Harvard Square.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com