The day O.J. Simpson stopped two of history’s greatest sports moments
Editor’s Note: This story originally ran on June 16, 2014. O.J. Simpson died on April 11, 2024 after a battle with prostate cancer.
There was so much to look forward to.
It was Friday, a warm and picturesque day on the brink of summer. It was a day for things that had never been seen, a day where imaginations would not be needed. It was a day built upon decades of anticipation, a day that would provide memories that could stretch even longer.
There was so much to see.
And then came the event no one could see coming.
June 17, 1994, was already scheduled to be remembered before O.J. Simpson took 95 million Americans on a slow ride down a California freeway.
In Pennsylvania, Arnold Palmer was playing his final round at the US Open. In Chicago and Dallas, the world’s biggest sporting event — the World Cup — would be played on American soil for the first time.
And in Manhattan, there was a familiar feeling — New York was bigger than the world.
At 11:45 a.m., the Rangers would be honored with a parade, celebrating their first Stanley Cup title in 54 years.
“I probably remember that day more than the rest of the playoffs,” said defenseman Jeff Beukeboom. “It’s etched in my mind.”
That night, the Knicks would host Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Rockets, in position to pull within one win of their first championship in 21 years.
“I remember so many things about that day, but so little about the game,” said Jason Lewis, a Knicks fan in attendance at Madison Square Garden.
Twenty years ago, moments slotted for permanent storage in many minds became footnotes to a television experience shared like the first moon landing, with wonder and pride replaced by a shock that strangled the country into submissive viewing.
But that came later.
That morning, Adam Graves was riding a Metro-North train from White Plains into the city, not wanting to sit in the traffic guaranteed to fill the streets.
“When we got on, our car was empty and within a couple stops it was full, and it was shaking back and forth and everyone was singing,” the Rangers forward said. “That’s probably one of my favorite memories, hundreds of Rangers fans on the train just telling stories, and talking and cheering and singing. It was fantastic.”
The Knicks were shooting around at the Garden when the Rangers gathered at the site of their ultimate triumph, to head downtown. The Knicks saw how it could be.
“I can still remember [Rangers coach] Mike Keenan barreling down the hallway between the coach’s office and the locker room on a motorcycle, flying through the hallway at 30 miles per hour,” said Jeff Van Gundy, then a Knicks assistant coach. “It was incredible. The joy on all their faces, it was really special. … Watching that parade after our morning practice was a thrill for all of us. We were hoping to repeat it a week or so later.”
Before the evening showed the troubling and bewildering sight of highway overpasses filled with people supporting a man who appeared guilty of murder, an estimated 1.5 million people packed downtown Manhattan to celebrate a group worthy of their adulation.
In New York’s first team parade since the 1986 Mets, the Rangers rode up Broadway through the Canyon of Heroes toward City Hall, with shredded computer paper ably doubling as confetti, falling from the surrounding skyscrapers, as various Rangers hoisted the Cup.
The day had finally come.
“I’m a bit of a history fan and I remember seeing the D-Day parades,” Beukeboom said. “I basically was in awe of the fact that I’m doing what these veterans got to do when the war ended in the ’40s. That was inspirational for me.
“I’ve got pictures at home. I can’t believe I had the ability to go down Broadway and have people cheer me on. I thought that was amazing.”
At 3 p.m. Eastern time, Germany and Bolivia kicked off the World Cup, but by then, the world’s biggest event had become an ant standing next to the Loch Ness Monster.
An hour earlier, Simpson had failed to surrender himself to the LAPD as scheduled, and nine minutes later, a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of murder — one day after the funerals of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
The man forever smiling in the spotlight — winning the Heisman Trophy at USC, becoming the NFL’s first 2,000-yard running back in a Hall of Fame career, starring in Hertz commercials, working as a TV analyst, appearing in the “Naked Gun” trilogy — was nowhere to be found.
At 8 p.m. Eastern time, attorney Robert Shapiro met with the media, pleading for Simpson to turn himself in, and friend Robert Kardashian read a letter from Simpson, widely interpreted as a suicide note:
“I think of my life and feel I’ve done most of the right things. So why do I end up like this? I can’t go on. No matter what the outcome, people will look and point. I can’t take that. I can’t subject my children to that. This way, they can move on and go on with their lives … Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O.J. and not this lost person. Thanks for making my life special. I hope I helped yours. Peace and love, O.J.”
At 9:45 p.m., Simpson’s white Ford Bronco was spotted on the 405 Interstate, with former teammate Al Cowlings (“You know who [he is], dammit!”) behind the wheel and Simpson in the back, holding a gun to his head.
The image is burned in memories forever — the Bronco crawling down the highway, with more than a dozen police vehicles in low-speed pursuit and even more helicopters overhead, capturing the chaos for an insatiable audience.
Roughly 3,000 miles away, as the second quarter of the most important Knicks game in more than two decades continued, the nation couldn’t move. Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon were afterthoughts, even at the Garden, as courtside seats became less valuable than prime position at the concourse concessions.
A day that began with so many possibilities looked as if it might provide an ending that just didn’t seem possible.
“I remember going to the bathroom and walking past the concessions and seeing a TV and it wasn’t showing the game, which was weird. It just looked like a boring highway and there was a white car,” said Lewis, then a 15-year-old sitting in the 400-level seats. “There was no volume, but we soon knew what was going on. I went back to the seats and told my dad, loud enough so that everyone could hear, ‘They found O.J.! He’s getting chased down the highway!’
“It was maybe a minute or two before halftime and then there was an exodus, where the whole section ran down the stairs. Hundreds of people were huddled in front of the concession stands, yelling at the TV. That just consumed the second half of the game.”
Fans at the arena had a choice. Fans at home were given the game in a small box occupying less than one-quarter of their television screens, the Finals were now nothing more than an inconvenience and annoyance to NBC, which had signed an exclusive deal one year earlier to broadcast the NBA for $187.5 million per year. It was the least-watched Finals game since the tape-delayed games of the early 1980s.
Juxtaposed were the highest of hopes with the worst fears. Legends in the making played beside an American icon’s destruction. The Knicks were on their way to making their past failures irrelevant. Simpson was doing the same to past glories.
Though the situation didn’t affect the players, it didn’t go unnoticed. Even in the biggest game of nearly each player’s career — in a series tied, 2-2 — the disarming number of empty seats was evident.
“There was a different feeling in the building. You didn’t have the unbridled passion and fervor that typically a game like that would bring about, and then you figure out why,” said Greg Anthony, then a Knicks guard and now CBS Sports’ lead college basketball analyst. “There were conversations going on during the game amongst the players as to what was actually happening, but that story was just breaking. People were just starting to think that possibly he could be guilty of doing something like that.
“The guys were absolutely cognizant and aware of it, but we weren’t distracted by it. It was easy to focus on what we had to focus on. It was just weird that everybody in that environment wasn’t focused on it.”
After 75 minutes, the chase was over.
As midnight in New York approached, Simpson finally surrendered and the Knicks were one win from an NBA championship, following a phenomenal defensive effort and a 91-84 win, with Anthony Mason scoring 17 points off the bench and Ewing posting 25 points, 12 rebounds and eight blocks, tying an NBA Finals record.
Another party was about to be planned.
“It would’ve been beautiful, a parade following a parade,” Mason said. “It was a dream come true, as far as opportunity goes. Some people never even get that opportunity.”
Lewis said, “We walked out of that building, the entire arena pounding on the railing, everybody chanting at the same time: ‘Knicks in 6!’ It was the coolest thing in the world. It was a high I never felt before. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that we weren’t going to go to Houston and win one of those games.”
Optimism was everywhere.
Olajuwon had not yet blocked a scorching John Starks championship-winning shot at the end of Game 6. Starks’ career-defining 2-for-18 performance in Game 7 was still days away.
The Rangers didn’t know the 54-year drought had just begat a new 20-year stretch. Colombia, a World Cup favorite, still had a tournament to look forward to, and its captain, Andres Escobar, a life after that, unaware he’d be murdered in two weeks after scoring an own goal against the US.
The day was over and no one knew anything, really.
“It was too quick,” Rangers legend Stephane Matteau said. “I remember it being crazy, but it was too quick.”
For some.
For others, it seemed like it would never end.
