The Players Voted Him Above Larry Bird... Then He Lost Everything Bernard King

In 1984 the players of the NBA filled out an MVP ballot of their own, and they did not put Larry Bird first. Eight numbers hang in the rafters at Madison Square Garden today. The man those players chose is not one of them. This film follows a career the league never found a place for: sixty points on Christmas Day, fifty in San Antonio and fifty more in Dallas the following night, a knee injury that in 1985 simply ended people, and two years of work in a gym with nobody in it. You will hear what one night in Salt Lake City cost him at twenty-three, why a franchise drafted his replacement inside three months, and what he was still scoring at thirty-four. Subscribe to Broken Hardwood for more untold stories from the NBA's golden age. TIMECODES 00:00 — Two MVP Ballots in 1984, and the One Nobody Talks About 01:48 — Fort Greene: Six Children, and the Face Bernard King Invented 04:05 — Bernard King at Tennessee, and the Letters Nobody Signed 09:20 — Salt Lake City, and a Team Gone at Twenty-Three 11:04 — Traded to New York for a Reserve and a Second-Round Pick 14:36 — Fifty in San Antonio, Fifty in Dallas, Forty-Eight Hours Apart 17:52 — Larry Bird Takes the Writers' Vote; the Players Choose King 18:39 — Sixty Points on Christmas Day, a Knicks Record for 29 Years 19:21 — March 23, 1985: The Knee That Stopped Bernard King at Twenty-Eight 20:18 — Two Years in an Empty Gym, and 28.4 a Night at Thirty-Four 24:52 — The Hall of Fame Said Yes. The Garden Never Did. #BernardKing #Knicks #BernardKingStory #NBAGoldenAge #NBADownfall