NEW YORK — One humid night some 27 years ago, Jeremy Spicer and his friends were playing H-O-R-S-E with a makeshift hoop at the corner of E. 43rd Street and Foster Avenue, deep in Brooklyn.
Clad in his sweat-soaked Patrick Ewing jersey, he promptly dropped the ball at 6:55 p.m. and ran inside. The Knicks were on, facing the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals, down 2-0 but returning to Madison Square Garden. He went to a handful of games a year with his father back then, and tickets for Game 3 were only $15 at tip. But pa was out of town, so the couch it was.