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Author Paul Knepper takes us back to the 1990s, a time when the New York Knicks, led by Patrick Ewing, perennially made the playoffs and once came within a game of winning it all. Boasting a bruising, physical style that’s long since disappeared from the league, these Knicks are remembered fondly by New Yorkers who pine for a respectable basketball team (the Nets obviously don’t count for Knicks fans) again. In “The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All,” Paul adeptly tells the story of these Knicks, and lucky for us, he’s here to provide the highlights of the narrative.

*Due to dynamic advertising, time stamps may vary:

6:17-6:53: “You get so immersed in this topic. It’s like writing a dissertation. It’s all I thought about for a couple years, and I’m just so heavily involved in [it]. So there’s these little nuggets of information or details that I pick up that I find really fascinating maybe, but I have to question: Is someone who’s not immersed in this topic like I am, are they going to find this stuff interesting, these little details? And these little details, can I make them work within the flow of the book?”

18:17-18:59: “If you give me a choice between talking to Patrick Ewing – especially Patrick Ewing, who’s very guarded – and talking to five to 10 people who knew Patrick Ewing well about Patrick Ewing, I’ll take the five to 10 people any day. I think they offer different perspectives. I think they are probably more honest than Patrick might be. I just think they see him in a different light. … So you start to paint the picture through all those different sources.”

19:27-19:56: “I interviewed close to a hundred people for the book, and everyone had an [Charles] Oak[ley] story, to the point that I would actually ask people, ‘OK, give me more your best Oak story.’ And I’d say seven out of 10 of them were about what a tough, physical, intimidating, scary guy he was. And three out of 10 were what a kind, gentle, caring, unselfish man he is.”

22:23-23:21: “There seemed to be greater intensity, and I think the physicality contributed to that. Every time down the floor, every possession felt like a battle, so that’s one. I also think there was more player continuity then. Certainly among stars, but even in general, the contracts are shorter now, so teams aren’t together for quite as long. … Patrick and the Knicks played Jordan and the Bulls in the playoffs five times from the late ‘80s to the mid-‘90s, they played the Heat four years in a row in the playoffs, they played the Pacers six times from ‘93 to 2000. And it was the same guys. Reggie Miller was with Indiana the whole time. Patrick was with New York the whole time. Through the whole decade, you had less player movement.”

24:56-26:06: “It’s been brutal, and [Knicks executive James] Dolan gets a lot of the blame for it, and I believe deservedly. I think he’s been a big source of the problem. But I do believe it can turn, and I think it can turn quickly. It happens. Teams that have been really bad for a really long time, you get the right people in place and you get a little bit of luck, and all of a sudden you’re a great team…I would just say that things can turn around relatively quickly even when it feels like it’s been bad forever.”

30:30-31:29: “I think Patrick gets a bad rap. People say he couldn’t get them over the hump, and he couldn’t beat [Michael] Jordan, and he lost to [Hakeem] Olajuwon in the Finals. And all those things are true. But nobody could beat Jordan then, and Olajuwon is, I think, at least top 15, possibly top 10 player ever. He was magnificent. And the other thing is look at his career, look at his teammates. He never played with another Hall of Fame player. … You typically need another great player, a Robin to your Batman to win it all, and Patrick never had that.”

*The book can be purchased on IndieBound or through Barnes & Noble, McFarland or Amazon, among other places.

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Music: “Who Likes to Party” by Kevin MacLeod.