I kept hearing about how great this book is, and it didn't disappoint, A fun, informative read from a great basketball writer.

I am mainly familiar with the author from his appearances on The Lowe Post podcast, which is one of my few remaining links to my basketball fandom. The 90s Knicks were an interesting team and Herring seems wise to focus on John Starks and Anthony Mason, neither of whom had blue chip basketball pedigrees, but were players of consequence. Pat Riley sounds like a loon, but I guess you can be that way if you win. There likely wouldn't be a book like this about small-market teams that didn't win a championship, but maybe there should be. Every team has its own stories.

I really enjoyed reading this book and the depth it gave on the 90s Knicks teams. The reputation that those teams have as bruisers was well earned, but history and time have a way of sanding down the fine details until you're left with a large story that may not be accurate. Blood in the Garden gave a great amount of detail into the skill that those Knicks teams had, and how they worked to address their deficiencies.

Pat Riley is clearly one of the most important people in the story of the NBA - you can't tell the story of the NBA from the 80s to the present day without him. What was interesting about this book was how much it exposed some of the warts that Riley has either worked to keep hidden or has never had to address. At first, I was worried Riley would be dealt a soft profile, but Herring's research clearly found people willing to talk about the issues they had with Riley. What intrigued me was how much the story of the Knicks in the 90s spun around Riley - he was the axle on which everything turned, even after he left.

While it's probably true of most teams, I was amazed at the amount of chaos that the Knicks seemed to be in constantly, and how it didn't affect their winning (for the most part). What finally caused their downfall was familiar to a lot of teams: a belief that you need to continue to do things the way that worked before, and when you do adapt, you're not doing it with real fidelity.

I really enjoyed this book and would give it to any NBA fan. I think they would deeply enjoy the book and find a great amount of new information.

This is a lovingy-detailed, incredibly-well-researched and reported overview of the 1990s New York Knicks, a team that never grabbed the crown but was painfully close, year-in, year-out. Author Herring goes into every nook and cranny of the team, from the front office to the players and, most critically, their head coaches, particularly Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy.

Over the course of this fast-moving book, you get to know each of the key Knick players, from Patrick Ewing to John Starks to Anthony Mason to many others, blasting past the public personae of each. What is revealed is a team filled with thoughtful, self-sacrificing grinders who didn't quite get to the promised land but were never too far away.

This book shows the workings behind a team that changed the NBA, for better or worse.

The 1990s Knicks played a joyless brand of basketball, and it's easy to see why. The two main protagonists in the book, Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy, are both very controlling of all aspects of the team. Riley came off as more paranoid and devious than anything. He perceived almost any innocuous action as an unforgivable slight. When Riley leaves, it's almost a relief. Van Gundy would likely have followed in Riley's footsteps if he'd been a more powerful figure. But starting out as a coach meant that people like Dave Checketts could prevent him from going full Riley. The 1990s Knicks played a joyless brand of basketball that only the purest basketball fans could enjoy. Reading about their coaches shows why they were so.

This book also hits all the beats a good sports book should. The anecdotes are interesting. The game action is described quite vividly. The main characters are well formed. There's also a solid arc of the Knicks' rise and fall. I'd put this up against most sports books written in the last 20 years.

I highly recommend this book for the 1990s NBA or Knicks fan in your life. Others may not find it as engaging as those groups of people will.

Growing up in the 80's and 90's you either loved the Knicks or you hated them. I was a die hard Bulls fan, so as you know they were rivals. I loved to see teams beat down the Knicks!

This book brought me back to childhood. It reminded me of the way basketball used to be.

I enjoyed when books are written by reporters as they have the ins and outs on players, teams, management, etc. and I felt like you got that in this book.

I think it was wonderfully written and a must have for any sports fan, even if you're not a Knicks fan.

I received this book in exchange from NetGalley

I just reviewed Blood in the Garden by Chris Herring. #NetGalley

I really enjoyed an inside look into the team I watched and idolized as a child. The author did an excellent job and made me feel like I was in the locker room

Subtitled: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

In the 1990s, several NBA Eastern Conference teams thought that the recipe to getting past Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the playoffs was to bully and pound on them. The New York Knicks of the mid- to late-1990s embraced that philosophy more than any other team since the Detroit Pistons earlier that decade.


Patrick Ewing was one of the league’s most physical players even before his team adopted violence as a strategy, but when the team added players such as Charles Oakley, John Starks, and Anthony Mason to the mix, the Knicks began leaving opponents battered and bloody. The Knicks of that era reached the NBA Finals twice. While their intimidating tactics never won the NBA title, they usually managed to push the teams that did to their limits.

I gave Blood in the Garden five stars on Goodreads. I usually rooted against the Knicks of that era, but they did make for interesting reading, and I actually felt a bit sorry for them because of the unusual and sometimes heartbreaking ways they lost several playoff series.

Very enjoyable book! Any NBA fan can enjoy this book, whether they were there for these events in the 90s or not. Herring's research is incredibly thorough and paints an excellent picture of what life was like for the Knicks teams during that iconic and tumultuous decade. Herring does a great job of illustrating both on-court action and off-court dynamics. As someone with no affiliation to the 90s Knicks, this book was thoroughly enjoyable and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of NBA basketball.

This is one of the best guides to an individual sports franchise during an important time in their history. The New York Knicks took on an identity of the smash mouth/hard hitting basketball team trying to win a title with Patrick Ewing leading the way. Stories of Pat Riley's tenure, Jeff Van Gundy taking over, reaching the finals, falling short and trying to win their way makes this a must-read for any diehard NBA fan.

One of the more entertain basketball books out there tackling one of the most fascinating time periods of an historic sports franchise. Could read endless amounts of books about 90s Knicks.

I wanted to like this book. I waited for it and was thrilled when I got an advance reader copy. I'm a Knicks fan and had season tickets for a couple of years in the 90s. Anthony Mason remains my favorite player. The author (a fellow Michigan alum and talented sportswriter) clearly has the same affection for the team.

But...

I was hoping for a deeper dive into the mindset of the players and coaches. Instead, it felt more focused on scores and games. There were biographical vignettes and I would gladly read another book by the author in which he interviews the same players and coaches.

Thank you Net Galley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

As a lifelong Knicks fan, there is no real new information here, but that doesn't mean I didn't love every word of this book. I was a kid during this stretch of Knicks history and I remember every one of these victories and defeats like they were yesterday. Just looking at that cover gives me chills. Essential for sports fans and especially Knicks fans looking to relive the last golden era of this (hopefully) rebounding franchise.

Professional basketball in the 1990’s was certainly dominated by the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan, having won six titles during that decade. Two others were won by the Houston Rockets and at the end of the decade, the San Antonio Spurs won the first of their five titles. However, if one is talking about teams that excelled during that time, one must also include the New York Knicks. Those Knicks teams provided some of the most thrilling moments for their fans and faced the Rockets and Spurs in the NBA Finals during the 1990’s. This excellent book by Chris Herring chronicles those teams in a fun, fast-paced read – not at all like the style of play by those teams.

Led by Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason, the Knicks were most famous for their stifling defense and their physical play. This carried over into their practices, and it is in those practice sessions where Herring tells the most interesting stories and information about the team. Whether it was about John Starks not wanting to drive to the basket during practice early in his tenure with the team, Gerald Wilkins sharing a story about practice ending early if he ran through a line of teammates ready to throw elbows and shoulders at him (he declined the offer) or the details in which coach Pat Riley had the team execute during these sessions, I enjoyed these sections more than the either the game writing or the portraits of key personnel.

That doesn’t mean that these sections of the book weren’t good – there were full and complete profiles on many of the key people who made the Knicks so successful during the 1990’s. That starts with Patrick Ewing and Pat Riley, the best player and coach respectively for the team during this time. But others are included as well – Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Jeff Van Gundy, Dave Checketts – those are just some of the names and people a reader will learn about as he or she reads about the team.

As for in-game writing, that is not as in depth as one might expect as only memorable games or moments are covered in detail. Take the 1994 Finals in which the Knicks lost to the Houston Rockets in 7 games. Of course, game 7 and the shooting struggles of John Starks are well documented as was the scene at Madison Square Garden during game 5 when the fans were leaving their seats and watching the television monitors in the concourse during the low-speed police chase of O.J. Simpson. But if a reader wants more detail of the other games in the series, there isn’t a lot aside from some details of the Knicks wins. The reader will still get a good perspective of the series, just not a lot of detail. This is true for all of the regular season and playoff basketball described in the book.

Knick fans who remember this time with mostly happy memories (after all, they did not win a championship) will want to get a copy of this book as will fans of the NBA during this time frame, when the Knicks, through their physical play, were one of the better professional teams.
I wish to thank Atria Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Chris Herring’s Blood in the Garden is a riveting tale of the 1990s New York Knicks. As a New Yorker, you can’t ask for much more; but, any sports fan — new or old — will love this well-written examination of the Eastern Conference dynasty that is largely forgotten about due to the supremacy of Michael Jordan and The Bulls. I would love to write an expansive piece on this before the January 18th release. This one is not to be missed !