Wayback Wednesday: Herb Williams & The New York Knicks

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at Herb Williams and his lengthy association with the New York Knicks.

When we think of players who are synonymous with the New York Knicks, I feel quite confident in saying that Herb Williams probably isn’t the first one that comes to mind for most people. NBA history buffs will likely recall Willis Reed, the Finals MVP on both of the Knicks’ championship teams in the 1970s, or his teammate Walt “Clyde” Frazier. Obviously, Patrick Ewing will be a popular choice, being an All-Star and the franchise’s all-time leader in twenty categories. Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire might be the first Knicks that younger fans think of.

If tasked to keep naming Knicks, then players like Charles Oakley, John Starks, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, Anthony Mason, Earl Monroe, Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell, Bernard King, Micheal Ray Richardson, and Dick Barnett will be on the list. Marcus Camby, Kurt Thomas, Charlie Ward, and even Phil Jackson will possibly get a mention. These days, Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle will probably be brought up as notable New York Knicks long before Herb Williams is. This is understandable, yet at the same time, Williams can claim one of the longest tenures in the history of the team, which produced some interesting stories. Let’s take a look back…way back…

For the record, Herb Williams ended up playing 278 games for the New York Knicks in seven seasons, starting in only ten. This isn’t surprising, of course. He joined the team in his mid 30s as a secondary backup to Patrick Ewing, long removed from his prime with the Indiana Pacers in the 1980s. Funnily enough though, Williams’ 278 games with the Knicks are more than Tyson Chandler (183), Bernard King (206), J.R. Smith (213), Derek Harper (216), Marcus Camby (221), Eddy Curry (222), Quentin Richardson (245), and Amar’e Stoudemire (255) played for the team. He’s also not far behind Stephon Marbury (287), Greg Anthony (293), and Jamal Crawford (299).

In other words, Herb Williams played in more regular season games for the New York Knicks than several All-Stars and key role players that we’d associate with the team before him. Granted, their numbers and impact make them far more memorable and significant in team history. To that point, Block Percentage and Defensive Box Plus/Minus are the only two categories in which Williams ranks in the top ten on the Knicks’ all-time leaders. Portland Trail Blazers Legend Maurice Lucas grabbed more boards in one season with the Knicks than Herb Williams did in seven! Longevity is impressive – especially for a role player – but short stints can be far more impactful.

With that being said, it’s still impressive that Herb Williams was not only a mainstay on the Knicks through the late 90s, but also ended up playing 18 seasons in the NBA. Given the way that veterans are sometimes forced out of the league, it speaks to how he was highly valued as an experienced voice on the bench and in the locker room, as well as his ability to still relieve his younger teammates for a few minutes here and there when needed. What’s also interesting about Herb Williams is that the Knicks continued to call upon his services in this way despite also including him in a couple of trades in the mid to late 90s, temporarily interrupting his long tenure in New York.

A few days ahead of the trade deadline in 1996, the Knicks traded Herb Williams and Doug Christie to the Toronto Raptors for Victor Alexander and Willie Anderson. That deal led to Christie’s breakout with the Raptors, sealed Alexander’s phantom stint with the team, and gave Anderson a short run with the Knicks some five years before his younger brother Shannon played for them. It also led to Herb’s only game with a team other than the Knicks between 1992 and his retirement in 1999, picking up six points and eight rebounds while playing 31 minutes in Toronto’s 102-86 loss to the Jazz on February 22nd. He was waived the next day, and rejoined the Knicks on the 28th.

Unlike Rasheed Wallace’s one-game stint with the Atlanta Hawks that was reflected in NBA Ballers, no 1996 season video game captures Herb Williams’ blink-and-you’ll-miss it Toronto tenure. A couple of years later, the Knicks threw Williams into another trade, only to reacquire him shortly afterwards. During the 1998 season, the Knicks traded Williams to Philadelphia along with Ronnie Grandison – an offseason signee who hadn’t played for New York or any NBA team since 1996 – for Terry Cummings on February 19th. The 76ers released him two days later, and once he cleared waivers, Herb Williams was back with the Knicks come February 25th.

Normally, in the days before official roster updates were viable and commonplace, this deal was unlikely to have made it into any video games. However, thanks to the late release of Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside and its roster cut-off date of February 19th 1998, the game includes both Terry Cummings’ midseason stint with the Knicks, and Herb Williams’ phantom stint with the 76ers! For those keeping track of video game and NBA roster trivia, this means that Herb Williams had a (very) brief stint that doesn’t officially appear in any video games, and a phantom stint that did end up in the official rosters of at least one title. It’s always fun when a player can boast both!

Williams signed a multi-year deal with the Knicks after the lockout was lifted. Now in his 40s, he played in just six regular season games, but made eight appearances during the postseason. It isn’t often that a player appears in more games during the Playoffs than they did in the regular season – incidentally, Raja Bell also did so as a rookie in 2001 – so that’s another rare distinction that Herb Williams can claim! His final game was Game 5 of the 1999 NBA Finals against the Spurs, officially tallying just 14 seconds of court time in the loss that allowed San Antonio to clinch their first title. The Knicks waived Williams on September 28th, and he retired on November 1st.

That wasn’t quite the end of his journey on the virtual hardwood, though. Because he wasn’t released until late September, Herb Williams still appears on the Knicks’ roster in the PC version of NBA Live 2000. That makes him another example of a player who retired after a game’s roster cut-off date, giving Herb yet another tidbit of video game roster trivia to his name. Williams is still playable as of NBA 2K24, owing to the inclusion of the 1999 Knicks among the selection of classic teams. Of course, Herb Williams did actually remain involved with the New York Knicks in between his retirement in 1999, and the addition of that classic team to NBA 2K’s rosters.

Four years after his final game with them, the Knicks hired Williams as an assistant coach on Don Chaney’s staff. Chaney was infamously fired two hours before a game on January 14th 2004, leading to Williams taking over as interim head coach for one game: a 120-110 victory over the Orlando Magic. The Knicks hired Lenny Wilkens on January 15th, with Williams returning to his assistant coach role until taking over for Wilkens after the latter resigned a year later, halfway into the 2005 season. Herb Williams remained a Knicks assistant until 2014, serving under Larry Brown, Isiah Thomas, Mike D’Antoni, and Mike Woodson, twice stepping in when Brown was ill.

Although his head coaching gigs were short-lived, when creating our roster updates for NBA Live 2005 PC, we still made a point of accounting for Williams’ temporary promotion. Once basketball video games began including an assistant next to the head coach on the virtual sidelines, Williams could be seen back on the bench. He was also usually available to replace a head coach when making staffing changes in NBA 2K’s franchise modes. In real life, Williams was fired by Phil Jackson in 2014, though he went on to serve as an assistant coach for the WNBA’s New York Liberty from 2015 to 2019. Now in his mid 60s, it appears that Williams is more or less semi-retired.

Between his time as a player and coach, Herb Williams spent twenty seasons with the New York Knicks, albeit with a couple of interruptions when he was temporarily traded later in his career. Throw in his time with the Liberty, and Herb Williams was involved with professional basketball in New York for a quarter of a century. As such, while his name isn’t the first to come to mind when you think of the Knicks, Williams has actually been connected to the team longer than several more noteworthy names. Indeed, when you take his coaching career into account, he’s been associated with the Knicks longer than former teammate Patrick Ewing, arguably their best ever player!

Because we’re obviously all about basketball gaming here, it’s also fun to look at how Herb Williams’ lengthy connection with the New York Knicks has impacted and been reflected in basketball video games. Williams’ entire playing career with the Knicks has been represented on the virtual hardwood, beginning with his first season in New York in games such as NBA Showdown for Super Nintendo, right through to 1999 season titles such as NBA Live 99, and even NBA Live 2000 PC as a recent retiree. There’s also some fun trivia with his phantom 76ers stint that made it into the first NBA Courtside, and the brief Raptors stint that was never accounted for in games.

And of course, by virtue of being a long-time assistant coach for the Knicks and NBA 2K’s inclusion of historical teams and players, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing him on the virtual hardwood decades after his playing career concluded. To that end, Herb Williams isn’t just a veteran player that I remember being at the end of the New York Knicks’ bench when I got into basketball back in the 90s. He ended up being a fixture of Knicks basketball for two decades, and video games have provided some constant reminders of that. It stands as proof that it isn’t just the biggest names that can boast interesting stories and deserve to be remembered when we’re discussing NBA history.

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