When the Garden Was Eden

Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks

By: Harvey Araton

Narrated by: Tim Morgan

“Brilliant . . . smartly written, featuring tons of interviews with the Knicks of the Phil Jackson-Clyde-Reed era.” — New York Magazine

“Harvey Araton has evocatively rendered the team that New York never stops pining for—the Old Knicks. More than a nostalgic chronicle . . . it’s a portrait of a group of proud, idiosyncratic men and the city that needed them."" — Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentleman, the Bronx is Burning

In the tradition of The Boys of Summer and The Bronx Is Burning, New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton delivers a fascinating look at the 1970s New York Knicks—part autobiography, part sports history, part epic, set against the tumultuous era when Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, and Bill Bradley reigned supreme in the world of basketball.

The late 1960s and early 1970s, in New York City and America at large, were years marked by political tumult, social unrest . . . and the best professional basketball ever played. Paradise, for better or worse, was a hardwood court in midtown Manhattan.

Harvey Araton has followed the Knicks, old and new, for decades—first as a teenage fan, then as a young sports reporter with the New York Post, and now as a writer and columnist for the New York Times. When the Garden Was Eden is the definitive account of the New York Knicks in their vintage pomp. With measured prose and shoe-leather reporting, Araton relives their most glorious triumphs and bitter rivalries, and casts light on a team all but forgotten outside of pregame highlight reels and nostalgic reunions at the Garden.

Araton’s revealing story of the Knicks’ heyday is far more than a review of one of basketball’s greatest teams’ inspiring story—it is, at heart, a stirring recreation of a time and place when the NBA championships defined the national dream.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Terrible Narrator of Excellent Book

I didn’t realize until the end that the book was written in 2011. The decision to make it into an audiobook was a good one, especially with the resurgence of the Knicks. The book brought back great memories of my childhood idols and games I watched, listened to (most often) and attended. I do believe that Knicks’ team was poetry in motion and probably the smartest and most cohesive unit ever in the NBA. I also fully enjoyed in depth profiles of the team’s component parks. Despite the excellent content, the listening was severely adversely affected by the narrator’s constant mispronunciations. He clearly was not familiar with the subject matter or would not have repeatedly mispronounced names like Riordan, Cowens, Unseld, Pepe and many others. Every mispronunciation jumped out like fingernails on a chalkboard and took away from a fine book.

Poor choice for a narrator

The person narrating this book obviously has little or no background in sports, as evidenced by the numerous mispronounciattions throughout. "NAIA" instead of N-A-I-A, Howar COsell, Mike RYERdon, Tommy HeinSON, and on and on. Very off-putting. Equally bad is that the author and the editor either didn't notice or didn't care enough to make edits.