The year is 1979. Despite the NBA being 75% Black players for well over a decade, a historical moment was taking place in Atlanta. At the Omni Coliseum, the hometown Atlanta Hawks were opening their season against the New York Knicks. This Knicks team made history that night by featuring an all-Black roster, the first in NBA history. While this occurrence is not uncommon today, it was unprecedented back then.

That Knicks team may often get overlooked in the history of the franchise. They finished 39-43, missed the playoffs, and hold the unenviable distinction of being sandwiched in between the golden age of Knicks basketball in the early 70s and the Patrick Ewing era that started in 1985. But while they are overlooked, they should not be forgotten. They played in an era that was incredibly racially charged and broke boundaries while dealing with hostility and negativity. In their own way, they are a testament to human perseverance and overcoming difficult times.

It is important to understand that the NBA, heading into the 1980 season, was much different than the one we watch today. Finals games were on tape delay, the league was struggling financially, players were known to have drug addictions, and there was a notion that a heavy influx of Black players was hurting the league’s viability. As a result, many basketball fans tend to overlook the 70s, a distant memory seldom mentioned.

But heading into the 1979-80 season, there was reason for optimism. That was the year that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the league and carried over their rivalry from the 1979 NCAA Championship game onto the NBA level. It cannot be discounted that part of the appeal for many was Larry Bird—the “Great White Hope”—an awesome White basketball player in a league dominated by Black players.

This is not too dissimilar from how we have seen certain segments of White basketball fans flock to Caitlin Clark in the WNBA this past season. But back in the 80s, it was even more pronounced because battle lines became drawn. Because of their stars, White fans generally liked the Celtics, while Black fans gravitated toward the Lakers or the Philadelphia 76ers, who had Julius Erving. These racial undertones elevated the rivalry between Boston and LA and brought more visibility to the NBA.

This moment underscored America at the time, a country filled with bubbling racial tensions. Just a short sixteen years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, many in America still clung to old ideals of discrimination. In Larry Bird, they had a symbol they could get behind, even if Bird himself didn’t agree with their values. These feelings were magnified by the emergence of Ronald Reagan and his ideologies when he won the presidency in 1980.

Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, but his reverberating impact on American society and culture was felt before then. Reagan was the governor of California in the 60s, growing his profile leading up to the presidential election. During his time as governor, he echoed sentiments that many who engaged in the “Larry Bird, Great White Hope” talking point felt inside.

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed race-based discrimination in employment and voting, Reagan opposed both measures. He even went as far as weakening the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act to limit the scope of African Americans in political discourse.

During his presidency, he also enacted policies that were hostile towards minorities. Reagan was a firm opponent of affirmative action, suggesting that “reaching quotas” was harmful to White Americans. He also ran on a platform that popularized the term “states’ rights,” which many have viewed as coded language to allow states that opposed Civil Rights reforms to avoid adhering to new progressive laws.

Even economic policies during the Reagan years had a tinge of disenfranchisement. Often called “Reaganomics”, his policies included tax cuts and deregulation for corporations that arguably increased the wealth gap between the upper and lower class. And considering the generations of roadblocks to accumulating wealth for Black Americans, this can be looked at as another act of hostility during that era.

Lastly was Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” which disproportionately targeted communities of color and criminalized many Black men in the process. This slant towards prejudice has become more evident over the years, as there have been leaked audio recordings of Reagan and former president Richard Nixon calling Black men “monkeys.”

Despite this, Reagan won the election in 1980 in a relative landslide. His opponent, Jimmy Carter, was wildly unpopular and only carried 49 electoral votes versus Reagan’s 449. That electoral count is the fourth-most ever, with the first-most being Reagan’s re-election in 1984 with 525 votes versus Walter Mondale’s 13.

The signs of a cultural division during the Reagan era were evident, and yet over half of the country got behind his candidacy…twice. Black people were incarcerated at an exponentially higher rate during the 1970s and 80s, while White families moved away from cities to suburbs due to this sort of prejudiced culture. Hip-hop music started to take hold as an emerging genre, and many White people felt threatened. This is the culture that the 1980 Knicks existed in. One where an all-Black basketball team turned heads and made people reckon with their views on race in America.

The highlight of the 1979 NBA Draft was Magic Johnson. The Michigan State point guard was drafted by the Lakers with the first overall pick and could resume his rivalry against Bird, who was taken with the sixth pick in the 1978 Draft. That draft had some intriguing players after Johnson that would be very successful in the NBA such as Sidney Moncrief, Vinnie Johnson, and Clifford Robinson.

The Knicks had three first-round selections in that draft, with the number three pick being the best one. With it, they selected center Bill Cartwright from the University of San Francisco. Cartwright is better remembered today as being the starting center in Chicago with Michael Jordan during the Bulls’ first three-peat. But for his first eight years in the NBA, Cartwright was a steady presence for the Knicks.

Cartwright made the All-Star team in 79-80, one of only 45 rookies to ever accomplish that feat. He averaged 21 points, 9 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks that season, establishing himself as a player with great potential. In the backcourt for that Knicks team was guard Michael Ray Richardson. A dynamic scorer and playmaker, Richardson would also make the All-Star team that season while leading the league in both steals (3.2 per game) and assists (10.1), a feat that only John Stockton and Chris Paul have accomplished since then.

With these two players, the Knicks had a young duo in their early twenties that would help them build toward a bright future. The team also held a remnant of the past with legendary guard Earl Monroe, who was playing the last season of his illustrious Hall of Fame career. But outside of Monroe, the team was remarkably young with the six biggest minutes getters being 26 or younger. That youth would be a hurdle to overcome for any team in any era. But in the 70s into the 1980s it became especially precarious.

Head coach Red Holzman tried to downplay that his young team was making history by being the first all-Black roster by taking a color-blind approach and saying that his roster was filled with the best players the Knicks could get. Publicly, this was the stance of Knicks management and league officials. The NBA leaned into messaging that painted the game and the league as a post-racial reality. Behind the scenes, however, they could not ignore the racial realities of America in 1980.

At the time, the NBA was in trouble before it was saved by the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird rivalry. Attendance numbers were low, and most franchises were losing money. That problem could only be exasperated when, in a charged racial climate, a team fields an all-Black team. That was the thought process of the Knicks front office. Their solution was to attempt to trade for Seattle Sonics forward Jack Sikma, who was just beginning his Hall of Fame career. When that didn’t work, they tried to engineer a trade with Phoenix to get Paul Westphal. The Knicks were unsuccessful, and there was concern about the way the team would be embraced in New York City.

At that time, there was a lot of change happening in New York City. The city underwent economic hardships and the rise of street gangs. The city’s White residents villainized their Black counterparts and moved to the suburbs, as was popular during the aforementioned Reagan era. A citywide blackout in 1977 further escalated these simmering tensions which resulted in violence and looting throughout the city. During this time, minorities were targeted by law enforcement, further expanding the divide between Black and White people in New York. This is the environment that the 1979-80 Knicks were presented with.

According to New York Post journalist Peter Vecsey that season, some White fans had taken to calling the Knicks by a different name. Taking the elongated Knickerbockers and replacing “Knicker” with the N-word. This was indicative of a shift in favorability among fans back then. The Knicks were quite often one of the best attendance draws in the NBA, especially during the early 70s. But 79-80 saw a dip. Part of that is due to the team struggling and New York City’s economic downturn in the later half of the decade. But it also cannot be discounted that racial animosity played a part in that dip.

The 1979-80 season was a mediocre year from a winning perspective as the team missed the playoffs. The following season, they would field yet another all-Black roster. That year, the young Knicks seemed to be heading in the right direction. They won 50 games and made the playoffs. Cartwright and Richardson continued to produce at a high level. Young point guard Ray Williams also emerged as a viable scoring option for the team, averaging 19.7 points per game. They had also acquired Campy Russell from Cleveland who provided a scoring punch on the wing.

The team seemed to be setting up their next era of exciting basketball. But then the team couldn’t agree to a new contract for Ray Williams and just as quickly as it came together, the team dissolved. This short-lived experiment would make way for the Bernard King era and eventually the Patrick Ewing era. Williams would go on to have one good year with the Nets, while Richardson would be traded to Golden State the following year and eventually have a brief renaissance with the Nets as well.

These two years of Knicks basketball are often forgotten, which can be expected when the team goes 89-75. But their impact as an indication of the changing tide of racial acceptance in the country should not be ignored. They played in a city that was very much divided, at a time of unrest but also at a time when the culture was shifting around them. The NBA had incorporated the three-point shot, hip-hop music was becoming a cultural movement in the Bronx, Black New Yorkers were protesting and rioting to make sure their voices were heard in society, and BET (Black Entertainment Television) was founded.

Those Knicks were groundbreakers as well. Their success in 1980-81 showed that NBA teams could be successful with an all-Black roster, while also showing that they were able to overcome adversity. Their story is an illustration that a team can win and be representative of something special in an unconventional sense. They were presented with a hostile climate and still found a way to be an exciting, if at times frustrating, team. Although they were sandwiched between two iconic eras, that doesn’t make what they did any less fascinating.