Kemba Walker And Dwight Hardy Both Make Bronx Proud At Garden, But Walker Steals The Spotlight

 

The great New York City basketball day was really supposed to be about St. John's at the Garden, be about the second game of the afternoon doubleheader, maybe be about a Bronx guard named Dwight Hardy who had so much to do with bringing St. John's back this season. Only now it was all about the ending to the first game, the one between UConn and Pitt, all about Kemba Walker, out of the Sack Wern Houses in the Soundview section of the Bronx. It was all about the ball in Walker's hands against Pitt, game tied. Walker's day now. His time, even with hardly any time left on the clock against the Pitt Panthers and the game tied at 74.
"Anybody in the world knew the ball was coming to me," Walker said in the interview area later, "that I would take that shot."
"Rule number one," Barry (Slice) Rohrssen, the outgoing coach at Manhattan and a former Pitt assistant, said upstairs at the Garden a few minutes later. "Never let the best player on the other team beat you."
Jim Calhoun, the Connecticut coach, sat next to Walker and talked about the various options on the last play, especially once Pitt's 6-11 center Gary McGhee switched out on Walker.
"There wasn't any doubt in my mind," Calhoun said, "which option (Walker) would choose."
New York City guard. New York City moment. Game tied at the Garden in March against one of the best teams in the country. Later Hardy, out of JFK High in the Bronx, would try to put St. John's back in the semis of the Big East, get them back to Friday night. But after some of the big shots Hardy had made in the second half, some of them shots off his own Bronx playgrounds, he traveled with the ball with just under 30 seconds left and Syracuse up four points on St. John's.
But that was for later.
The place belonged to Walker now, off Lafayette Ave., a kid who would later move downtown to play his high school ball at Rice. This was the moment at the Garden that all city kids imagine for themselves, kids out of the projects and playgrounds and rec centers, out of all the old ideas about city basketball.
"I was taking that shot," Walker said.
He would take it on tired legs. He and his UConn teammates were playing their third game in three days. You could see it with Walker most of all, especially down the stretch. He had 22 points before the last shot but if he had his legs Thursday he would have had 30 easy. He was missing shots he usually makes, not just in his dreams, but in his sleep.
But there was no other option for him on that last play against Pitt. He knew it and Calhoun knew it and so did the rest of the UConn players and all of their fans at the Garden.