Knicks champions bring title magic to Morristown with Walt Frazier, Mike Breen

By Kristen Neymarc

If you were anywhere in the Greater Morristown area Tuesday night and suddenly felt your spirits lift, you weren’t imagining it. You were feeling the electricity generated by the joy, nostalgia, affection, and euphoria radiating from the Mayo Performing Arts Center, where fans were positively glowing in the company of some of their most beloved Knicks voices and heroes.

If that sounds a little over the top, it’s because the evening was.  The Drew Forum brought Knicks broadcasters Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Mike Breen to MPAC for an evening of stories, memories and basketball—and then raised the temperature considerably when Knicks players Miles “Deuce” McBride and Landry Shamet walked onstage as surprise guests. MSG Knicks analyst and ESPN New York host Alan Hahn moderated the evening.

RELIVING THE CHAMPIONSHIP CALL

Hahn went straight to what the audience wanted to hear—the Knicks’ June 13 championship victory over the San Antonio Spurs, a 94–90 Game 5 win that delivered New York its first NBA title since 1973.

A clip of the final seconds played on the huge screen, carrying Breen’s call through the theater: “Knicks fans, this is not a dream. Go ahead and cry.”

Hahn admitted that he had cried, then asked Breen if he had, too. “Yes,” Breen said. He explained that for years Knicks fans had told him that if the team ever won another championship, they would cry, so he had wanted his final call to speak directly to them. “It was hard to hold in the emotions on the air,” he said. “But to see it finally happen was magical.”

What delighted him most, Breen said, was what the championship meant to the fans and the city. Breen, a New Yorker and Knicks fan since age 7, thought he already understood the size of the fan base. The championship proved otherwise. “I was wrong,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Frazier, asked the same question, had a different answer. “I didn’t cry because after 53 years, my tears have dried up.”

The audience roared.

ADVICE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

The conversation eventually moved from what Breen and Frazier had witnessed to what they had learned. With members of the Drew University basketball team in the audience, Hahn asked what advice they would give young people hoping to make a career in broadcasting.

Breen’s answer was simple: Preparation, and being someone other people want to work with. “Come in every day to work with joy and curiosity and preparation,” he said. When he calls a game, he said, he wants viewers to come away knowing three things: That he was prepared, that he loves basketball and that he likes the person sitting next to him.

He paused. “Clearly, I failed on the third.”

The theater erupted again.

Frazier’s success formula extended beyond broadcasting to include confidence, teamwork, hard work and respect — qualities he synthesized from his parents, eight siblings and his teammate and idol, Willis Reed. (Frazier shed tears when Reed died in 2023.)

“If you don’t believe, you can’t achieve,” he said, adding that he still prepares for games with the same discipline he brought to basketball.

DECADES OF CHEMISTRY

Breen and Frazier have the credentials to back up their advice. Breen received the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Media Award for broadcasting in 2020; Frazier received it in 2022. Frazier, a two-time Knicks champion inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player in 1987, is the only Hall of Fame player also to have received the broadcasting honor.

But their appeal together is less about résumés than chemistry. Breen, the polished and meticulous play-by-play man, grew up idolizing the stylish, quick-witted Frazier, whose rhymes, enormous vocabulary and flamboyant wardrobe have become part of Knicks lore. They have worked together for more than three decades, and Breen said the chemistry was there almost immediately.

Frazier remembered meeting him somewhat differently. “When I met Mike, I knew he was a neophyte.”

Breen shot back: “I made the biggest mistake of my career. I said, ‘Clyde, you can talk whenever you want.’ I’ve regretted it ever since.”

It never hurts to have great mentors. For Frazier, it was legendary sportscaster Marty Glickman. Marv Albert inspired Breen.

WHAT COMES NEXT?

Then Hahn turned to the question hanging over every Knicks fan in the room: What happens now?

The laughter stopped. The theater went so quiet you could have heard a sneaker lace drop.

Frazier knew the problem firsthand. His Knicks won the championship in 1970 but failed to repeat, and did not win another title until 1973.

“Hunger,” he said. “How bad do they want it?”

Winning, Frazier warned, changes everything. There are celebrations, appearances and demands on players who once could simply disappear into the gym and work. Knicks captain Jalen Brunson just hosted Saturday Night Live. Even Frazier’s own phone, he joked, had been “ringing off the hook” since the championship.

“It’s very difficult to repeat,” he said.

“IT STARTS TODAY”

Minutes later, the answer walked onto the stage.

As a highlight reel rolled, Knicks point guard McBride and shooting guard Shamet appeared, sending the audience to its feet again. Asked what the Knicks needed going into their title defense, McBride pointed to preparation. They had come directly from a two-a-day practice, McBride said. “It starts today.”

Shamet said all the accolades and jubilant replays count for nothing on Oct. 20, when the Philadelphia 76ers will be gunning for the Knicks in their season opener.

“None of it matters, and that’s the approach you have to take. That stuff’s not going to carry you. You have to define the new things that are going to carry you, and new habits, new foundations you’re rebuilding,” he said.

When the conversation turned to the fans, both players made clear how much that support had mattered during the championship run. Shamet recalled being surprised to find Knicks fans even in San Antonio, while McBride remembered hearing his name chanted on the road in Philadelphia.

“It’s a blessing,” McBride said. After years of long nights and early mornings fighting for playing time, he said, hearing Knicks fans behind him made the payoff almost overwhelming. “When shots are falling, and you guys are behind me, I mean it feels like I’m on top of the world.”

For Shamet, New York had become something close to home. “We love the energy it gives us,” he said, describing his affection for the city and the connection he had developed with it — he even met his fiancée there.

McBride said the championship parade was “one of the best days of my life,” not simply because the Knicks had won, but because of the extraordinary outpouring from the people who came to celebrate with them.

“To see that many people show so much love for something you worked so hard for,” he said, struggling for words, made the championship feel like something bigger than the players themselves. “It’s an incredible achievement not just for us, but to be able to share it with you guys, share it with a city that has been yearning for a championship for so long.”

For one night in Morristown, that love between the Knicks and their fans filled the Mayo: Players describing what the fans had given them, and fans answering with cheers, laughter and standing ovations.

After 53 years of waiting, nobody seemed ready for the magic to wear off.