In the mid-1980s, there wasn’t a full slate of NBA games scheduled on Christmas Day -- just one. “We were the sole attraction. You knew all your peers and the basketball world was watching,” Bernard King would recall, years after he recorded one of the all-time Christmas Day performances, when he poured in 60 points against the Nets.
Being from Brooklyn, King recalled having goose bumps every time he took the court at the Garden. “Every game at Madison Square Garden was Christmas,” he said. And every time King took the floor, you knew he just might deliver the gift of another offensive performance for the ages.