Bernard King Still Has Christmas Crown

Jeff Turner can laugh about it now, 25 years later. As an NBA rookie in 1984, he was thrilled to be playing on Christmas Day in Madison Square Garden, the biggest stage of his life, primed to be starting now at small forward for the New Jersey Nets.

Two minutes after tip-off, though, he knew this would not end well for him.

Bernard King of the New York Knicks was on a mission, about to set the league on fire. And Turner would serve as the footnote, the guy trying to guard him.

"I still call it the 'Christmas Day massacre,' '' joked Turner last week. "I think I fouled out before I could break a sweat.''

It was King who made history that day and carved his name into NBA Christmas lore, torching Turner and the Nets for 60 points, most ever in the storied sports cathedral, and still the most points ever scored on the league's annual celebration of basketball.

Turned played 10 seasons in the NBA as a serviceable role player, getting his turn against future Hall of Fame forwards like Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Adrian Dantley and Karl Malone, but no one ever impressed him more than King on that memorable Christmas Day.

"I tell people to this day that the hardest guy I ever guarded was Bernard King,'' Turner said. "In his prime, he was unstoppable. That day, he was incredible.''

The NBA has five games scheduled for Friday, all on national television, the first of which will be the Miami Heat playing in New York against King's Knicks.

"Once a Knick, always a Knick,'' King said earlier this week from his home in Atlanta, where he will watch basketball on television with his daughter throughout the day. "Obviously, playing on Christmas is very special. It always has been. When I look back, it's still one of the highlights of my career. It's the one game people always ask me about.''

King, 53, played 14 seasons in the NBA and scored almost 20,000 points, leaving with a career scoring average of 22.5 points per game.

He played with the Nets, Jazz, Knicks, Warriors and Wizards before retiring in 1993. He missed almost two full seasons after a devastating knee injury, returning to become an All-Star again. He lost another season to substance abuse, returning to win the league's Comeback Player of the Year.

He won an NBA scoring title, and twice was named first-team All-NBA, both times standing alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas and Larry Bird as the best in the game.

"I'm proud of my basketball career and everything that I accomplished,'' said King, who is part owner of BK&T Energy, a hardware solutions company in Atlanta. "But that Christmas Day game will always have a special place in my heart.''

King (seen at right in 2004) hit 19 of his 30 shots that day. He made 22 of his 26 free throws. He had 40 points by halftime. Turner was starting for the Nets that day only because teammates Albert King -- Bernard's brother -- and Mike O'Koren were injured.

"I think I actually only guarded him for about six minutes,'' said Turner, who left his job as an NBA radio analyst a few years ago to become a high school basketball coach where his children go to school in Orlando. "I got three real quick fouls in the first quarter and left, then tried again in the third, and the same thing happened. I don't think we ever stopped him. Eventually, Bernard just got tired of scoring.''

The Nets tried a variety of other defenders against King -- Michael Ray Richardson, Buck Williams, Kelvin Ramsey -- finally resorting to 6-11, defensive-minded center George Johnson to slow him.

Although the Knicks led by as many as 17 points early, the Nets rebounded to win, 120-114, when King made only one of his seven field goal attempts in the fourth quarter. Richardson countered with 36 points.

"We wanted to get off to a good start that day,'' King said. "I got rolling, and as good a team as the Nets were then, they really didn't have a defensive team system that was going to stop me. I remember Jeff Turner, a rookie, was kind of thrown into the fire. He did what he could.''

King knew that playing Christmas Day in Madison Square Garden meant performing as well as competing, and he was up to the task, basking in the glow of the crowd and a television audience that included casual basketball fans who marveled at his play.

This was the season in which he averaged a league-best 32.9 points, the season he was hailed as one of the NBA's most prolific scorers, getting back-to-back 50 point games. It also was the season he tore up his knee in the final month, costing him almost two years of rehab and an even more revered place in history.

He is the only NBA single-season scoring champion who is eligible for, but not enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame. He and Tom Chambers are the only retired NBA players not in the Hall who scored 60 points in a single game.

Until the knee injury -- which was before surgical advancements that have made it easier to return -- he was as unstoppable as Michael Jordan, and arguably the best pure scorer in basketball.

Unfortunately for him, he never played on a great team, advancing past the first round of the playoffs only once. It was in the 1983-84 season, when he averaged 34.5 points for the Knicks, when they beat the Pistons in the first round. He then pushed the eventual champion Celtics to seven games in the second round before falling.

"I never really dreamed of being in the Hall of Fame, but when you see your contemporaries there -- the guys you played against -- it makes you think about it. If I never get there, I still had my moments I won't forget,'' he said. "I'll always have Christmas Day.''