Momentum in a best-of-five series can flip quickly — and Yankees have just the thing to do it

This was back in the spring of 1994, the beginning of a playoff march that would carry the Knicks to the very brink of ending a 21-year championship drought that would instead reach 53 years before being quashed. Pat Riley was standing against a wall outside his office at Madison Square Garden, fidgety and jonesing for the first cigarette he’d light once behind the office door.

The Knicks had survived the Nets that day, staving off a furious New Jersey rally that was certainly helped along by Patrick Ewing’s ejection after only 16 minutes of Game 2. The Knicks were up 2-0 in the best-of-five series, but Riley’s face looked like that of a man who’d been pushed to the brink of sanity, if not elimination.

“The cigarettes aren’t going to kill me,” he said with a thin smile. “You know what’s going to kill me? Coaching best-of-five playoff series.”

Riley wasn’t alone. By 2003, the NBA would at last do away with best-of-five series and make every round the standard best-of-seven. The NHL had made that leap long before, going to strictly best-of-seven in 1987. Cynically, this was seen as a way to squeeze extra games and extra revenue out of those sports’ cash-cow months.