Two Great Garden Parties, But Not Best

There is plenty of chatter and debate about sublime basketball at the world's most famous arena this week, about how Kobe Bryant and LeBron James transformed Madison Square Garden into their personal playgrounds within 48 hours of each other, and about who made a better case for MVP on what is still one of the game's largest stages. (Boston is coming to town tonight, making Garden officials refer to the past six days as "Dream Week.")

Before we get to whose was the grandest regular season performance of all time in the building -- Kobe's scintillating 61 points on Monday night, breaking Bernard King's Garden record of 60 set in 1984, or LeBron's surreal triple-double on Wednesday (52 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists in a closer-than-expected victory) -- let's first do away with the notion of "all time."

That moniker will forever be reserved for Michael Jordan in March 1995, the night he scorched the best defensive team of its era for 55 points -- a Knick team coached by Pat Riley, not Mike D'Antoni.

I know. I was there.

But now that that's out of the way, a serious inspection of all the jump shots, dunks and general misery Kobe and LeBron unleashed on the Knicks, whose defense today is comparable to the Professor's and Headache's of AND1 fame, shows a clear champion in Gotham during the last three days:

Kobe.

Look, the man played just 36 minutes 45 seconds, meaning he essentially didn't play a full quarter of the Lakers' win over New York. If he had, there is no reason to believe he would not have scored 75 points.

It wasn't as if he were a one-man team, either. Pau Gasol got 31 points in the game.

Yes, LeBron was flat-out amazing, displaying a flair and fire that was mesmerizing in his 44 minutes. But he needed two more shots to get his points than Kobe (LeBron was 17 of 33 from the field) and he missed three free throws (Kobe went 20 for 20 from the line). LeBron's closest sidekick that night, second-leading scorer Zydrunas Ilgauskas, finished with just 15 points.

John Starks took the brunt of Jordan's superb show that special night, March 28, 1995. The reason I consider it greater than any individual regular season performance before or since at the Garden is because it came less than a month after Jordan returned to the NBA after his first retirement.

This was before three more titles in Chicago, before the shot that sunk the Utah Jazz in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals. At the time, no one believed Michael was still, well, Michael. In fact, the enduring image of Jordan in the playoffs that year was getting the ball stripped by Orlando's Nick Anderson in a second-round series the Bulls would lose in six games.

The player who tormented Pat Riley, the Knicks and their howling fans throughout the early 1990s seemed less explosive and theatrical. But that night announced his genuine return to the game, and he was even better, using Starks and Greg Anthony as pylons, maneuvering through the middle, pulling up off one foot for pillowy jumpers one moment then powering over a front line of Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason the next.