The Onion review brings up the point about how animated everyone involved still gets about those series, and I think it extends to the fans as well. At least this one. To me, Hicks v. Knicks was a far greater, intense rivalry than Colts v. Patriots, and the 1995 playoff series win did a lot more for Indianapolis' collective consciousness than anything Peyton Manning could ever do, up to and including the Super Bowl.
After all, the whole terminology of Hicks v. Knicks made the rivalry personal among the fans in ways Colts v. Patriots could never be. At the time, Indianapolis was still trying to establish itself as something more than a slightly overgrown Toledo, and its citizens, despite any outward Hoosier Pride, were all too aware, and had internalized, eons of (sometimes well-deserved) derision about how they were all a bunch of backward hicks. (I remember seeing some short-lived Gen X magazine that did city ratings, including a rating for how much people liked their own city. ****burgs like Rockford even got a 10 out of 10. Indianapolis scored a 3.)
Reggie Miller, despite the infamous 1987 draft party booing, never ripped the fans, and in fact understood the fans I think better than they understood themselves. When Miller says he was doing this for Indiana, you can believe it. But then again, Miller was a perfect match for this franchise: a guy who, no matter what, had always been **** on as someone not good enough. Heck, he couldn't even beat his sister, right?
I was at the head-butt game, and when Starks pulled that move, it was like a switch went off. The Hicks v. Knicks headlines came out of New York, to the great insult of the people of Indianapolis. Yet, once the fans embraced their inner hick (always loved the tractor outside Market Square Arena), it was like some sort of freeing thing -- yep, we're hicks, so what you gonna do about it?
After my wife and I got married, we moved to New York, where I strung the seventh game for my old employer (the Daily Journal in Franklin, Ind.) and the Indianapolis Star. I talked to a lot of fans before the game, including a kid from Staten Island who showed in a Reggie Miller jersey. But the funniest were two guys from New Jersey who showed up in full Hee-Haw outfits, including overall, straw hats, corncob pipes and blackened teeth. What all the fans had in common was that this rivalry wasn't just basketball. Knicks v. Heat was basketball. Knicks v. Pacers was oh-****-don't-let-us-lose-to-Miller-and-these-hicks. When Ewing's last shot rimmed out, I never heard an arena go from so loud to so quiet so fast. The only sounds were security guards, on the verge of tears, being more brusque than usual.
All this said, I, nor anyone else in Indianapolis (I hope), would ever say the city is equal in any way, shape or form to New York, especially just because of a basketball game. But I do believe that, slowly but surely, the Hicks v. Knicks series was a watershed moment for how people in Indianapolis thought about themselves. If nothing else, it ended the idea that the prototypical Hoosier player had to be a 6-foot, white sharpshooter, what with a 6-foot-7 black guy playing a sharpshooting, feisty game, and, in one sequence in "Winning Time," the sight of injured-reserve Damon Bailey in street clothes, part of his being Donnie Walsh's charity case.
