NEW YORK – What Curt Schilling did here Tuesday, pitching Game 6 of the American League Championship Series on an ankle so messed up it will require surgery at season’s end, has historical precedent.

But only a few people outside the Boston clubhouse could explain what it must have felt like to be Schilling’s teammate as the Red Sox won 4-2 on a cold, rainy night at Yankee Stadium.

Cazzie Russell is one of those people.

He was a New York Knick in 1970 when Willis Reed gave us the modern standard for playing through pain. Russell actually staged a dramatic entrance of his own that electric May night before Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and he still chuckles at the reception he got from a crowd of 19,000 at Madison Square Garden.

“I was still in the locker room, getting some last-minute treatment on a thigh bruise, and I came out a little late for warm-ups,” Russell recalled Tuesday by phone from Savannah, Ga., where he is basketball coach at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

“As I walked out, this roar started. I guess they thought I looked a lot like Willis in terms of stature. When I got out on the floor and they realized it was me, it kind of died down. It was, “You’re OK, but you’re not who we’re looking for.””

Reed, the Knicks’ captain as well as their leading scorer and rebounder, had missed most of Game 5 and all of Game 6 after suffering a torn muscle in his right thigh. The Los Angeles Lakers came back to tie the series, and no one was sure whether Reed would be able to play.

Maybe three minutes after Russell hit the court, another low rumble began to move through the Garden. One last Knick was emerging from the tunnel: Reed.

“Out came the captain, and the place just exploded,” said Russell, in his ninth season coaching the Bees, an NAIA team that plays in the Florida Sun Conference.

Down at the other end of the court, Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor could hardly believe their eyes. Spotting their hollow expressions, the late Dave DeBusschere turned to his New York teammates and told them they would win.

Reed, dragging his bum leg behind him, somehow jumped center against Chamberlain and hit the Knicks’ first two shots of the game. A pair of jumpers.

“The place went berserk,” Russell said. “Nobody sat down the rest of the game.”

Reed wouldn’t score again, but the moment was so emotional and his teammates were so uplifted, the Knicks rolled to a 113-99 victory and the NBA crown. Even now, 34 years later, his feat is referenced every time an athlete grits his teeth and plays when maybe he shouldn’t.

Jack Youngblood with the “79 Rams. Isiah Thomas with the “88 Pistons. Kirk Gibson that same year with the Dodgers. Karl Malone this summer with the Lakers.

There were two major differences, of course, between what Reed did in 1970 and what Schilling did Tuesday. Unlike Reed, Schilling was announced as the starter two days before the game.

And, unlike Reed, Schilling was on the road. There would be no cheering mob to lift him higher on this night, which made his seven innings of one-run ball even more impressive.

Still, watching on television, Russell couldn’t help but think back three and a half decades to the guts shown by his courageous teammate.

“The similarity is there,” Russell said before the first pitch. “What Curt means to Boston seems the same as what Willis meant for us. And, from what I understand, the Red Sox don’t know what to expect from Curt, just like we didn’t know what to expect from Willis.”

Even though Walt Frazier provided 36 points and 19 rebounds that night, it’s Reed everyone remembers. That’s because of the immense impact he had on his teammates.

Same with Schilling, who overshadowed Mark Bellhorn’s three-run homer in the fourth.

“I would imagine it’s like you’re taking your big brother with you,” Russell said.

“This guy’s been bothering you, and now you come up and say, “I’ve got my big brother with me now.’

“We knew Willis was in pain. You could watch the way he ran to know he was dragging the leg. Then, to hit his first two shots, that was all we could do to hold our adrenaline in. He was the catalyst.”

Russell, by the way, is a big baseball fan. Now 60, he calls the sport his first love, growing up as a switch-hitting outfielder, catcher and first baseman.

Charlie Finley tried to sign him for the Kansas City A’s in the mid-1960s, and even after Russell played college ball at Michigan, he barnstormed with a summer all-star team that played against Triple-A clubs like the Toledo Mud Hens.

He became friends with former Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant when El Tiante coached baseball at the Savannah college a few years back, but Russell has to side with the Yankees in this one.

Russell said he stayed up for the first 12 innings of Monday’s five-hour, 49-minute marathon at Fenway Park. But he couldn’t make it through all 14 frames because the Bees practice each morning at 8.

Schilling’s start, though, he had to watch. It brought back too many good memories to miss.

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(c) 2004 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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AP-NY-10-20-04 0036EDT