Knicks mop celebration after 1989 76ers sweep is bold statement current team wouldnt dare try

PHILADELPHIA — We know how these cities feel about each other.And sometimes, a little of that rancor actually bleeds out from the participants, too.

Chase Utley was California.David Wright was from Virginia.

They weren’t exactly born into the geographic sporting blood feud between these warring factions of the northeast corridor.But they were never shy about talking about it.“When we beat them, it’s a little sweeter,” Wright said in 2015.“We respect each other,” Utley said in 2008.“But we don’t like each other.”Chuck Bednarik took great delight in flattening Frank Gifford on a cold Yankee Stadium field in 1960.

DeSean Jackson seemed to enjoy himself a little extra at the end of that punt return in 2009.Asrdubal Cabrera once took so long to round the bases after a walk-off home run against the Phillies in 2016, you could’ve watched most of “The Irishman” before he touched home plate.But never was there anything quite so audacious as what happened a week shy of 35 years ago, which was also the last time the Knicks played the Sixers in a playoff game in this city.

Then — May 2, 1989 — the building was the Spectrum, still a decade away from a date with a wrecking ball.The Knicks won a heart-thumping game that night, beating the 76ers 116-115 when Charles Barkley missed a shot at the buzzer.It clinched that first-round series — then a best-of-five — although the games had been razor thin, the Knicks winning twice by one point and winning all three by a combined eight points.“These were the three best games I’ve ever been a part of,” Barkley said after he’d finally been peeled off the Spectrum floor, where he’d slumped after his potential game-winner had bounded away.It was shortly after the buzzer when it happened.Five Knicks — Sidney Green, Johnny Newman, Mark Jackson, Eddie Lee Wilkins and Charles Oakley — spotted a janitor’s mop under one of the baskets.

Giddy at the sweep they’d just completed and no doubt over...