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The comeback began on April 18, 1969, in the locker room of the old Boston Garden. The Celtics had won — again — but Willis Reed knew a change was coming.

Boston’s dominant run — 11 titles in 13 years, and the last one won after besting New York in the Eastern Division finals — would come to an end. Bill Russell was set to retire. There would be a new champion the next season and Reed was sure it would be the Knicks.

He did not proclaim it loudly. This was no basketball analog to Joe Namath, his fellow New York City star who promised and then delivered on a title just three months prior. But Reed was clear in his intent before another offseason at his Louisiana home.

“I said, ‘We’re going to win it the next year,'” Reed said, recounting his words 51 years ago. “No one is going to keep us from winning it the next year. No one left for the summer without that in mind … No one is going to keep us. We’re that good. We’re a young team but we’re a veteran team. We won’t have to worry about the bearded wonder.”

A year later, the Knicks would capture their first NBA title in a dramatic seven-game series win over the Lakers that will live on in league lore for Reed’s gutsiness and dramatics. It imprinted his name into record books and solidified his reputation as an avatar of toughness. In the 50 years since, nothing has diminished the flame of the 1969-70 Knicks. They live on as a platonic ideal of a basketball team — a selfless, cohesive group that persevered to become champions — and as towering figures in the franchise’s history.

As The Athletic celebrates sports’ greatest comebacks, there is no list without those Knicks and Reed. The image of the 27-year-old center hobbling down a Madison Square Garden tunnel — painkillers coursing through his body and adrenaline pumping through the arena — remains a vivid one.

“Here comes Willis,” Marv Albert said that night on the team’s radio broadcast. “And the crowd is going wild.”

Although Reed’s return from injury was only two games in the making, the story of that night began more than a year earlier. The Knicks did not take their 1969 loss to the Celtics well, losing the final game by a point after the retiring Sam Jones made a last-second free throw.

They had pushed Boston hard but still lost in six games. It was clear, though, that there was a potential champion budding in New York. The Knicks had beaten the Celtics six of the seven times they played in the regular season. Reed had been an All-Star in each of his first five seasons. Walt Frazier was emerging as one, as well. Bill Bradley and the newly acquired Dave DeBusschere filled out the rest of a formidable frontcourt.

“I’m glad that’s over,” Russell said after their series ended. “The Knicks were tough, a real good team. We had to go all out.”

The Knicks’ 1969-70 season was an appropriate follow-up for a team that had matured from that Celtics series. They won 60 games, won their division and placed three players on the All-Defense first team. Reed won MVP. The Knicks needed seven games to get past Earl Monroe, Wes Unseld and the Bullets in their opening playoff series, but then easily dispatched Lew Alcindor and the Bucks in five games.

The Lakers presented a formidable opponent in the Finals, though. They had shrugged off a humdrum regular season and had Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain. The series would not lack for star power.

No player, however, outshined Reed. He averaged 31.8 points and 15 rebounds through the first four games of the series and proved himself more than just Chamberlain’s equal. While the series was tied 2-2, the Knicks had the advantage of the seventh game in New York.

Game 5 was nearly calamitous. Reed was hurt just eight minutes into the first quarter, falling on his right hip and sitting the rest of the night. The Knicks won the game, but Reed’s status for the rest of the playoffs was in doubt. He missed Game 6 and his fate for the series finale was unknown leading up to game time.

Reed was a battered man by that point. His knees ached. That Game 5 injury, described as a bruised hip in newspaper accounts, was actually a torn thigh muscle. He took a shot of cortisone that night, but it didn’t help enough for him to return to the floor. Chamberlain torched the Knicks for 45 and 27 the next game.

But Reed was insistent on playing in Game 7.

“I’ll play if I can crawl,” he said before the game, according to The Associated Press.

“Everything was perfect except me being physically healthy,” Reed told The Athletic. “It was a late game, which was always a great game for the New York Knicks because most of the fans would have gone, left work, gone to dinner, had a few drinks. They were ready to go, fired up.”

Inside the locker room, Reed was more restrained. He knew he wanted to play but did not know what that would require.

He agreed to take two injections to his thigh. Dr. James Parkes administered both. One contained cortisone, a steroid that helps diminish swelling and inflammation — Reed received 200 CCs, according to the television broadcast. The other delivered 200 mg of Carbocaine, a numbing agent used to dull pain during medical procedures.

“I didn’t know what it was,” Reed said. “All I know is, ‘Did they give me enough?’”

Reed’s biggest concern was the site of his injury. Because it was in the muscle instead of a joint, he worried it might not work as well. Parkes never told him what he shot him up with.

“They told me I was going to be alright,” Reed said. “First of all, how do they know? Nobody gave them that shot. You know how doctors are. But I was going to play, as long as I could run. I was dragging the leg. I couldn’t bend it. There was no way that I could have not gone out there.”

Reed says he never considered sitting out. After the game was over, he told reporters he played “because there’s no tomorrow.” In the aftermath, West expressed his admiration, admitting that many peers would not have taken the floor.

Even now, any such suggestion is met with instant denial. The pleasant drawl on the other end of the conversation suddenly stiffens. To ask such a question — did he ever consider not playing — is to misunderstand the man it’s being asked of.

“No. No. No. No,” he said. “I didn’t. I was hoping that I would be able to play without any pain at all. I did have some pain. I had to be out there. I didn’t think I’d play that much. Maybe if I missed those first two shots it might have been different. You’ve been against the wall a few times, from going to high school and playing for a championship and in college playing for a championship. I had played on teams where you had to get down. That’s what makes a player a player. That’s the reason you play. You play to win. You don’t get many shots at it. The ones you do get you’re grateful for … You’ve kind of been groomed for that moment.”

When Reed took the floor, he did so without bravado. He didn’t do any talking; he feared inspiring Chamberlain. He greeted Chamberlain the same way he always did when they played — “Good evening, Mr. Chamberlain” — and concerned himself with keeping the center far enough away from the basket when he was on the defensive end.

The rest, of course, is a well-worn tale. Reed hit his first two jumpers (he’d miss the other three) and those four points propelled the Knicks to a 27-point halftime lead. Reed took another painkilling injection at intermission, but he was not needed much. Chamberlain was quieted — he scored 21 points but missed 10 of 11 free throws — and West was nearly despondent after the loss, his seventh NBA Finals defeat.

“Someone has to lose,” West told reporters. “It’s unfortunate that it’s always me.”

Reed won the Finals MVP award and his return stands as legend, but Walt Frazier was the engine behind the win. He scored 36 points that night and had 19 assists, a nearly peerless performance in a Game 7.

Those Knicks, Reed professes, were a team that tried to diminish the individual, even if it sometimes gets lost in history. He believes Frazier does not get enough credit for the win.

“Probably not,” Reed said. “Let’s put it this way, if I don’t make those first two shots, if I don’t play, they’re still going to win the game. Having been the captain of the team, I think all that had something to do with it too. I don’t think he got enough credit as he thought he deserved. I think I got more credit than I deserved. The credit for me was credit for us winning a championship. That was the most important thing. You want to be a part of a championship. Thinking about all those years of Russell — they won 11 of 13 championships. I was glad he was gone.”

Reed’s career stalled out a few years later. The next season he was an All-Star for the last time and he retired at 32, after one more championship in 1973. He doesn’t believe the injury and the shots he took to play through it slowed down his career. In 1974, he just wasn’t interested in having another surgery on his problematic knee.

A half-century later, he cannot imagine a world where he did not play, where he did not win a title. The Knicks locker room was raucous in victory. Coach Red Holzman sipped a beer as the team sprayed champagne. Dustin Hoffman, a Knicks fan, found his way backstage to celebrate with them as yelps of “Ratso” filled the room.

But the night was sealed in the pregame locker room, where Reed took two shots just as big as the ones on the court. Somewhere, there is proof of it too. Phil Jackson, his teammate, took photos from inside, lingering as a photographer to document the season while he was out with injury.

The photos are too gruesome — and the needles are too big — for Reed, who swears he has not seen them. And he doesn’t want to, either. All these years later, he is no fan of needles. Only the comeback they ensured.

“I took it,” he said. “You weren’t looking at that needle. Close your eyes and try to think of something real pleasant … I was praying. ‘Please, please let me able to play.’ If I was talking to you and had not played, I would have been so disappointed.”