Earl Monroe opens up about very personal meaning behind 1973 championship, Knicks NBA title chances

Former Knicks great Earl Monroe — a man of many nicknames and a member of the 1973 championship squad — takes a shot at some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.Q: A quote from your friend and former Baltimore Bullets teammate Ray Scott about you: “God couldn’t go 1-on-1 with Earl.”A: That quote is one of the quotes that I think a lot of guys were saying back in those days.Me being from Philly, they used to call me “Black Jesus.” It was kind of like a play on that nickname.Q: Your favorite nickname was “Duke of Earl.”A: The nicknames are great, people give you all those, but at the same time, I guess the ones that you like are the ones that you give yourself.Q: Who was the first person to call you “Pearl”?A: I don’t know.

That came from when I was in college [Winston-Salem State].I scored 33 points my first game, and my second game of my senior year I scored 58, and I stayed in the 50s for a few games.

… But anyway, a guy wrote a column and the caption of the column was “These are Earl’s pearls.” And from there, people down South started calling me “The Pearl.” I didn’t like it at first, but I couldn’t stop people from saying it, so I became “Earl the Pearl.”Q: A quote from Clyde Frazier about you: “He was a nightmare to guard.Earl didn’t know what he was going to do, so how could I?”A: That’s pretty accurate.

I didn’t know what I was going to do.I tried to let the situation determine pretty much what my actions were going to be, because it was the action and reaction is kind of the way I played the game early on.

We were two guys that came out of school the same time, so it was always competition between us.Q: Another Clyde quote: “Earl’s fire and I’m ice.”A: I was very much into it, I was very animated and so forth, and he was cool.Q: How would you describe your playing style?A: My playing style was to be where they’re not.I wasn’t a great jumper, so I had to be trickier and do things that...