Dick McGuire turned 75 Friday – the day his brother, Al, passed away.
It was a bittersweet birthday, one his family wasn’t sure he’d see following hip replacement surgery in August that landed him in the hospital for two weeks.
Dick McGuire, in his 44th season with the Knicks, was rushed to a cardiac care unit following the hip surgery when a lack of blood and oxygen was received by his brain. McGuire spent three days in the unit and was so disoriented he didn’t recognize anybody.
The Knicks will hold a moment of silence before today’s Lakers’ game at the Garden in the memory of Al McGuire. Dick McGuire won’t be there. He’ll be on a plane today headed to Milwaukee to bury his brother, who succumbed to a rare blood disease Friday.
“I’ll miss him,” Dick McGuire said yesterday.
Dick has made a full recovery. He and his son Scott McGuire run the Knicks’ college scouting department. Dick is still on the road during college basketball season four days a week watching college games and high school tournaments. “I’m lucky,” McGuire said.
Rockaway Park’s own McGuire brothers are the only brother tandem in the Basketball Hall of Fame. They grew up shooting hoops on the famed 108th Street courts, alongside Rockaway’s boardwalk and beach. They played together for the Knicks in the early 1950s. One of them remains, lucky to be alive, still watching basketball for a living.