Checketts, who oversaw the Knicks and Rangers, ended up with only one championship.

Prior to the player introductions at Knicks' home games, the public address announcer reminds us where we are: the world's most famous sports arena. That would be Madison Square Garden and the man who helped make it that way once again was Dave Checketts.

He is "stepping down" after 10 years in New York, first as the overseer of the Knicks and, later, as the top man at Madison Square Garden. Over that span, he signed off on just about every significant personnel decision/event that affected the building. He had a few winners. He had a few losers.

But what he undeniably did was restore the cachet to the building, not just as a sports venue, but as an entertainment one as well. Bruce Springsteen played there 10 times on his last tour and just released a CD called 'Live in New York.' Barbra Streisand chose the building for one of her two final live performances last year. Checketts made the Garden a boxing haven once again, competing with Las Vegas for the biggest fights and landing more than few (Holyfield/Lewis, Lewis/Grant, Trinidad/Joppy.)

But his roots are in basketball and it was the Knicks who first reaped the benefits of Checketts' handiwork. When he was hired as the team's president in 1991, the Knicks had not won a best-of-seven series since 1973. He aimed high and convinced Pat Riley to come aboard for the rebuilding job. Riley did and the Knicks started to win and win and kept on winning, even after Riley and Checketts did their Burr/Hamilton thing, minus weapons, in 1995. The Knicks sold out occasionally prior to 1991. They sell out regularly now, despite prices that oil barons find excessive, and have for years.

Sure, it didn't hurt to basically have an open checkbook. Larry Johnson, for instance, was presumed to have a contract and a back that made him immovable. Checketts brought him to New York. Checketts overpaid ridiculously for Patrick Ewing when Ewing clearly was a shell of himself. Didn't matter. And when it came time for Ewing to go, Checketts made that one happen, too.

Checketts almost delivered the prize in 1993, but Charles Smith couldn't make a layup (or two. Or three). He almost delivered the price in 1994, but Hakeem Olajuwon took over the Michael Jordan role and stopped the Knicks a game short.

	Johnson

	Ewing

If Checketts had done nothing more than run the Knicks, his legacy would have been safe. No, they haven't won it all. But they have been an undeniable success story over the last decade, a fact drummed home when they lost to Toronto. It marked the first time in Checketts' stewardship that New York didn't get to the second round. He was widely presumed to be targeting Chris Webber as a free agent this summer.

But in moving into the larger, broader Madison Square Garden honcho's role, Checketts spread himself incredibly thin. The Rangers, who are to hockey what the Red Sox are to baseball, broke through in 1994 to win the Stanley Cup. That ended a 54-year drought. Checketts took over MSG three months later and the Rangers have basically been a mess since then, not having even qualified for the playoffs since 1997 (which is hard to do in the NHL) despite a huge payroll. There was an unseemly parting with Mark Messier, one of the team's undeniable stars. Wayne Gretzky didn't help, either.

In many ways, the Rangers and Knicks represent polar opposites on Checketts' resume: one team brought home the ultimate and has done nothing since. The other team almost brought it home but has been consistently successful since.

The Garden branched out under Checketts and acquired Radio City Music Hall. He apparently became so enamored with the Broadway production of 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' that he made that part of the empire as well. He oversaw two cable television outlets that beamed his teams to the public. He learned to survive in a corporate culture amid the Viacoms, Paramounts and Cablevisions where the two main prerequisites are sharp elbows and long nails. He made his owners a lot of money.

But, apparently, not enough. The Knicks never dropped the proverbial "other shoe" after the Ewing trade and paid for it with their first-round departure. The Rangers have been uniformly pathetic for years and these days don't even bother making arrangements to play in May.

As much as Checketts made the Garden a 'place to see and be seen,' the building is neither when its two main tenets aren't there.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.