My Favorite Cigar
John Starks • Former NBA Star • Rocky Patel Disciple Sixty
New York Knicks v. Chicago Bulls, 1993 NBA Eastern Conference semifinals, game two. Less than a minute left in a tight game. John Starks dribbles the ball all the way down the court, heading toward the right side. Seeing his opening, he drives toward the basket and leaps higher than a man should be able to. He soars over Horace Grant and the greatest basketball player ever, Michael Jordan, who has come in to help. Switching hands as he leaps, Starks dunks the ball emphatically with his left hand, sending Madison Square Garden into a frenzy.
While the Knicks would lose that series, Starks is forever adored by Knicks fans for that one play—now simply known as The Dunk. However, Starks didn’t celebrate the moment with a cigar. He wouldn’t begin smoking them until 2000, when a friend handed him one on the golf course. But it was love at first puff.
“It calmed me down, I just mellowed out,” he says. “I’ve been smoking them ever since.”
Starks, who at 58 looks much younger, now smokes every day, often on the golf course, as well as at the Stamford Cigar Lounge in Connecticut, which he owns. Rocky Patel Disciple is his favorite along with Legend Cigars, his private-label brand.
