Earl the Pearl was a Knickerbocker nemesis in 1970. The trade that brought him to NY was a real shocker, to me.
That was before my time, but I’ve seen some clips.
Earl wanted out of Baltimore, which was a small-market NBA town even in the late 1960s and 1970s (witness Abe Pollin moving the team to the DC area a short while later). He wanted to play under the brighter lights of New York or LA.