That a quote from Melo about the pressures of New York has turned into an indictment of Patrick Ewing's career — to me seems to validate Melo's point about New York's lack of patience and high expectations.
It's also OK to just say that by 2000 many of us were bored or disappointed by Ewing and more excited about the shiny new toys in Spree and Camby. But carry on trying to find stats-based rationale to retrospectively validate your emotions.
Eli and Houston as examples of true New York sports heroes... this is pretty funny. They heroically took tons of backpage ****, no doubt.
Great thing about New York is since it's so dense, everywhere you want to do a happy dance you are dancing on someone's grave.