... when they retired his number.






There aren't many nights that seem to matter for the Knicks these days, and when they do matter it is because of the opponent, Shaq or Kobe or Michael Jordan. Tonight it is Yao Ming of the Rockets at the Garden. The Knicks don't have anybody who can handle him, at least for very long. It would have been better in the old days, when Patrick Ewing was still young.

He took on a lot of big guys at the Garden, over all the years when he carried the Knicks. He would have leaned on Yao a little the way he did the rest of them, then sat in the Knicks locker room afterward in that old blue robe he used to wear and talked about it.

He was told last night that they should retire that old blue robe the way they will No. 33 on Friday night, when he goes high up in the place with all the other great Knicks, up there where he belongs.

Ewing laughed about the robe.

"I think somebody sold it on Ebay," he said.

Patrick Ewing gets a night on Friday night, one he earned, whether you loved him or not, whether or not you liked his game or the way he acted off the court. He played over 1,000 games for the Knicks on those knees of his and averaged 21 points and 10 rebounds. Even Ewing's critics should send up a flare the next time any Knick produces numbers like those. The old-timers say Clyde Frazier was the greatest Knick of all, or Willis Reed. They won championships and Ewing did not. People who want to say he was the greatest Knick are allowed to stand their ground.

He couldn't get past Michael Jordan in an NCAA final they played when they were kids and he couldn't get past Jordan in his prime, which is what it is like now for golfers to go against Tiger Woods in his prime. Even when Jordan was gone, Ewing and the Knicks couldn't finish off the Houston Rockets when they had Houston three games to two in the NBA Finals of 1994.

Ewing was in an Indianapolis hotel room last night. He is an assistant coach now with Jordan, which means the two of them are finally on the same side again, the way they were in the Olympics in '92. Ewing was asked if he thinks much about those two games in Houston, especially Game 6, when John Starks took the shot from the outside that could have won the Knicks the title.

"I think about it when Herb (Williams, his old teammate, now a Knicks assistant coach) and John (Starks) and me get together," he said. "Sure we talk about it."

"When you talk about it, what do you say?"

Ewing said, "I say that maybe John Starks could've passed me the ball."

"And what does Starks say?"

"He says maybe he could have passed me the ball," Ewing said. "But you know John. He always thought he was open."

There was a pause and Ewing said, "You always think about a couple of shots, a couple of bounces of the ball, that could have changed everything for us. And for me."

When he was a kid at Georgetown and Georgetown still had a chance against Jordan's North Carolina team, Ewing's teammate Fred Brown brain-locked and threw the ball to James Worthy of Carolina. And there was the night when Charles Smith couldn't get the ball to the basket against Jordan's Bulls, when the Knicks thought they had a tremendous chance to take them out.

"You ask me if I have any regrets?" Ewing laughed again. "I regret Michael didn't retire a little earlier."

Jordan wasn't playing for the Rockets in '94. But Sam Cassell went crazy at the end of Game 3 at the Garden, or the Knicks would have won in five. "Coulda, woulda, shoulda," Ewing said last night. Then Hakeem Olajuwon was better in the last two games when it was all on the line. And when Olajuwon came out to get a piece of Starks' shot at the end of Game 6, Ewing was open underneath.

Maybe Starks could have passed him the ball.

This was supposed to be the payoff for all those years when Ewing didn't just carry the Knicks, but one coach after another, one general manager after another. "And don't forget the owners," he said. "I finally lost count of all my bosses." Then Dave Checketts became president of the Knicks and Pat Riley became coach and Patrick Ewing was a contender, at last.

"Dave and Ernie (Grunfeld) and Pat brought stability," he said. "And we flourished."

Riley left for Miami after the '94-95 season. The Knicks might have had their best team in '97, and were going to beat the Heat easy, and then there was that Game 5 in old Miami Arena when Ewing walked away from the bench during the Charlie Ward-P.J. Brown fight. He got suspended from Game 6 at the Garden, when the Knicks would have closed the Heat out. Ewing came back for Game 7, but there were still other Knicks suspended, and they lost, and he never did get that last shot at Jordan.

"Then I watch Shaq in the middle of a fight in the runway this year (against the Kings), and noticed he didn't get suspended," Ewing said.

Bad timing, bad luck. Bad games at the wrong time. He was never the same shooter after he broke his wrist in Milwaukee in December of '97. He came back. He helped put the Knicks in the Finals in '99, even with an Achilles tendon made of crepe paper by the end, but had to sit out the Spurs series because the doctors were afraid the Achilles would go and that would be the end of his career.

There was one night in San Antonio, after one of the first two games there, he can't remember which one, when he went back to the team bus and cried.

"That's how angry and frustrated I was," he said. "'Course I didn't let anybody see me. Not my style."

He wasn't much good with the fans, worse with the media. It sometimes seemed he went through too much of his career like a fighter with his hands up, protecting himself from blows he was sure were coming. There was no scandal for most of his career, then came the story about an affair with a Knicks dancer, and the breakup of his marriage, and all the lousiness out of the Gold Club in Atlanta. It is all there in the public record.

So is this: He played hard all those years, he played hurt, he never had a big star watching his back, the way Jordan did, the way Bird did, the way Magic did. He still got his points and got his rebounds. And with everybody always telling him what he couldn't do, he was the star, the big man, No. 33 in the middle, when the Garden came back to life in the '90s, and we had the best years there since the glory years. His teammates respected him and so did his opponents, which is why Jordan will be there Friday night and Charles Barkley, and Alonzo Mourning and Dikeme Mutombo. Even Fred Brown and Starks.

Send up another flare when things are that good again at the Garden, for that long.

"It goes fast," Ewing said last night. "I think of myself as a rookie, see myself as a rookie, and it seems like yesterday. I can still hear Hubie (Brown, the Knicks coach when Ewing was a rookie) yelling at me to get my ass over and trap my goddam man. One day you're hearing that, imagining what the future's gonna be like, and the next thing you know, you're retired and they're retiring your number."

They do this Friday night. He goes up there with Frazier and Reed, Monroe and DeBusschere and Bradley. Finally Patrick Ewing gets the kind of players around him he deserved.

Great read!! thanks!

Thank you for this. Such a great article for a truly great player of the Knick franchise. I loved his game and had so much respect for him. Oh, the good old days...

How bad would you like to have this guy on our team right now???