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What more do Ew want? Don't undervalue the big man because he never won a titlePosted: Wednesday September 18, 2002 11:57 AM
"And when the basketball competition of the National Sports Festival III ended in Syracuse, N.Y. last week, America had a new center of attention -- Stuart Gray of UCLA. Gray easily outshone Patrick Ewing, who is headed for Georgetown, and Greg Dreiling, who is bound for Wichita State."
Eight months later, as a Patrick Ewing-led Georgetown was storming toward the NCAA Finals, Hoyas coach John Thompson spotted me at the West Regional. "Hey, there's the guy who thought Patrick couldn't play," he said, wearing a smile as wide as his waistline, which was wide indeed. Well, that wasn't exactly what I had written in that article, but I granted Thompson his cat-and-canary moment. There had been much debate over whether Stuart Gray, an outgoing Californian, was better than Ewing, an introvert from Massachusetts by way of Jamaica, and my conclusion was that, although Ewing's upside was much greater, Gray was better at the moment. It turned out that Gray was one of those players who was as good at 18 as he ever would be (same with Greg Dreiling), while Ewing made a phenomenal improvement throughout his freshman year. Ten years later, when I selected my hypothetical starters for the first United States team that would send NBA players to the Olympics, I picked Ewing, by then a New York Knick, as my center, along with forwards Karl Malone and Charles Barkley and guards Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. I had underrated Ewing when I first saw him. I may have overrated him with his placement in that exalted lineup, but he was coming off one of the greatest all-around seasons (1989-'90) any center had ever had -- per game averages of 28.6 points, 10.9 rebounds, 4.0 blocked shots and 2.2 assists. It is far too strong to say that Ewing's 17-year NBA career was a "disappointment," as I've seen written since he announced his retirement and joined up with Jordan as an assistant coach in Washington. But, obviously, his career wasn't all it could be. Ewing played three or four years too long. Injuries slowed him to the point that, at times, he looked more like Dreiling or Gray than the warrior who as a young player galloped up and down the court like a racehorse. It seemed to me that he never reached his potential as a rebounder. And, of course, Ewing committed the ultimate sin -- he never led a team that won it all. But make no mistake about it: Patrick Ewing was a great player who will make the Hall of Fame. We are tough on our big men, probably because they are big, and most of us are not. We want them to be superhuman, so we probe and probe to find their weakness. Of all the centers who played in the post-Mikan era, only Bill Russell (the ultimate winner) and Hakeem Olajuwon (the ultimate undersized athlete) seem to have escaped criticism. (And Olajuwon is whittling away at his legacy as he continues to gimp along in Toronto.) Wilt Chamberlain didn't really give 100 percent. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was soft. David Robinson was too nice. Until recently, Shaquille O'Neal didn't work hard enough on his game. Ewing? Well, something just didn't add up. He didn't have enough heart, the critics said. He was selfish, the critics said. He couldn't get it done in crunch time, the critics said. Nobody would've said any of those things, of course, had he played on a championship team, as Olajuwon did. I always considered Ewing's major failure to be less definable -- lack of leadership. He wasn't a selfish player -- in his early years his game truly was predicated, as was Russell's, on defense, changing the game with a blocked shot or just with his lane-clogging presence -- but Ewing never seemed to understand that he had to be the man to guide his teammates. He never developed -- how to describe it? -- a statesmanlike presence. But, look, in his first 13 seasons, Ewing never averaged fewer than 20 points a game, and he shot better than or near 50 percent from the field most of the time. For nine seasons he averaged double figures in rebounds (even though I think he could've been better). Though as a young player he had a limited offensive repertoire, he turned himself into one of the best outside-shooting pivotmen in the history of the game. Some would argue, in fact, that Ewing's marksmanship adversely affected his inside dominance. I go along with that to a point. The Ewing I remember most fondly was the teenager who went up against North Carolina in that memorable 1981 NCAA championship in New Orleans, the one Jordan ended with a clutch jump shot. In the first half of that game, Ewing was called for goaltending three times as he sent various Tar Heel shots into the rafters. No, they weren't the wisest of plays, but they sent a message. I'm here. It's never going to be easy for you. The 40-year-old Ewing who wisely hung it up this week lost that ferocity a long time ago, but that's no reason to undervalue his entire career. Of his contemporaries, only Olajuwon was better; Gray and Dreiling aren't the only centers he left behind. Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covers the NBA beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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