Sizing up Pat

Ewing's legacy will be his Georgetown days

There is a certain poetic justice in Patrick Ewing's announcement that he is retiring after 17 years in the NBA. It is mid-September, and soon NBA teams will open training camps for the coming season. In basketball terms, autumn is a time of promise and expectation. And to be sure, the story of Ewing's career is all about promise and expectation.

Bottom line: Ewing never became the player he was expected to be when he left Georgetown in the spring of 1985. But that's too simplistic. We thought Ewing would become a cross between Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell -- not just the next great center in the NBA, but the greatest ever. Ewing wasn't supposed to just play the center position, he was expected to revolutionize it. Had Ewing met the world's expectations, we would now be wondering if Shaquille O'Neal is really as good as Patrick had been in his prime.

The legend started when Ewing was in high school in Cambridge, Mass., the object of a furious recruiting battle won by John Thompson, who would make Ewing the centerpiece of not only a mini-dynasty at Georgetown, but also the living, breathing embodiment of what came to be known as Hoya Paranoia. Closed practices, heavily controlled media access (including a Georgetown p.r. man counting down the limited minutes of postgame access, as if preparing for a rocket launch), and an intense playing style based on suffocating, intimidating defense. Few college programs in history have played harder for longer. Few have evoked more emotion from fans, both negative and positive.

Ewing's Georgetown teams went to three national championship games in four years, a record matched by precious few teams in the history of the game (the John Wooden UCLA dynasty, Duke in the early '90s, Kentucky in the late '90s). In 1982, when Ewing was a freshman, the Hoyas lost by a point to North Carolina on Michael Jordan's epic jumper (and Freddie Brown's subsequent giveaway). In '84 they handled Houston, and in '85 they lost to a Villanova team that captured lightning in a bottle and played the game of its life. Georgetown was ever so close to three national titles.

On each of these teams, Ewing was a glowering presence, a shot blocker whose every movement said, Don't bring that weak s--- in here, and a dominating rebounder. He scored enough to make it seem as if he could put up points at will.

Ewing was regarded as such a franchise player that when the Knicks won the lottery in the spring of '85, team president Dave DeBusschere made a spectacle of himself, celebrating having won the opportunity to draft Ewing. The Knicks took him No. 1 overall, and a city sat back and prepared to hang banner after banner from the rafters of Madison Square Garden.

Of course, it didn't happen that way -- for many reasons. It turns out Ewing was very much a different player as a pro than he had been in college. He was a good rebounder and respectable shot blocker, but less than dominant. He was a better shooter than we had imagined, and he could run the floor and move in the halfcourt game. But he was terrible at passing out of the double team, a fatal flaw. Most telling, the Knicks never found a great player to be Scottie Pippen to Ewing's Jordan or Kobe Bryant to his Shaq. For his entire career in New York, Ewing was the only superstar on the team, and he wasn't super enough.

Too often -- four times -- his Knicks ran into Jordan in the playoffs. In the one postseason in which Jordan was gone altogether (1994), New York ran into Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets in the Finals and lost in seven games. Ewing's career finished quietly in Seattle and then Orlando, and anyone who admired his passion is glad to see him leave now.

Patrick Ewing scored 24,815 points and was named one of the top 50 players in NBA history. His is an admirable legacy. Yet, it is less than we once imagined it would be. Years from now, Ewing will be remembered not as a Knick, but as a Hoya.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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