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Why I can't stand Pat
By Jay Lovinger
Special to Page 2NEW YORK -- Patrick Ewing was the most unsatisfying of superstars, grim and stubborn, getting little joy from his work, giving none.
|  | | During his 15 seasons in New York, Patrick Ewing consistently came up short. |
As a lifelong Knicks fan, I could live with the absence of championships. Only one team each year can be the best. And to be fair, the Big Fella (as he was known, not lovingly, to New York's notoriously hard-to-please tabloid press) never had enough help, only the bad luck to spend his best years in the long shadow of Michael Jordan.
Even Ewing's lamentable tendency to brick free throws and finger rolls during the last two minutes of critical playoff games was forgivable. In fact, his lack of grace under pressure was one of the few things about Ewing that the average person could relate to. No, the problem was this: He and his teammates were the black hole of pro basketball, sucking all the life, beauty and pleasure out of the game.
At its best, basketball should flow and soar. The only thing fluid about a Knicks game from the mid-'80s through the late-'90s was the blood that would pour from your body if you had the temerity to drive the lane against Ewing, Charles Oakley, et al. And it wasn't simply that the Knicks were thugs: Their true genius lay in dragging the league's high fliers down to their own primordial level, the better to grunt and flail and wallow around in the ooze together.
Not that this was all Ewing's fault. If anything, the prime culprits were Pat Riley, who never met a value he wouldn't sacrifice for a win, and the terminally earthbound Oakley, a hoops hitman without a conscience. But by style and temperament, Ewing tacitly put his stamp of approval on the whole sordid arrangement.
Consider the Big Fella's offensive style, which, admittedly, produced stats worthy of a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The ball would go into the post, to be dribbled into submission (along with the 24-second clock), after which it would inevitably be hoisted hoopward, most often with Ewing falling away from 15 feet or thereabouts. Yes, as has often been said, the man was probably the best jump-shooting big man who ever played. But also yes, when the shot would fail to fall, the rest of the team would be standing around in no mood or position to rebound or to do anything otherwise useful.
Temperamentally, he was distant and mistrustful. Not that I cared whether he signed autographs or talked to the press -- on those rare occasions he did so, he specialized in the most monotonous of clichés, or "guarantees" which famously failed to be delivered -- but it is hard to enjoy a man's body of work if he doesn't seem to be getting any pleasure from it himself. And he was notorious for keeping his own teammates at arm's length, culminating sadly in their absolute indifference when he was finally traded to Seattle before this season. According to most accounts, not one of them even bothered to call to say goodbye.
Which is how I feel -- and I suspect many of my fellow Knicks fans would agree -- on the eve of Ewing's first game against the only other professional team he has ever played for. He worked hard, he played hurt and he scored a lot, but he never seemed to care what the fans, the media or even his own teammates thought of him. In life, sometimes you reap what you sow. Go, Knicks.
Jay Lovinger, former managing editor of Life magazine and former editorial director of Inside Sports, is an occasional contributor to Page 2.
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