Top 50 NBA players from last 50 years: Patrick Ewing ranks No. 28
Mon, May 16, 2022
NBA News (AP)
Patrick Ewing's career highlights:
In recent years, the NBA has made Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid eligible at center and power forward on all-league ballots. Neither plays power forward, of course, and they've ultimately been voted at center each season. But there is magnified interest in how the voters list them this year given that they finished atop the MVP race.'
What does this have to do with Patrick Ewing? Well, for more than a decade, he was among the best players at any position. And he has one All-NBA first-team nod to show for it.'
"By changing the rules, it now makes Ewing look worse," Wright said.'
One of the finest shooting centers to ever play, Patrick Ewing left the game as the New York Knicks' all-time leader in nearly every significant category while ranking as the game's 13th-ranked all-time scorer (24,815 points) upon his exit. Ewing was three-time All-Defense, appeared in two NBA Finals, and had six top-five MVP finishes. Ewing also had a great run at Georgetown, where he won an NCAA championship and earned a Final Four Most Outstanding Player Award.The Knicks icon is a victim of circumstance, as his prime overlapped with those of Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Shaquille O'Neal. The fellow Hall of Famers were assuredly better than him, but not exponentially so. Ewing's six second-team selections and six top-five MVP finishes point to the fact there were years in which he was superior. All four players are among just 12 to average 20 points and 10 rebounds for their careers over the past 50 years.
What Ewing is missing are the titles.'
To be fair, he was also missing All-Star teammates. Only three Knicks made an All-Star team alongside Ewing, and none did so more than once. The uber-coveted No. 1 overall pick from the 1985 draft was an All-Star as a rookie and then 10 times more. The Knicks earned 13 consecutive playoff berths during his career, and he was their clear-cut best player for the first 10.
"The knock on Ewing historically has been not great in the postseason," Wright said. "And while he did come up short in some postseasons, we've glossed over what he did great in the postseason."'
In Game 5 of the 1989 Eastern Conference semifinals, Ewing recorded 32 points and 11 rebounds to stave off elimination against the Bulls. In Game 6, he put up 22 points, 13 rebounds, six assists, three blocks and two steals, but the Knicks lost by two as Michael Jordan dropped 40.'
In 1990, after New York had fallen into a 2-0 hole in the first round against a Celtics team featuring the last of All-NBA Larry Bird, Ewing averaged 36-13-5 over the final four games for a series win. The Knicks then lost to the eventual-champion Pistons. They'd be eliminated the next three years by the first three-peat Bulls, though Ewing, still a defensive titan at this stage, had his fair share of big games in the process.'
The Dream Team center finally got New York over the Chicago hump in 1994, while Jordan was on his baseball sabbatical. He put up 18-17-6 in Game 7 of the conference semis versus the Bulls and 24-22-7 with five blocks in a Game 7 win against the Pacers in the conference finals. Though Ewing was outclassed by Olajuwon in a seven-game Finals loss to the Rockets, he did lift New York to a 3-2 lead in the series with 25 points, 12 rebounds and eight blocks in Game 5.
Bad knees started to catch up with Ewing, whose play grew more inconsistent in his early thirties. While his effort never waned, he gradually lost explosiveness. He went for 29 and 14 in Game 7 of the 1995 conference semis against Indiana, but opted for a potential game-tying layup instead of a dunk and missed as the clock expired.'
In 1999, a 36-year-old Ewing was leading the Knicks in scoring and rebounding and played a crucial role in helping them advance to the conference finals, only to tear his Achilles and miss the ensuing Finals. His absence left New York severely undersized in what would be a five-game loss to the Spurs and twin towers Robinson and Tim Duncan.'
Ewing rallied from the injury to post one last productive season (and postseason) before hanging on for two more years outside of New York. Over 139 postseason games, he averaged 20.2 points and 10.3 rebounds, making him just one of 10 retired players to hit those benchmarks since the 1970s.
"We can't act like Ewing never came up big in the postseason," Wright said. "Jordan beat him a bunch, he got outplayed by Hakeem. Those are two of the greatest players in the history of the game."
Ewing, at the very least, was one of the greatest of his generation.
