Win or Lose, Patrick Ewing Is Going to Be Disappointed

Patrick Ewing is one of my favorite professional athletes of all time. I grew up during his heyday with the Knicks. I watched him, each year, come tantalizingly close to breaking through against Michael Jordan and the Bulls. Finally, in 1994, while Jordan was off trying his hand at baseball, Ewing led the Knicks past the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Championship, putting up an amazing 24 points, 22 rebounds, 7 assists and 5 blocks in the decisive Game 7. A few weeks later, despite jumping out to a 3-1 series lead, Ewing and the Knicks ended up on the wrong side of Hakeem Olajuwan's Houston Rockets in the Finals. Later, in 1999, Ewing, out with a partially torn Achilles tendon, was forced to watch from the sidelines, as the Knicks, behind Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell, Larry Johnson and Marcus Camby, made their improbable run to the Finals. That Knicks team lost in five games to the San Antonio Spurs, another goddam team from Texas. In his professional career, Ewing was 0-2 in the Finals. 

Like Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and John Stockton, Ewing's quest for a championship ended badly. To this day, Ewing is widely considered one of the greatest basketball players never to have won a ring, a dissonant, unforgiving list of Hall of Fame talents who came up short, a list that grows longer each passing year. As a fan, this remains my biggest disappointment in sports. Patrick, as he was known around my household, should have won. At least twice. The fact that he didn't continues to wrankle, even today. 

It seems to be messing with the Big Fella, too.  Yesterday, Ewing, now an assistant coach with the Eastern Conference Champion Orlando Magic, had this to say about the prospect of winning it all. "It means a lot," he said. "A player, coach, winning a championship means a lot. That will shut everybody up. Everyone who says I don't have one, it will shut them up when I do have one."

Does he really believe this? Could capturing an elusive championship as a coach possibly be as satisfying to Ewing as it would have been if he had delivered a ring to New York as its franchise player? Does Ewing really think an Orlando victory would separate him from the likes of Barkley and Malone? I'm sorry, Patrick, but this just isn't the case. If the Magic win it all, I'm sure Dwight Howard would be more than happy to credit Ewing with his inevitable development as a player. I'm sure, too, that Stan Van Gundy would continue to put in a good word for Ewing around the league as a possible head coaching candidate. But, ultimately, if the Magic go on to beat the Lakers, bragging rights would belong, almost exclusively, to the players, head coach and general manager, just as it always has, and just as it should remain. Ewing's championship contributions, on the other hand, will be noted, rather unceremoniously, somewhere between 12th-man Jeremy Richardson and Tom Smith, the Magic's athletic trainer.