USA Basketball Mitchell & Ness Warmup Shirt Patrick Ewing 1992

Size: Small (36)

Ewing won Olympic gold medals as a member of the 1984 and 1992 United States men's basketball teams.[5] In 1984, Ewing averaged 11.0 points in eight games, and was the tournament's leading shot blocker with 18.[35][36] The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame referred to the 1992 "Dream Team" as "the greatest collection of basketball talent on the planet".

Patrick Aloysius Ewing Sr. (born August 5, 1962) is a Jamaican-American basketball coach and former professional player who last coached for the Georgetown University men's team.[1] He played most of his career as the starting center for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) before ending his playing career with brief stints with the Seattle SuperSonics and Orlando Magic. Ewing is regarded as one of the greatest centers of all time, playing a dominant role in the New York Knicks 1990s success.[2]

Highly recruited out of Cambridge, Massachusetts,[3] Ewing played center for Georgetown for four years—in three of which the team reached the NCAA championship game. ESPN in 2008 designated him the 16th-greatest college basketball player of all time.[4] He had a seventeen-year NBA career, predominantly playing for the New York Knicks, where he was an eleven-time all-star and named to seven All-NBA teams. The Knicks appeared in the NBA Finals twice (1994 and 1999) during his tenure. He won Olympic gold medals as a member of the 1984 and 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball teams.[5] Ewing was selected as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996 and as one of the 75 Greatest Players in NBA History in 2021.[6][7] He is a two-time inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts (in 2008 for his individual career and in 2010 as a member of the 1992 Olympic team).[8] Additionally he was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame as a member of the "Dream Team" in 2009. His number 33 was retired by the Knicks in 2003.

Ewing was expected to be the top pick in the 1985 NBA draft. The team that selected him would be making history by doing so. From 1966 until 1984, the NBA draft was conducted similarly to the NFL draft, where teams are awarded draft positions based on winning percentage. The difference was that instead of the team with the lowest percentage automatically being awarded the top pick, the NBA held a coin toss between the teams with the worst records in each conference and the winner of the coin toss selected first with the loser automatically picking second. This practice tended to encourage teams to purposely lose games in order to improve their draft position and potentially get into the coin toss. The only way two teams from the same conference could have the first two picks would have been if one of the two aforementioned teams traded their pick to another team (as the Indiana Pacers had done with what eventually became the number-two pick in the previous year's draft).

Beginning with the 1985 draft, the NBA handled matters differently. Every team that qualified for the playoffs received positions based on their winning percentage, and the teams that did not were placed in a lottery. In the first lottery, the NBA did not determine the positions as they do now. In this case, the seven teams that did not qualify for the playoffs were each given an equal chance to get the top pick. Each team had its name and logo put in an envelope, and the envelopes were placed into a hopper and spun to shuffle them. Once done, Commissioner David Stern then drew an envelope from inside to determine who would pick first. In a move that would create controversy for years to come, the envelope Stern drew was the one belonging to the New York Knicks, inviting allegations the draw was rigged;[19][20][21] Stern had also grown up a Knicks fan.[22] The Knicks drafted Ewing, as expected, beginning a 15-year relationship. They then signed him to a 10-year, $32 million contract, a contract that The New York Times years later described as "a tremendous contract at that time or any time."[23]

Although injuries marred his first year in the league, he was voted NBA Rookie of the Year and named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team after averaging 20 points, 9 rebounds, and 2 blocks per game. Soon after he was considered one of the premier centers in the league. Ewing enjoyed a successful career; eleven times named an NBA All-Star, once named to the All-NBA First Team, six times a member of the All-NBA Second Team, and named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team three times. He was a member of the original Dream Team at the 1992 Olympic Games. He was also given the honor of being named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History.

In the 1992 Eastern Conference Semifinals, the Knicks played the defending NBA champion Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. Ewing was unstoppable in Game 1, finishing with 34 points, 16 rebounds, and 6 blocks, and the Knicks beat Chicago 94–89. The Knicks were facing elimination in Game 6 when Ewing had one of the greatest games of his career. The team trailed 3–2 in the series, and Ewing was limited physically by a bad ankle sprain,[24] but he helped the Knicks beat the Bulls 100–86 by scoring 27 points. NBC announcer Marv Albert called it a "Willis Reed-type performance", but the Knicks were ultimately eliminated in Game 7 in a blowout, 110–81.

In an April 14, 1993, game,[25] between the Knicks and the Charlotte Hornets, the 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m) Ewing suffered a moment of embarrassment when Muggsy Bogues, a 5-foot-3-inch-tall (1.60 m) point guard for the Hornets, managed to block his shot.[26] The team looked like it was going to advance to the NBA Finals when they took a 2–0 lead over Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Both teams battled well, each winning on its home court in the first 4 games. However, the Bulls stunned the Ewing-led Knicks, winning Game 5 in New York 97–94 after Ewing's teammate, Charles Smith, was repeatedly blocked down low by Bulls defenders on the game's final possession. The Bulls would go on to win Game 6 96–88 and then claim their third straight NBA title. This would be one more season in which Ewing had to deal with no championships, despite the fact that the Knicks had the best regular-season record in the Eastern Conference at 60–22 and had the second-best record in the NBA, behind the Phoenix Suns, who were 62–20.

With Jordan out of the league, 1993–94 was considered a wide-open year in the NBA, and Ewing had declared that 1994 would be the Knicks' year. He was a main contributor to the Knicks' run to the 1994 NBA Finals, in which the Knicks—in the Finals for the first time since 1973—lost in the final seconds of Games 6 and 7 to Hakeem Olajuwon's Houston Rockets. The Knicks, with Ewing leading them, had to survive a grueling trek through the playoffs simply to reach the Finals. They defeated the Bulls and Scottie Pippen in seven games in the 1994 Eastern Conference Semifinals (all seven games were won by the home team), and defeated Reggie Miller's Indiana Pacers in the Conference Finals, which also took seven games to decide. In the Finals, the Knicks stole Game 2 in Houston, but could not hold court at home, dropping Game 3 at the Garden. The Knicks then won the next two games to return to Houston ahead 3–2. However, the Rockets won the next two games. Ewing made the most of his playoff run by setting a record for most blocked shots in a Finals series with 30 (later broken by Tim Duncan in 2003 with 32). He also set an NBA Finals record for most blocked shots in a single game, with 8 (surpassed by Dwight Howard in 2009).

The following year, a potential game-tying finger roll by Ewing rimmed out in the dwindling seconds of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, resulting in a loss to the Indiana Pacers. In the 1995–96 season, Ewing and the Knicks were eliminated in the Eastern Conference Semifinals in five games by the record-setting 1995–96 Bulls, who won 72 games that year en route to their fourth championship.

In the 1997 playoffs, the Knicks faced the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Ewing was involved in a Game 5 brawl where both teams' benches got involved. The Knicks, who were up 3–1 in the series going into Game 5, lost the next three games and were eliminated.

In the next season, Ewing's career almost came to an end due to an injury. On December 20, 1997, in a game against the Milwaukee Bucks at the Bradley Center, Ewing was fouled by Andrew Lang while attempting a dunk.[27] Ewing fell awkwardly and landed with all of his weight on his shooting hand. The result was a severely damaged wrist, with Ewing suffering a displaced fracture, a complete dislocation of the lunate bone, and torn ligaments. These injuries required emergency surgery to prevent nerve damage, and it was said that Ewing suffered injuries that were usually reserved for victims of vehicular accidents.[28]

Ewing, who had only missed 20 games in the previous ten seasons, missed the remaining 56 games of the season,[29] but he was able to rehabilitate the injury faster than expected, and as the playoffs began Ewing was talking about returning. The Heat and Knicks met in the playoffs for the second straight year. This time, the two teams met up in the first round of the playoffs. The series went to a decisive fifth game, but the Knicks avenged their loss to Miami the year before by beating the Heat in Miami 98–81. Ewing returned for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Pacers. His presence was not enough, however, as the Knicks fell to the Pacers in five games.

The following season, Ewing and the Knicks qualified as the East's eighth seed in a lockout-shortened season. Although battling an achilles tendon injury, Ewing led the Knicks to another victory over the Heat in the first round, 3–2. In the series-clinching Game 5, he scored 22 points and grabbed 11 rebounds.[30] They followed that up by sweeping the Atlanta Hawks, and defeated the Pacers in the Conference Finals in 6 games, despite Ewing's injury finally forcing him out of action. The Knicks could not, however, complete their Cinderella run, as they lost in the Finals to the San Antonio Spurs, 4–1.

In Ewing's final season with the Knicks in 1999–2000, the team finished as the third seed in the East behind the Pacers and Heat. The team advanced to the Conference Finals again, sweeping the Toronto Raptors and beating the Heat for the third straight year in seven games, but could not defeat the Pacers and fell in six games. In his last year with the Knicks, Ewing had a game-winning slam dunk over Alonzo Mourning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals to lead the Knicks to the Eastern Conference Finals. During his final season with the Knicks, Ewing played in his 1,000th NBA game, finishing his Knick career with a franchise-record 1,039 games played in a Knick uniform (he is the only player to play 1,000 games with the Knicks).