Ewing, Patrick

Patrick Ewing, in full Patrick Aloysius Ewing, (born August 5, 1962, Kingston, Jamaica), Jamaican-born American basketball player and coach who was one of the dominant stars of his era, primarily while playing for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Ewing arrived in the United States at age 11, and he was introduced to basketball relatively late in life while a schoolboy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He quickly overcame his initial awkwardness on the court and became a hotly recruited player in high school, eventually taking a scholarship offer from Georgetown University. A 7-foot (2.13-metre) centre, Ewing had an outstanding collegiate career at Georgetown, where he led the Hoyas to three appearances in a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I national championship game and to a national title in 1984. Additionally, he was named an All-American three times and was voted the Most Outstanding Player of the 1984 Division I basketball tournament.

He was drafted with the first overall selection of the 1985 NBA draft by the Knicks, who had earlier that year won the first NBA draft lottery ever held. Ewing was touted as a “franchise-saving” player as soon as he joined the Knicks, and the young player quickly became the focus of intense media pressure. Over the course of his career, he was selected as an NBA all-star 11 times and led the Knicks to 13 play-off appearances in his 15 years with the team—including a trip to the 1994 NBA finals—but he ultimately failed to lead the Knicks to a title. He also set a number of Knicks franchise records, including points scored, rebounds, and blocked shots.

After a pair of one-year stints with the Seattle Supersonics (2000–01) and the Orlando Magic (2001–02), Ewing retired in 2002 as one of the greatest players in league history to have never won an NBA title—possibly because his playing career largely coincided with Michael Jordan’s years of basketball dominance. He entered into coaching after his retirement, serving as an assistant coach for a number of NBA franchises from 2003. In 2017 he was named the men’s head basketball coach at Georgetown University. In addition to his storied collegiate and professional careers, he was a member of two gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic basketball teams, including the dominant 1992 “Dream Team” that consisted of NBA superstars (his other gold medal came in 1984). Ewing was named one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history in 1996, and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008.