PATRICK EWING will get the ball with little time left, which is plenty more than Jeff Van Gundy has for anyone who wonders why.
“A Hall of Fame player gets the ball in the right spot, wide open on two straight post-ups and people groan?” groaned the Knick coach the other day. “The guy in the fourth quarter is our highest percentage shooter. It’s not even close.”
So you can etch it in the stone of The Big Fella’s undersized mitts: This is where the rock is going. Not only can you turn off your shot clock by it, but also those of us more inclined to question Ewing’s percentage in getting the shot away than how often it goes in.
It’s a long way down to the floor when Ewing puts the ball onto it, schlepping his 37-year-old bones across the paint. Muggsy Bogues, small enough to turn the space between Ewing’s legs into the Arc De Triomphe, stripped Ewing on one late possession in Game 1.
The next time, Ewing smartly kicked the ball out of the double team and Latrell Sprewell found an open man, Larry Johnson, whose big 3-pointer made Knick fans open to the idea that maybe Van Gundy knows best after all. Their reassurance will last only until the next time, which could be as early as Game 2 tonight, when Ewing loses the ball or misses the shot and the groans drone on.
Hey, you can’t make ’em all, only reasonable arguments that the Knick offense at crunch time is as ponderously predictable as the drop step across the paint and a huge waste of resources like Allan Houston and Sprewell, besides. They stand twiddling thumbs while Ewing puts all 10 of his to work.
He is every bit the future Hall of Famer that Van Gundy insists, a big winner who has come through at crunch time more often than his critics remember. It is not Ewing’s fault that he happened to be born into the Michael Jordan era, that he was past his prime before the Knicks effectively complemented him with a second star like Houston and/or Sprewell, that Pat Riley didn’t get John Starks outta there when that 1994 championship really should have been Ewing’s to win.
Courage and perseverance have earned Ewing the warm fuzzies the Garden crowd finally feels for him, in season No. 12. His last legs are working better than we ever thought they would again and there are selected nights when he still is a dominating force. We just don’t know why, on those that he is not, the ball still gets forced to him.
“Because he delivers,” said assistant coach Don Chaney. “If he is not delivering, we would go to somebody else.”
Ask any mother who is a Knick fan whether it was more painful to deliver than it is sometimes to watch Ewing trying to deliver, and she’ll have a tough call. No question, he has a three-inch height advantage on Charles Oakley and it makes sense to exploit it. As long as the ball can come back out safely, there is logic in throwing it into Ewing first.
But you still wonder about the Raptors not having to be curious about where the ball is going, about Oakley’s intimate knowledge of Ewing’s skills and mindset. Also, about the morale effect this has on Sprewell, who took two shots in the fourth quarter Sunday; Houston, who took three; even Larry Johnson, who shot 7-for-11.
Ewing, who made only six-for-15, nevertheless led the Knicks in fourth-quarter attempts with four. “It doesn’t hurt Sprewell and Houston mentally because Pat is not always the first option,” insisted Chaney. “We mix it up.
“Allan has had the ball on the last shot as well as Sprewell. It will depend on the matchup. Of late, we’ve gone to Patrick but circumstances, like a guy being hot or us wanting to get to the line, dictate.
“If Allan were a great paint player, we would probably go with him for the last shot. And if he’s hot from the outside, we still will. It varies, but Patrick has been very consistent. He takes up a lot of space in that paint area and gives us a huge size advantage against Oakley. If they double him, he has a chance to make somebody else better by passing the ball out.
“You can’t tell him, ‘don’t bounce the basketball.’ You have to let him play. More times than not, he’ll make the right decision. There will be a few times they take it from him. It’s part of the game.”
Right, the most crucial part. That’s when you want the ball in the best hands, which Ewing assuredly does not own. Certainly, he is the Knick most likely to draw a foul, but the Raptors don’t have to draw any diagrams when they huddle up for the big stop.
They know, everybody knows, Ewing is the first option. And sometimes he doesn’t weigh the others carefully enough to leave the Knicks reason to live and die with him anymore.
