It’s on again!
The Patrick Ewing trade talks are sizzling once more and this deal appears to be more than just another false alarm.
A four-team deal involving the Knicks, Seattle, Phoenix and the Lakers was close to being completed late last night that would send Ewing to the Sonics. The Knicks would walk away with the Lakers’ Glen Rice and Suns center Luc Longley, sources told The Post.
Phoenix became the new team involved in the discussions after the Sixers dropped out early yesterday in a deal that would have landed the Knicks Rice and Matt Geiger. That proposed deal is dead.
The Suns, ironically, are on Ewing’s eight-team wish list but Phoenix would come away with just the Lakers’ Travis Knight and throw-in players such as Greg Foster. The Knicks also may get Seattle’s young 7-footer Vladimir Stepania.
Knicks’ GM Scott Layden was contacting the other three teams and conversing with David Falk, the agent for both Rice and Ewing, last night.
Ewing would go to Seattle, ending his 15-year run with the Knicks, the Lakers would get Horace Grant and the Knicks Rice and Longley.
The proposed deal beats last week’s clinker that crashed in which the Knicks would wind up with only Rice in a three-way with Seattle and the Lakers, but not by much.
By adding a fourth team, the Knicks get somebody to replace Ewing at the pivot but it is hardly a stirring deal, especially now that Longley would be coming aboard instead of Geiger.
And it hardly matches last month’s four-team package in which the Knicks netted Vin Baker and Rice.
The Knicks’ infatuation with Rice is tied to gaining another outside shooter to make them comfortable in dealing Allan Houston or Latrell Sprewell for an All-Star big man such as Dikembe Mutombo or Chris Webber. The Knicks have already discussed deals with Atlanta in which either Houston or Spree and Marcus Camby would be packaged for Mutombo.
Longley, the 7-1 center from Australia, has been in Phoenix two seasons after leaving the Bulls. Despite all his rings, Longley has been a disappointment in Phoenix and has four years and $26.5 million left on his contract that the Suns are trying to dump.
Geiger had more offensive upside than Longley but landed in Sixers coach Larry Brown’s doghouse during a horrible campaign last season. Geiger also has four years left on his pact and about $34 million.
Yesterday afternoon, the Bulls announced they “no longer had any interest in signing Glen Rice.” That announcement was a clear indicator the Rice-Ewing talks were alive again.
The Bulls, the only club capable of offering Rice more than the $2.25 million exception, had grown tired of waiting for Rice to make a decision. Falk has tried to orchestrate a sign-and-trade with the Knicks all summer in which Rice could land a $50 million package starting at $8.3M a year. The Bulls offered only a one-year, $8M deal.
Meanwhile, one league source indicated one of the holdups yesterday was the Knicks not willing to fork over the $50 million they were prepared to give last month when the original four-team deal nearly came to fruition.
Ewing came out of his cave in Potomoc, Md., last weekend, showing up in Minneapolis at a charity event thrown by his ex-Knick teammate Trent Tucker.
According to Tucker, Ewing was in a good mood, signing autographs and posing for pictures and chatting with Michael Jordan. However, when The Post reached him at his hotel room last Friday, Ewing said, “I’m not talking to anybody.”
When asked if he’d be in a Knick uniform this season, Ewing hung up the phone.
