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Ewing's journey nearing end
I first saw Patrick Ewing play basketball when he was in the eighth grade. There was a summer tournament called the Boston Shootout, one of those affairs that features high school all-star teams from various cities. Patrick Ewing played for Boston. He was about 6-foot-9, slender, hadn't even started Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. I never had heard of him, but all of the college coaches knew everything about his life. I think they had been tracking him since he showed up as the biggest kid in nursery school. "Here's what you should do," one coach suggested. "Follow this kid from today forward. Write down everything that happens to him. You'll have a book." No, I never followed the advice, but yes, I followed the kid. Through all these years -- watching players on other high school teams waving rakes and brooms in front of their starting centers in practice to get them ready for the playoffs against Ewing, watching Georgetown on television, watching the Knicks come close, but ultimately short, a bunch of times -- he has been a grand, evolving warrior. The book that would have been written would have been without much controversy, dull, actually, but solid and honest. Now, after a bad year in Seattle, he's going to go to the Orlando Magic at age 38 for one more turn around the floor. OK, fine, Patrick, but here's some advice from your biographer that never was: the final chapter's already been written. The dance is done. Leigh Montville's commentaries appear regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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