Building a starting five of New York Knicks star Patrick Ewing’s best teammates, if you could put them on the same team during their respective best season.
Modern-day New York Knicks fans forget that Patrick Ewing’s time in the Big Apple was marked by criticism. Long before teammate Charles Oakley used the media’s bullhorn to make his own critiques public, all you needed to do was walk down the escalators of Madison Square Garden at the end of a Knicks playoff loss, and you would hear plenty of fans voicing their frustration with Ewing’s failure to lead the team over the top.
How times have changed.
With the benefit of time and James Dolan, Patrick Ewing’s legacy in New York has improved. Knicks fans have suffered through two decades of losing since Ewing was shipped to the Seattle Supersonics, and the days of Ewing leading the Knicks deep into the playoffs every single season are surely missed.
But what about the players who played alongside Mr. Ewing in New York?
An argument long-held by Ewing supporters is that he never had a proper number two option in the lineup to take some of the load off the big man with failing knees late in his career.
We know the names of the players who suited up next to Ewing during the nineties. But what if we ignored time? What if we came up with a starting five around Ewing that gave him the best version of his best teammates at each position? In other words, you could put prime Patrick Ewing alongside someone like Allan Houston in his prime.
This is what the all-time Patrick Ewing teammates team would look like.