Patrick Ewing

Patrick Aloysius Ewing Sr. (born August 5, 1962) is a Jamaican-American basketball coach and former professional player who is a basketball ambassador for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA), where he spent most of his 17-year playing career as the starting center before ending his playing career with brief stints with the Seattle SuperSonics and Orlando Magic. Ewing is regarded as one of the greatest centers of all time, playing a dominant role in the New York Knicks' 1990s success.^[1]

Highly recruited out of Cambridge, Massachusetts,^[2] Ewing played center for the Georgetown Hoyas for four years—in three of which the team reached the NCAA championship game. ESPN in 2008 designated him the 16th-greatest college basketball player of all time.^[3] He had a seventeen-year NBA career, predominantly playing for the New York Knicks, where he was an eleven-time all-star and named to seven All-NBA teams. The Knicks appeared in the NBA Finals twice (1994 and 1999) during his tenure. He won Olympic gold medals as a member of the 1984 and 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball teams.^[4] Ewing was selected as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996 and as one of the 75 Greatest Players in NBA History in 2021.^[5][6] He is a two-time inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts (in 2008 for his individual career and in 2010 as a member of the 1992 Olympic team).^[7] Additionally he was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame as a member of the "Dream Team" in 2009. His number 33 was retired by the Knicks in 2003.