One Big Jump Shot Makes Up for All of Ewing’s Misses

For Patrick Ewing, it was the worst of times.

Playing in front of 17,505 Forum fans Sunday night, and playing against maybe the greatest basketball team and basketball center in the world, Patrick Ewing had misplaced his jumper.

It was embarrassing.

The Knicks’ heralded rookie was making his second and last appearance in Los Angeles this season--the Knicks already played the Clippers at the Sports Arena--and he was tossing up bricks and even air balls.

Laker center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had swatted a few Ewing shots back into the rookie’s face.

If Ewing ever had nightmares about what the NBA would be like on a bad night, the nightmares were now coming true.

Where was that jumper?

The New York Knicks, a team limping along at the back of the NBA pack, know they can’t count on much this season, but they have learned to count on Patrick Ewing’s jumper.

But where was it now, when they really needed it?

In the first half Ewing hit one of his nine shot attempts. With a minute and a half left in the game, Patrick’s personal shot-o-meter registered a frigid 2 for 16.

Still the rag-tag Knicks were holding onto a lead over the game’s glamour team, the Lakers. But the Lakers were closing, just five points back.

On the Knicks’ bench, the players were talking.

“We were talking about how we all had confidence in Pat,” said Knick sub Ernie Grunfeld. “He kept asking for the ball. He’s been taking the big pressure shots for us all season. He has a big heart. We don’t care how many shots he was missing. In a pressure situation, we were going to him again.”

So they did. With the 24-second clock about to expire, Ewing found himself with the ball and he buried a 15-foot jumper to give the Knicks a seven-point lead and the game.

“This is the kind of kid he is,” Knick Coach Hubie Brown said. “He took the big shot. A hell of a lot of players would have passed off. That (taking the shot) took (guts).”

Did Brown say anything during the game to Ewing about his shooting?

“I told him to keep shooting,” Brown said. “We need him and Gerald (Wilkins) to keep shooting. All we ask him (Ewing) to do is not keep turning baseline.”

Ewing’s favorite move is a fallaway jumper along the baseline. Brown wants Ewing to turn the other way, into the lane, and look for either the shot or the pass.

This time he simply turned and fired.

“I knew I could make it,” Ewing said quietly. He says everything quietly.

“I know why I was missing (earlier). I was hesitating, trying to get the ball closer, to get Kareem out of the game (on fouls). That threw my shot off a great deal. But I had a whole lot of confidence.”

He has needed it this season. The idea was for Ewing to join the Knicks, play a lot of forward, learn from small forward Bernard King and center Bill Cartwright, and help the team contend for a playoff spot.

But King and Cartwright were both sidelined with injuries, and the Knicks have been placed squarely on Ewing’s shoulders.

The tough New York fans, the tough New York media, Ewing’s shyness and lack of big-city sophistication, the beating he was sure to take around the league, criticism from the super-sharp-tongued Brown, losing regularly--all these factors could have driven Patrick Ewing down deeper than the subway.

And there were the nagging injuries. An elbow, an ankle, a cornea, two knees. Sometimes he ices down his knees on the bench during a game.

Opposing teams gear their defense to stopping Ewing. They double and triple team him, dropping down guards or moving in weak-side forwards to torment and confuse him.

The Knicks have lost more games this season than Ewing lost in his college career. The season grinds on, with no relief in sight.

Through it all, Ewing has played hard, has carried the Knicks, a hustling but overmatched team.

“He works so hard,” Laker coach Pat Riley said. “He has great offensive moves and tenacity.”

Ewing is supposed to be the next great NBA center, the next Kareem. It’s doubtful he’ll ever reach that level, because Kareem’s skyhook is inherently more dangerous than Ewing’s fallaway jumper, even when the jumper is falling. A shot released five feet from the rim is more dangerous than a shot released 15 feet from the rim.

But the kid is catching on fast.

He scored 28 points against the Lakers in mid-December, but Laker forward Kurt Rambis said of Ewing after Sunday night’s game, “He’s improved a lot since then. He seems more refined, his overall game has improved tremendously.”

This despite the fact that injuries have kept Ewing out of 75% of the Knicks’ practices.

On Sunday, Ewing got another up-close and personal look at the Post Master, Abdul-Jabbar. He watched Kareem rain 40 points worth of sky hooks down on the hapless Knicks.

Then Ewing found his jump shot, the one he had been looking for all evening. One jump shot, and the Knicks beat the Lakers.

As he left the visitor’s dressing room at the Forum, halfway through a long season, Ewing was smiling and he walked with a spring in his step.