When he was a kid, Patrick Ewing’s games were cricket and soccer, not basketball. It wasn’t until he left his native Jamaica at age 12 for Cambridge, Massachusetts, that he began playing the game that would define his life.
After a stellar college career with John Thompson’s Georgetown Hoyas and a key role on the 1984 Olympic team that took home the gold medal, Ewing was the obvious prize in the 1985 draft. (One NBA executive was quoted as saying, “We’ve had the Mikan era, the Russell era, the Kareem era. Now we’ll have the Ewing era.”) In the first year of the draft lottery -- designed to discourage teams from “tanking” in order to gain a higher draft pick -- the Knicks emerged with the number one pick.