Ewing elected to Hall

Olajuwon, Dantley, Riley also honored

PATRICK EWING Great work ethic

SAN ANTONIO - You'd have to assume this was a rubber-stamp election.

How could Patrick Ewing not make the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame?

Well, he did. He joins Hakeem Olajuwon as first-time nominees elected to the Class of 2008, as announced yesterday at the Final Four.

Joining the two titans of the pivot for the enshrinement ceremony in Springfield, Mass., on the weekend of Sept. 4-6 will be scoring machine Adrian Dantley, five-time NBA championship coach Pat Riley, three-time national championship women's coach Cathy Rush, longtime Detroit Pistons owner William Davidson, and the one and only voice of college basketball, Dick Vitale, who made it in after being rejected the two previous years.

Ewing's transformation from Jamaican immigrant to one of the great centers of all-time began in Cambridge, Mass., where his family settled when he was 11. Within a couple of years, tales of a tall, talented basketball phenom in the Cambridge middle schools began to circulate. Ewing paid public tribute to his first coach, Steve Jenkins, but it was Cambridge Rindge and Latin mentor Mike Jarvis who truly molded the young man into the player he became by modeling him after the greatest winner in American team sports history, and Jarvis's personal hero. That would, of course, be Bill Russell.

Jarvis wanted Ewing to realize that there was far more to this game than scoring. He wanted Ewing to be a superior defensive and rebounding presence, too, and once the 6-foot-11-inch Ewing had led Rindge and Latin to a pair of state titles, the job was handed over to John Thompson at Georgetown. Ewing went from a coach who loved and respected Russell to one who was his back-up center for two years. His work habits were further ingrained.

By the time Riley met up with Ewing, the man who had coached four championship teams in Los Angeles thought he had come across everything the NBA possibly could encompass. But the new coach of the Knicks found out otherwise.

"I'm the new coach of the Knicks, and we're having our first practice down there in Charleston [S.C.]," Riley recalled. "I work them hard the first day. We go three hours, and when it's over, Patrick says to me, 'That's it? Just three hours? I thought you were going to do some work.' From that moment on, Patrick became a great ally for me."

Ewing's Georgetown team won the NCAA championship in 1984 and got to the Final Four on two other occasions. He was a three-time consensus All-American and a member of Bob Knight's 1984 Olympic team. But he did not get a ring in the NBA, and Riley feels accountable.

"We were very close in '94," he said. "I wish I could have gotten Patrick over the hump."

For the record, the Knicks lost to Olajuwon's Houston Rockets in seven games after taking a 3-2 lead back to Houston.

The truth is the Knicks were built around Ewing for a decade and a half. He spent 15 of his first 17 NBA seasons in New York, playing in 11 All-Star Games. He is the franchise's career leader in points, rebounds, blocks, steals, and field goals. He averaged 20 points or more 13 times. He was a member of the hallowed Dream Team in 1992, where he wound up bonding with Larry Bird. And through it all, he never took a possession off.

Riley has a special place in his heart for Ewing.

"He's the kind of guy you want to get up at 5 in the morning to coach, and when you get there, you find out he's already there," said Riley.

Despite being groomed by Jarvis and Thompson to be the next Bill Russell, he turned out to be the first Patrick Ewing. Russell never had an offensive weapon as remotely feared and effective as Ewing's turnaround jumper.

The one great what-if of Ewing's career is what would have happened had he been allowed to participate in a true up-tempo offense. For there have been few centers in basketball history who could get up and down the floor as quickly and gracefully.

"I've been blessed," Ewing said. "I've been blessed since I came here from Jamaica."

The millions of people who watched Ewing play feel pretty blessed, too.