ESPN 30 For 30 Short: "When Patrick Ewing Committed To Georgetown"

[Art Vandelay]

"Until 6 years ago, he had never seen a basketball."



All anybody remembers from that North Carolina game was Jordan's shot-- I had no idea it ended on such a sloppy turnover, the outcome literally totally out of Ewing's hands.

 

[Mack1052]

Fear of the black man within the first 7 seconds of the video

 

[playahaitian]

Good post

 

[Art Vandelay]

Fear of the black man within the first 7 seconds of the video

I didn't even notice that shit.

 

[Mack1052]

I didn't even notice that shit.

It's so covert yet so blatant

 

[Mr. Bizkits]

Fear of the black man within the first 7 seconds of the video

The doc didn't explain the enormous amount of racism/white supremacy that Ewing had to overcome while at Georgetown playing other teams.

 

[Mack1052]

The doc didn't explain the enormous amount of racism/white supremacy that Ewing had to overcome while at Georgetown playing other teams.

Yup but in fairness it's a short doc. That subject would need a full on documentary starting from the Bill Russell days

 

[Art Vandelay]

​

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

[Mike Wilbon Voice] Pat-rick Ewing! [/Mike Wilbon voice]

 

[Duece]

How the fuck did he pass the ball to the other team?

 

[c_commander]

How the fuck did he pass the ball to the other team?

I have no clue. Dean Smith's 2 titles came on the biggest fuckups in NCAA title game history. This and the Webber timeout.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

The doc didn't explain the enormous amount of racism/white supremacy that Ewing had to overcome while at Georgetown playing other teams.

That really is a story that needs to be told.

They threw bananas at him so often, the Washington Post stopped mentioning it because they said it wasn't news.

A Banner Year for Meanness
Patrick Ewing comes ungently to the Big East tournament
By Tom Callahan
Monday, Mar. 14, 1983

The sophomore season of 7-ft. Georgetown Center Patrick Ewing has been a mean slide back to the hard times of Jackie Robinson. Signs along the way: at Providence College, EWING CAN'T READ; at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, THINK EWING! THINK!; in Philadelphia's Palestra, EWING IS AN APE. When Ewing was introduced there someone in the crowd tossed a banana peel onto the court. T shirts and buttons have been manufactured bearing the slogan: EWING KANT READ DIS, which is also a recurring chant at the games. Not surprisingly, Patrick Ewing, 20, has had a few fights this year. Racism is not surprising. It pervade sports and life. But the overtness of ape banners and bananas on the floor is chilling.

Basketball is a most intimate game. Observing a baseball or football player from a distance, the first impression of color might be the color of his uniform. But basketball players are running around in their underwear, and the spectators are close enough to see the players' beards dripping sweat. Since a giant black center is no novelty, something about Ewing must be particularly affecting. "He looks like a big, bad, mean guy," says John Thompson, his coach. "Actually he's a big, quiet, sensitive guy."

Ewing is an aggressive player. The most popular black basketball players in the world are the Harlem Globetrotters, grinning minstrels "aping" their game. But the next most popular black basketball players are those without a black presence, whose talent may be intimidating but whose style is unthreatening. Ralph Sampson, the University of Virginia's 7-ft. 4-in. senior center, is more docile and less abused. In fact, fans are given to wondering how much better Sampson would be if he had a rougher temperament. Ewing plays angry. "The way Ewing plays," says Thompson, "he doesn't ask questions, he makes statements."

Neither does he answer questions very often. In the manner of U.C.L.A. Coach John Wooden, whose players frequently needed postgraduate work in smiling, Thompson has sheltered his star from the public and press. "I'm not going to make Patrick talk to someone if he doesn't want to," Thompson says, "and usually he doesn't want to." Though just a few words from Ewing might lower the banners, Thompson wonders, "Should it be up to him? We've received letters from people trying to rationalize the abuse, to justify it. 'He should get used to it,' they say. 'It comes with the territory.' Do we want a young kid to get used to this?"

Thompson, too, is black and around 7 ft. tall. For a couple of seasons after his playing years at Providence, he backed up Bill Russell for the Boston Celtics. A few banners have stretched across Thompson's life as well. In 1975, his third year at Georgetown, this one was hoisted in the school gym: THOMPSON THE ****** COACH MUST GO. Last season, when Ewing and Thompson came within one basket of winning the national championship, a great deal was made of Thompson's being the first black coach to bring a team to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's final four. So much talk of color distressed him. "Ignorance has no color," Thompson says. "The point isn't that this season has been degrading to a black man. It has been degrading to any man. On the airplane last week, I asked Patrick again how he was holding up. He told me, 'I've grown accustomed to it. I got so much of it in high school.' That made me saddest of all."

Ewing's high school was Cambridge Rindge and Latin in Massachusetts, his coach a concerned man named Mike Jarvis. In a well-meaning letter that became the source of the KANT READ slurs, Jarvis explained to swarming recruiters that Ewing had lived his first twelve years in Jamaica and still spoke with an island patois that made him self-conscious. According to the letter, Ewing had learning deficiencies that would require such licenses as un-timed testing and lecture taping. "My approach was to argue against the terms of the letter," says Thompson, who insists Ewing has received no concessions of the kind requested and that he is faring well in school. "I told Patrick's father, 'Don't send your son to me to be educated and then tell me how to educate him.' " Naturally, after Ewing chose Georgetown, copies of the letter were well distributed by the losers. In any case, for the bigots in the stands, the letter is only an excuse. The grudge existed before Ewing.

Unconventional, mysterious, Ewing wears a gray T shirt under his game jersey, a shield from the cold but also an emblem of individuality. The shirt is festooned with NIKE insignias, Thompson being a consultant for that sporting-goods company, as many college coaches serve one company or another for a significant fee. Nobody looks down to question the propriety of manufacturers' logos on the socks of collegiate players, but Ewing waves the practice not only under your nose but over the rim. Unwittingly or not, he never softens anything. Says Thompson: "He has an unbelievable strength that is close to arrogant pride, but a good arrogant pride. He'll learn to hook and roll eventually, but for now he's a banger."

The banging in the Big East, a four-year-old conference with five teams ranked among the country's top 20, has been almost as loud as the signs, and nearly as ugly at times. Both Georgetown-St. John's games this year have featured fistfights, and Madison Square Garden is in a tingle for the Big East tournament this week. Georgetown's record is 9 and 5 in the conference (19 and 8 overall). Two graduated guards have been missed this season: opponents have been able to concentrate on Ewing and bang on him. "Our games are not for the faint of heart, that's for sure," says Commissioner Dave Gavitt, who disputes "the chatter about violence in the Big East." As for the banners, he has directed administrators to be quick in getting them down. At his angriest, Thompson says, "First a sign, then a banana, then a rock, .then a riot." But then quietly he adds, "There is learning in negatives too." Ewing is certainly getting an education.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951986,00.html




Sport: A Dream That Couldn't Miss
By Tom Callahan
Monday, Apr. 15, 1985

Once again, the first mention of a dynasty signaled its end. Figuring to become only the sixth university to repeat a national basketball championship, Patrick Ewing's Georgetown was about to be fitted beside Bill Russell's San Francisco and measured against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's UCLA when destiny's Villanova happened along, singing a song, shooting 78.6% in the title game, missing one shot the second half. As the Nebraska football team seems to remember, being the best can be a lonely distinction next to beating the best, though last week's 66-64 final was more than just the most amazing basketball game anyone could recall. It was the most equitable upset of all.

How proficient a team may be at rebounding loses some moment if there are no rebounds. Reasoning that they played passably well under the circumstances --shooting almost 55% themselves--the Georgetown Hoyas had no difficulty afterward standing and applauding the Wildcats, whom they defeated twice during the season. From the little, mussed coach, Rollie Massimino, to the small, smiling guard, Gary McLain, Villanova is a most appealing winner. Massimino said, "I've screamed at this group more than any other, not because they are such good players, but because they are such good kids. They could take it." On the eve of the championship, Massimino's expressive eyes filled with water as he heard McLain describe him as "a brother, a friend, a father, your boss, your coach."

That is a fine definition of a teacher, and suits Georgetown's John Thompson no less. "We know how to win basketball games," he said, "and we know how to lose them." Before the game, Thompson had observed, "There are 50,000 ways of educating people," though this one could hardly have occurred to him. Since two of the other three teams in the Final Four were twice-beaten Big East rivals, Georgetown's dominance was a matter of record as well as opinion. Declaring Memphis State the secular national champion, country Coach Dana Kirk quickly left the tournament to these city Catholics. The untidiness of Kirk's 52-45 semifinal loss to Villanova obscured his prophecy: "If they're a Cinderella team, Cinderella wears boots."

Meanwhile, Georgetown was terrorizing St. John's, for the third straight time, 77-59. As wisps of point-shaving memories blow north from Louisiana, this has been a nostalgic season for college basketball in New York City. The local papers have clutched elfin Coach Lou Carnesecca adoringly to their breast, and more than one national organization has concluded that freckle- faced Guard Chris Mullin is the finest player in the country. He won the John Wooden player-of-the-year award, but it would probably be best if nobody asks UCLA's old coach his opinion. Of 148 sportswriters and broadcasters consulted by U.P.I., only 39 selected the 7-ft. center Ewing, who has now lifted his team to three final games and is beyond question the most significant college player since Bill Walton.

Ewing won the Adolph Rupp player-of-the-year award, though it is possibly just as well that Kentucky's bigoted baron is not around anymore to vote on who can play basketball. As Ewing was introduced for his final college game, a banana peel hit the floor of Lexington's Rupp Arena with a sickening whap. It seemed barely to miss slapping him, though he appeared not to notice. The Washington Post stopped recording this ritual when it ceased being news. "Bananas have been thrown at Ewing in at least ten games this year," Reporter Michael Wilbon says. Illiteracy signs were back also: EWING KANT READ DIS. If he is not the most glib performer in the interview room, Ewing apparently has had no trouble conversing with and charming teammates or classmates.

Even at a glance, his four-year development shows. There is no doubt either that Ewing made Georgetown rich or that Georgetown made Ewing meet some educational standard, enriching him as well. It was a square deal. "I've had a great career at Georgetown," he said. "I've learned a great deal." Fetching his award in the postgame commencement, Ewing poked a No. 1 finger at the roof, but in the next instant he seemed to lead the clapping for Villanova, especially for Ed Pinckney.

As a child of the Bronx, Pinckney visited the other New York boroughs, * sampling different styles like a linguist studying accents. In Manhattan, he learned power, in Queens finesse. Brooklyn showed Pinckney the attraction of flamboyance, but it is unlike him to display any. Massimino's preaching of "the perfect game" impressed the 6-ft. 9 1/2-in. senior center and fascinated him. "On a one-shot deal, we can beat anyone in the United States," the coach urged, and had Pinckney not believed him, would what the others thought have mattered? Though only by two points and a rebound statistically, he outplayed Ewing profoundly. Three Ewing dunks in a rattling row amounted to an invitation to shudder, but Pinckney was inspired.

"If we played them ten games, I don't know how many we'd win," he admitted. "Really and truly, I don't know if we thought this would ever come true. But we did dream it. We dared to." So suddenly the basketball season yielded not one, but two teams of lasting memory.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,966166,00.html

 

[kdogg3270]

How the fuck did he pass the ball to the other team?

he did'nt...Guard Gene smith did. Ewing was in the paint and never got the ball.

 

[Duece]

he did'nt...Guard Gene smith did. Ewing was in the paint and never got the ball.

I've always known that and I've seen that game in it's entirety before.

I'm just wondering what was going thru Gene Smith's head.

 

[playahaitian]

I've always known that and I've seen that game in it's entirety before.

I'm just wondering what was going thru Gene Smith's head.

Fam

Why you doing this to me?

Wasnt the jordan documentary enough?

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

"Big John Thompson is the single most important black man in the history of D.C. sports." - @clintonyates

@Amajorfucup - Agreed? And is the modifier "black" even arguably necessary in this case?

 

[Amajorfucup]

"Big John Thompson is the single most important black man in the history of D.C. sports." - @clintonyates

@Amajorfucup - Agreed? And is the modifier "black" even arguably necessary in this case?

Absolutely YP. Not even close. Especially with the "sports" qualifier (hes arguably top 5 regardless of concentration/vocation). And no, color was not needed as an additional qualifier.

Pretty sad day for me man.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

Absolutely YP. Not even close. Especially with the "sports" qualifier (hes arguably top 5 regardless of concentration/vocation). And no, color was not needed as an additional qualifier.

Pretty sad day for me man.

"Arguably top 5 regardless of concentration/vocation" is interesting and a notable argument to advance.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

"You need to try to apply for this job. You need to call President DeGioia and lobby to have an opportunity to interview for this job... You've been trying to get [an NBA job] for 15 years and they haven't given you an opportunity yet. It's time you try a different avenue."- Ewing on what John Thompson said to make him seek the Georgetown job.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

Put some respect on this man's name!

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

 

[Costanza]

Peter Jaworski on LinkedIn: Georgetown is redoing our basketball courts at Yates. The courts where… | 41 comments

Georgetown is redoing our basketball courts at Yates. The courts where Patrick Ewing, Allen Iverson, Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning, Otto Porter Jr., Jeff… | 41 comments on LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com

Peter Jaworski​

Associate Teaching Professor at Georgetown University​

​

Georgetown is redoing our basketball courts at Yates. ​

​

The courts where Patrick Ewing, Allen Iverson, Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning, Otto Porter Jr., Jeff Green, and so many other legends practiced. ​

​

Before we built the Thompson arena, our basketball players practiced at Yates and played at McDonough Arena. ​

​

I found out we were just throwing the court away. ​

​

Not cutting it up and making it available for fans. ​

​

Not saving it in any way.​

​

Just tossing it. ​

​

Thankfully my pal Rob Johnston, MPS had a golf cart, and the vision to see that this was a huge mistake. ​

​

We managed to salvage at least some of this history. ​

​

If you want to see the floor where Georgetown legends first made their mark, you’ll have to come to my office. ​

​

That floor is now my floor.​