Patrick Ewing: ‘I Still Consider Myself a Knick’

Patrick Ewing, an assistant coach with the Orlando Magic, continues in his futile (and somewhat depressing) search for a head coaching job in the NBA, and indicates that he very much still wants to be part of the New York Knicks family. From ESPN: “Could we see Ewing on the Knicks’ bench one day? ‘I hope that one day I get to come back home because I do live in this area, I still consider this my area, I still consider myself a Knick. Hopefully one day I’ll be brought back here,’ Ewing said. When asked about the lack of big men as head coaches in the NBA, Ewing said: ‘If you look at most of the guys who have gotten the jobs, most of them have been guards. Very few big guys have gotten the opportunity.’ The big man was candid about the subject, saying: ‘People have always said that, ‘Oh, he only knows the center position. He can just teach the big guys.’ Well, when I played, Jeff Van Gundy was the guy who I worked with. Does that make him a ‘big-man coach?’ People think that just because you’re a center, you’re not as smart as the guards or the smaller guys. I think that’s a load of crap. When I played with the Knicks, I was just as important or just as smart as any other of the guards I played with. I still had to call out plays, notice schemes, know the systems, do everything they had to do.'”