Top 100 NBA Players: #30

Patrick Ewing

(Kalb: #38, Simmons: #39, BBR: #29)

Patrick Ewing is remembered for never having won an NBA title, but he was one of the top centers in the entire league for a decade, and he never missed more than 6 games in a season over that span, during which the New York Knicks made the playoffs every year with Ewing as their star player.

Ewing hit his peak in 1989-90, when he ranked as the third-best player in the entire league and the top center, falling behind only Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley in overall value. He was 27 years old at the time, and he appeared to be the next dominant center, although he never did dominate the game the way many expected. Here are his stats from his best season:

Ewing - 28.6 pts, 10.9 reb, 2.2 ast, 1.0 stl, 4.0 blk, .551 FG%, .775 FT%

You read that right. Besides averaging over 28 points and 10 rebounds every night, he was blocking 4 shots on average in every game. From there he kind of plateaued, maintaining his standing as one of the top 10 players in the league, but falling behind fellow centers David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Shaquille O'Neal in production. Overall, he was still very impressive over the six seasons from 1989-1995, and those stats are below:

Ewing - 25.3 pts, 11.3 reb, 2.3 ast, 1.0 stl, 2.8 blk, .515 FG%, .749 FT%

That is what the Knicks were able to expect from Ewing every night for 6 straight years, quite impressive considering that no center today comes close to those numbers in a single season. For all the numbers he put up and all the seasons that they made the playoffs, Ewing still never saw big playoff success. The Knicks won their first round series nearly every season, but lost in the second round almost every time. The only two exceptions were 1993 and 1994, when they made the Eastern Conference Finals once and the NBA Finals after that, where they were beaten in 7 games by Houston.

Ewing hung around for a long time after his peak, but became less and less effective and was no longer the focal point of the Knicks' team, so when he finally made it back to the NBA Finals in 1999, he was more of an afterthought on a team featuring Latrell Sprewell, Allan Houston, and Marcus Camby. He never did get that elusive ring, which is the biggest reason that he's only at #30 all time.

Ewing was never as big a star as Rick Barry was, but Ewing did not cut out the prime years of his career like Barry did, so while Ewing was able to reach his peak and maintain it for a long period of time, Barry left at his peak, then had to regain momentum upon his return. Barry won a championship, but did little else in the playoffs, so Ewing's playoff failings aren't enough to drop him behind the old-time Warrior on this list.