Patrick Ewing, back in March Madness, has a message for his doubters

Patrick Ewing doesn’t feel vindicated. Not yet, at least. If winning the Big East Conference Tournament was all that he had set out to do when he became the head coach at Georgetown, the program he elevated to prominence with some “paranoia” four decades ago, then this would be his opportunity to take extended time to gloat.

But Ewing does appreciate what that four-day run at Madison Square Garden has allowed him to do.

“I have shut a lot of people up,” Ewing said this week during a Zoom call with reporters as 12th-seeded Georgetown prepared to face fifth-seeded Colorado in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Saturday. “When I got this job, there were a lot of people … that said, ‘Why are they giving him this opportunity when there are other people better suited for the job?’ Well, I’m shutting them up.”

Those who witnessed Ewing working, wondering when he would get his chance as a head coach, are relishing his long-awaited recognition. This moment required plenty of patience.

“He’s been working his butt off, really, to build the right culture,” Alonzo Mourning, a fellow Georgetown alum, said in an interview this week. “Patrick is trying to get back to that aggressive, defensive-minded winning culture to where people feared playing against Georgetown.”

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Ewing started coaching immediately after his Hall of Fame playing career ended in 2002. He began at the urging of his friend Michael Jordan, who wanted him on the bench for his final season with the Washington Wizards. What began as a curiosity quickly became something Ewing loved so much that he was willing to put up with the frustration and rejection, and what he views as anti-big-man bias, that denied him a head coaching gig.

“I was still a young man,” Ewing said of what kept him going after years of being passed over. “Even though I could’ve retired and went on and go hang out with my kids, I enjoyed having something to do.”

The decadeslong grind is why Stan Van Gundy, the New Orleans Pelicans’ coach, said he teared up watching Georgetown beat Creighton in the Big East final last week. It’s why a 31-point lead wasn’t enough to keep Jeff Van Gundy, Stan’s brother and Ewing’s former coach with the New York Knicks, from angrily saying, “Don’t jinx it!” whenever someone on his group text chimed in.

Mourning said he watched from the private lounge of a cigar bar in Miami, taking slow drags to celebrate their alma mater reaching the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years. As Ewing held up the trophy, Mourning fired off congratulatory texts to the “big brother” whose work ethic he adopted in his own Hall of Fame career.

Mourning was one of Ewing’s confidants when the Hoyas were preparing to hire him in 2017. Ewing had spent decades playing for, and then working under, culture-setting coaches with the hope he would one day become one. But that work – the late nights breaking down video, the early mornings snagging rebounds and the game nights when his voice sometimes boomed louder than the boss a seat or two over – was done with the NBA in mind.

Ewing took the rejection in stride, never belittling less-qualified candidates who got head coaching jobs ahead of him. Guards are often given credit for intelligence that taller players aren’t, and the late John Thompson Jr., a towering figure himself, always suspected Ewing’s height was why he couldn’t get interviews, much less a job.

“All I did when I was told no was just try to do the best job I can, to become the best coach I can,” Ewing said.

Jeff Van Gundy said Larry Bird may be the only other player of Ewing’s stature to commit to being a coach. And he could only do it for three years as a head coach. Ewing was an NBA assistant for 15.

“That’s Patrick Ewing, but he doesn’t look at it that way,” said Van Gundy, who said he knew Ewing had the intelligence to coach because he and fellow Knicks standout Charles Oakley never blew a defensive scheme. But, Van Gundy acknowledged, there is a “difference between knowing a guy is capable and having no clue that that’s the life he’d want to live.”

“The guy put in an incredible amount of time, which you really don’t see out of the top-level players,” Stan Van Gundy added. “He literally approached coaching like guys – nonplayers – would when they were just starting out in the profession at 22, 23 years old. Pat was a grinder.”

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Georgetown was the only place to acknowledge that grind from one of its own, and it was the only school Ewing would’ve considered. Thompson convinced Ewing that the NBA had spent too long overlooking him and that he needed to go to the place – a school he loved – willing to give him what he desired.

“He embodies the fabric of the history of Georgetown basketball,” Mourning said. “When people identify with Georgetown basketball, he is the first name that people think of.”

Ewing turned Georgetown into a basketball power the moment he arrived on campus, leading the Hoyas to three NCAA Tournament finals and its lone championship in 1984. By returning to campus – in a different era of college hoops, in a role that wouldn’t allow him to influence the game in remotely the same fashion as he did on the court – Ewing risked leaving behind a tattered legacy.

“I wasn’t worried about my legacy,” Ewing said. “My legacy was already cemented. That was Patrick Ewing the player. This is Patrick Ewing the coach.”

Instead, he said, he viewed it as coming “full circle,” from playing for Thompson to trying to replicate his success. “This is my turn,” he said.

Ewing’s four seasons as Georgetown’s coach have been a challenging reintroduction. He has had to learn how to recruit, cramping his long legs in small gyms to scout talent. He has had to learn that teenagers might not be ready for his bluntness and strict demands. He has paced the sideline with the same vigor he played with, often sweating so much that he unbuttons his shirt and removes his tie in the second half.

Having played for intense, defensive-minded coaches – Thompson, Pat Riley, Jeff Van Gundy – and working under the Van Gundys and Steve Clifford in the NBA, Ewing was prone to holding long, exhausting practices. His players had to adjust or seek an escape hatch. As coaches, great players can struggle to connect with players who aren’t as talented or driven. But Ewing made a career of outworking people, something he believes every player, regardless of skill level, can do.

“I go back to something that Coach Thompson always talked about,” said Ralph Dalton, Ewing’s backup on two of those Final Four teams and one of his closest friends. “ ‘Success is not a surprise. It’s a product of what we put into it.’ ”

But in today’s college game, that approach leads to a coaching style that can come across as abrasive. His most viral clip as a coach came in his first season, when Marcus Derrickson shot a one-legged step back jumper and Ewing asked, “Have you ever shot that shot?” Ewing isn’t one for taking what you don’t practice into a game.

Last season, Georgetown was supposed to take its big step forward. But those plans were halted midseason when four players, including James Akinjo, the team’s third-leading scorer, decided to transfer. The other three players had been accused by a classmate of harassment. The accusations led to restraining orders but no criminal charges.

The Hoyas finished the season with seven straight losses. Then another prize recruit, Mac McClung, decided to transfer, too. Two weeks after that, Ewing announced that he had been hospitalized while battling COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Then, in August, Thompson died.

The wave of adversity, and Ewing’s ability to weather it, reminded Dalton of 1984. That year, Georgetown won the title only months after Ewing’s mother, Dorothy, died, and he contemplated giving up basketball.

“It was like anything else, we had to endure,” said Dalton, who lost his mother a few weeks after Ewing, “and push forward.”

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Last season’s upheaval generated the lowest of expectations: a predicted last-place finish in the Big East this year. That was supported by a slow start and complicated by a coronavirus breakout that shut down the program for three weeks. But when they returned, the Hoyas won 10 of 14 games, with seniors Jamorko Pickett and Jahvon Blair leading a team that has assumed Ewing’s mettle.

“They’re always competitive, and for a team that’s not expected to do much, they still play with confidence. … I think he instills that,” Jeff Van Gundy said. “Because you couldn’t shake his belief in himself.”

“He’s got them now where they’ll run through a brick wall for him, because they believe what he’s telling them right now,” Mourning said.

Still, the recognition is slow in coming. After the most stirring win of his coaching career, an upset of rival Villanova in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament, Ewing was perturbed about “getting stopped, accosted” by overzealous MSG security. His flex was a rare feeling-myself moment but perhaps warranted, given all that he had done in his “house,” from his time as a college star to leading the Knicks’ last truly relevant years. “Is my jersey not hanging in the rafters?” he asked.

Being underestimated is a new position for a program-altering legend and an all-time great, but Ewing is embracing it. After the Creighton win, Ewing strutted into the locker room, waving a towel. As his giddy players doused him with water, he sang Drake’s “Started From the Bottom.”

“Patrick does not like to lose,” Dalton said. “He does not like to fail. I think he’s always known he’s going to get there. This is just the start. But I think he has much higher goals, and I believe he’ll get there.”