Patrick Ewing circa 1985. (Photo: Getty)

After over a decade playing and coaching in other cities, Hall of Fame center Patrick Ewing might have a shot to return to New York, the home where he spent fifteen seasons building his Hall of Fame career with the Knicks. However, the speculation surrounding Mr. Ewing doesn't involve his old team, it is centered on the Knicks' new outerborough rivals, the Brooklyn Nets, who are in the midst of a sudden makeover of their coaching staff and could have newfound room for Mr. Ewing on their bench.

Yesterday afternoon, the Nets abruptly announced the firing of head coach Avery Johnson, mere weeks after he was named Eastern Conference Coach of the Month. Mr. Johnson's surprise departure came after a dismal stretch that saw the Nets essentially obliterate a promising start to their first season in Brooklyn by getting just three wins and ten losses during the first few weeks of December. In the wake of Mr. Johnson's exit, assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo was named interim head coach, but in a press conference about Mr. Johnson's firing Nets general manager Billy King acknowledged the team could pursue other options.

"PJ will be the interim coach at this time. Will we look other places? We may, but at this time, PJ's our interim head coach," Mr. King said. "The remaining staff will stay with him and we'll go forward from there."

Mr. Ewing's name is among those that have surfaced as a top contender to replace Mr. Johnson. After his playing career Mr. Ewing served as an assistant coach for the Houston Rockets and for the Orlando Magic. In Orlando, he worked under coach Stan Van Gundy and was seen as a key part of the team's 2009 trip to the NBA Finals and instrumental in helping groom the team's star big man Dwight Howard. Mr. Ewing has been out of a job since the Magic fired Mr. Van Gundy back in May. He owns a house in New Jersey and has expressed interest in coaching in the city he called home for over a decade.

Not only does Mr. Ewing have a strong fan base in New York, but his skill set as a specialist for coaching big men would seem well-suited to a Nets team where defense has been one of the main weaknesses. According to the Brooklyn Game, which analyzed the possibility the Nets could give Mr. Ewing a coaching job, his background as a former star and his lack of an existing "system" might prevent him from clashing with the team's star point guard, Deron Williams, who has earned a reputation as a "coach-killer" over the years that fueled rumors he may have played a role in Mr. Johnson's demise.

Mr. Ewing could also potentially join the Nets as an assistant coach. Another name that has been floated for the head coaching job is Mr. Ewing's old boss, Mr. Van Gundy. Though he worked with Mr. Van Gundy in the past, the ex-Orlando coach is reportedly not interested in the job and Mr. Ewing has focused his job search efforts on hunting for a head coaching gig after his years as an assistant.

Signing one of the biggest Knicks icons would certainly help the Nets in the budding rivalry between the two teams. It also might be satisfying to Mr. Ewing who reportedly felt snubbed when the Knicks offered him a D-League coaching job earlier this year. However, the reports of bad blood between Mr. Ewing and the Knicks may be exaggerated. He has attended multiple Knicks games this season including at least two this month.

Though he may have repaired his relationship to the Knicks, there are some signs that Mr. Ewing is also cozying up to Nets management. Mr. Ewing was seen in the Nets' locker room after a game against the Celtics. Another interesting sign came on Twitter from Mr. Ewing's son, Patrick Ewing Jr., who has re-tweeted multiple messages saying his father should join the team (including one from this reporter, who, full disclosure, is a fan of both the Nets and Mr. Ewing).

After the Nets' loss to the Golden State Warriors December 7, the Observer asked Mr. Johnson whether he would consider having Mr. Ewing join his coaching staff and the ex-coach revealed Mr. Ewing had recently seen Mr. King.

"Patrick is a great guy, I think he and Billy were at a fundraiser the other night for a lady that works with the NBA," said Mr. Johnson.

Despite Mr. Johnson's praise for Mr. Ewing, he characterized the coaching staff as "pretty set" and said the team hadn't discussed bringing the Knicks legend on board.

"You know, that's something we haven't talked about," Mr. Johnson said. "You know, our coaching staff is pretty set right now, but we definitely respect what Patrick did as a player and, you know, I think he's had a pretty good run as a coach with his work in Houston and in Orlando."

After we asked Mr. Johnson about Mr. Ewing, we were angrily chastised by a Nets executive who accused us of asking a question "that no one gives a shit about." Now, three weeks and seven losses later, the team's coaching staff is anything but "set" and perhaps the Nets backoffice is indeed starting to give a shit about Mr. Ewing.

Deron Williams getting a shot past Carmelo Anthony during the Nets' win over the Knicks Monday night. (Photo: Getty)

Back in high school, one of my favorite clothing staples was a Knicks jersey adorned with Latrell Sprewell’s number eight. I wistfully remembered this as I pulled a black jersey bearing the same digit from the rack in a Midtown Modell’s last month. This time, the number on my back would represent a player on a different team, Deron Williams, the star point guard of the nascent Brooklyn Nets.

My purchase of Mr. Williams’s jersey was the culmination of a painful decade-plus process in which I chose to abandon the basketball franchise I fervently rooted for throughout my childhood. Though the Knicks spent that period in an agonizing annual ritual of unsuccessful postseason runs, my defection wasn’t about the dearth of championships. Even when the Knicks of the ’90s lost, they were in contention—they were part of a zeitgeist that included Spike Lee’s trash-talking commercials and garish retro blue-and-orange gear. They weren’t winners, but the effort always made for a fun ride. No, my break with the team didn’t coincide with one of their heartbreaking early postseason exits; it began in 2000, when they unceremoniously traded my basketball idol, Patrick Ewing, the center who had been with the team for as long as I had conscious memories.

Mr. Ewing had stuck with the Knicks throughout his career, despite the organization’s repeated failure to assemble a championship-caliber team around him. His loyalty cost him a ring that other players with a fraction of his talent were able to earn in more healthy institutions, and yet as soon as age began to weaken his formidable frame, he was shipped out rather than being permitted to retire gracefully.

Despite my anger over the mistreatment of Mr. Ewing, I stayed true to the Knicks. For me, the straw that broke the camel’s back came a year later in 2001, when two of the team’s least dependable and most overpaid players, Allan Houston and Charlie Ward, made a series of shockingly anti-Semitic statements in the presence of a reporter at a team Bible-study session. As a Jewish guy from Brooklyn, I was disgusted.

In a fit of high-school rage, I created a “Knicks fan’s hit list,” and taped it to my bedroom wall. It included all of the people I held responsible for the series of indignities I had suffered while rooting for the team—from Mr. Ward and Mr. Houston to the back-office executives I blamed for, among other things, dumping Mr. Ewing, failing to draft hometown hero Ron Artest in 1999 and going years without signing a true starting point guard. I vowed not to support the team again until all the scoundrels on my list were gone from Madison Square Garden. Then I waited, always planning a return to Knicks fandom when the time was right.

Because of my time-out from cheering on the Knicks, I was a detached observer as Cablevision heir James Dolan took on a major management role and made a series of missteps that caused the team to vanish from postseason contention. Eventually, all the miscreants on my hit list moved on. The final holdout was Mr. Houston, who initially retired in 2005 and made an aborted comeback attempt with the team in 2008. Soon after, the Knicks seemed to be salvaging themselves from the hoops scrap heap with the signing of stars Amar’e Stoudemire (a Jew!) and Carmelo Anthony. Though I had long since stopped following basketball religiously, I began to very casually root for my old team again.

In 2010, with the legal battles over the Barclays Center finally finished, it became clear the Nets were definitely headed to my home borough. A major-league sports franchise in Brooklyn was something I had dreamed of as a child, but my enemies had been vanquished, and the idea of shifting my sports loyalties was hard to stomach.

Last year, along with many other New Yorkers, I was fully pulled back into the Knicks’ orbit as point guard Jeremy Lin led the team on an improbable and electrifying run. For the first time in over a decade, I even tried to go to a game. Alas, I found the home court at the Garden was sold out, inaccessible for less than $175.

Just when it seemed the Knicks were beginning to win back the hearts of Big Apple basketball fans, our hopes for the team were crushed when management made a series of baffling offseason moves that included losing the likable Mr. Lin and signing a slew of past-their-prime players, including convicted domestic abuser Jason Kidd.

Like all massive train wrecks, the Knicks’ self-destruction this past summer was utterly riveting. I devoured every bit of the coverage and, in the course of this masochistic sports-page reading, learned that one of the villains from my rogues’ gallery was still lurking around the locker room. Mr. Houston had since become the team’s general manager and was yet again participating in the ruination of the Knicks, this time from the back office rather than the backcourt. I was done.

And conveniently, I had a new team to embrace, just a little over a mile from my house.

I know the Nets aren’t championship-caliber yet, but it is clear they are building a solid foundation and, more important, they represent my motherland.

As I contemplated this monumental decision, I sought the counsel of an old classmate, Isaac. Though we had seen each other only sporadically in our post-college years, he had been seated next to me in the nosebleeds during most of the Knicks games I attended in high school. When I called him, I explained that I was thinking about defecting to the Nets. Though Isaac is a Manhattanite, he admitted he was also wavering, and said he would attend a Nets game this season to “see how it feels.”

A little over a week ago, I went to the Barclays Center for my first Nets game. Though the team has been using the Jumbotron to encourage a variety of chants from the audience, the only cheer that seems to stick is fans simply shouting “Brooklyn.” It felt right. I was home.

After Monday night’s win over the Knicks, I received two text messages from Isaac, who, for now, is sticking with our old team.

“Oh man,” he wrote. “Oy. Congrats.”

My reply consisted of just two words: “Join us!”

He has yet to answer.

By Alex Fine.

Basketball is back. Three weeks after opening night was canceled in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, four months after the Knicks let Jeremy Lin slip out of town, 13 years since the Knicks’ fluke run to the NBA finals, and two decades since Pat Riley’s tough-guy team captivated New York in the early years of the Giuliani era, fans in the world’s greatest basketball city care without cynicism again.

The Isiah Thomas era and the Knicks’ failed pursuit of LeBron James are old news. The Nets’ long struggle for big-city relevance got lost somewhere in New York harbor. When the teams squared off Monday night in Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center, the city had plenty to cheer about: real stars, the top two spots in the Atlantic Division standings and the eyes of millions upon us.

“Brooooooklyn,” they sang in the style of Biggie Smalls—the best rallying cry in American sports—when the Nets scored a bucket. “MVP!” they chanted when Knicks star Carmelo Anthony stepped to the free throw line. The crowd was so loud at times it was hard to believe that the 17,000-plus fans weren’t all cheering for the same side.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among them, as were Michael Strahan, Charlie Rose, Richard Gere and, of course, Nets part-owner Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé. By our count, there were 100 members of the press on hand, including representatives from Chinese, German and Italian outlets. ESPN had 12 journalists at the game, in case you were wondering how the sports network gauged its importance.

In the end, Mr. Anthony missed a jumper that would have won the game in regulation, and the Nets outlasted the Knicks in overtime. It didn’t matter, much.

For a night, we could forget that the Knicks hadn’t won a title in 40 years, forget about Bernard King’s balky knees and Patrick Ewing’s shaky nerves, forget about anything having to do with Mr. Thomas.
New York was back where it belonged, as the basketball center of the universe.

New York is a basketball town, God help us. There’s something in the collective DNA that tells us hoops is the most important sport, some vague understanding that there are neighborhoods where a kid can still become immortal on a playground, some distant memory of the days when teams traveled to media and not vice versa, the days when the Garden earned the right to be called Mecca.

So what if it’s an empty boast? So it’s been 40 years since Willis and Clyde led the team to glory, longer still since the city produced a truly elite player. (Best New York City product in the last 25 years is ... Stephon Marbury?) Basketball is the ultimate confidence sport, and New York is the fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence town. Don’t forget the darker days when the city’s greatness wasn’t a given, the days of “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” when we could swap tales of Earl “the Goat” Manigault snatching quarters off Harlem backboards—or Willis Reed staggering onto the court for game seven of the 1970 finals, John Starks rising high over Jordan and Grant for a left-handed jam—and recognize a grace and gall and toughness we imagined in ourselves.

Suffice it to say the psychic stakes were high for us Knicks fans setting foot in the Barclays Center on Monday night. Indeed, in the years since Bruce Ratner first broke ground, I often feared that the Knicks’ woes would continue, that the hangover from Mr. Thomas’s tenure, when the team collected overweight players with fatter contracts, would never abate, that James Dolan would remain a pox on the franchise. And that, in the absence of a team they cared about, the fickle masses would give in to the allure of the hottest borough, the newer arena, the team with one owner who’s rich enough to run for Russian president and another who doesn’t simply not suck, but doesn’t suck so much that he’s married to Beyoncé.

Would I blame them? No. Excommunicate? Probably. But something would tear loose from the fabric of my city if New York were no longer a Knicks town.

I can report that a trip to the Nets’ new arena offers temptation enough for a lesser-willed fan to cross over: High ceilings (this is Brooklyn, so exposed ducts, natch) and open sightlines; a thoughtfully curated selection of local food (Spumoni Gardens for the natives, Fatty ’Cue for the arrivistes, Nathan’s for the tourists); instead of the light shows that often mar pregame introductions, a dignified volley of fireworks. Instead of stadium anthems, music that reminds you that Brooklyn belongs to the world. (We have to wonder, though, how big a cut the sound man is getting from Roc-A-Fella Records: with the exception of the periodic Biggie track, it was almost entirely Jay-Z’s catalog.)

Slick Rick played at halftime. He was pudgy, and some of the words were lost in the acoustics, but still, it was a classy nod to New York City’s hip-hop history, and something that’s hard to imagine going down at corporatized Madison Square Garden.

I can also report, happily, that on the evidence of one evening, the fan exodus isn’t happening. Led by Mr. Anthony—reinspired, the sportswriters say, and leaner at the waist after playing alongside Mr. James in the London Olympics—and Tyson Chandler, the biggest man on the court, if not tip to toe, then certainly by the size of his heart, the Knicks have the look of a title contender. Maybe not a favorite, but at least a plausible long shot. It’s not just the fans who think so: the team filled out its roster for this season with veterans like Jason Kidd and Rasheed Wallace, the type of already-rich players lured not by the biggest paycheck but by the best title shot.

So the Nets fans were more numerous, more conspicuous in their “Fan Since Day One” badges (oh really?) and black-and-white Brooklyn gear. Knicks fans were, if not louder, better at the business of being fans. They chanted “Defense” from the first possession and serenaded Mr. Anthony at the free-throw line. Maybe it was simple sports loyalty, as Spike Lee, the world’s most public Knicks fan, tweeted at Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz: “With All Due Respect I’ve Been A NEW YORK KNICERBOCKERS Devotee Since 1967, Not Gonna Switch.” And as Mike Williams, a Knicks fan from East New York, Brooklyn, told us in the spacious bowels of the arena, “Knicks fans have been Knicks fans forever. The Nets are just a novelty.”

But let’s not overindulge in name-calling, at least not in the afterglow of this happy new rivalry. Who cares if the black-and-white-clad masses remember nothing of the Drazen Petrovic tragedy, the Derrick Coleman disappointment, if they had to read the banners hanging from the rafters to know the Nets won a pair of ABA titles in the days before the merger?

Instead, let’s celebrate for a moment the improbable course that led these two teams to their current exalted status. Nets general manager Billy King, who achieved middling results as the decision-maker for the Philadelphia 76ers, bet that by paying heavily for swingman Joe Johnson, late of the Atlanta Hawks, he could convince Deron Williams, his star free agent point guard, to re-sign with the Nets.

Meanwhile, if the Knicks are as good as their early play has promised, the fans will owe the team’s salvation (or at least, above-averageness) to the last figure they’d expect: current GM Glen Grunwald didn’t just play college ball with Isiah Thomas at Indiana University, he was hired by Zeke on two separate occasions. The Knicks are wont to downplay the relationship between the pair, lest they stoke our suspicions that the former GM is still conspiring to ruin the team. Mr. Thomas isn’t so coy: “I love Glen, he’s one of my favorite people on earth,” he told ESPN Radio last summer.

Who cares? Like players, executives come and go: love and hatred for them are fleeting emotions, and for the moment, Mr. Grunwald’s free-agent signing of shot-blocker Mr. Chandler and installation of defensive-minded head coach Mike Woodson (another one of Mr. Thomas’s Indiana pals), are all anyone needs to know.

The Brooklyn partisans can speak for themselves. Mark Anise, a Brooklyn resident who loves his borough so much he had a Nets ‘B’ tattooed on his right bicep on the ground floor of the Barclays Center, told me: “Basketball was the one sport where I always rooted for the name on the back of the jersey. I always said if Brooklyn got a team, then I’d root for the name on the front.”

Never one to mince words when it comes to his love for his hometown, Mr. Markowitz emailed The Observer, “Our fans are so wild, so over-the-top, so proud and so loud that even residents of the outer borough of Manhattan will hear us cheering for the best team in New York and the best team in the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets.”

On the way down to the postgame press conference, I passed an usher with his hands clasped in the air in the shape of the Roc-A-Fella diamond in an homage to Jay-Z. “We’re coming for you, Spike,” a colleague usher said to Mr. Lee, who wasn’t in the arena, or to no one. Or everyone.

Well, let them come—it’s good to have a rival. The great Knicks team of my youth, Pat Riley’s boys, tapped into the ethos of 1990s New York: tough as Charles Oakley, the man who used to ride an exercise bike to the point of tears, and cocky as John Starks, who played his college ball in nowhere Oklahoma, and believed even then that he was better than any of the anointed kings of the NBA. And so we loved them for it.

In the hearts of the city’s sports fans, they were displaced by Derek Jeter’s Yankees: brilliant hardworking men who made their fortune in New York City, tapped in less to the town’s blue collar roots than to the Wall Street princes who defined a revitalized city.

These Knicks aren’t that tough or that classy, and neither are these Nets. But the city doesn’t need an NBA title. Yet. For the moment, it’s enough to care.

pclark@observer.com

When Mr. Ewing shattered his right wrist two years ago, Mr. Ewing's handlers immediately paged Dr. Melone, the country's best-known hand surgeon, who rebuilt the center's dislocated lunate bone and torn wrist ligaments But Mr. Ewing is just one of the many player-patients Dr. Melone has patched up over the years. On the walls of his office are pictures and autographed thank-yous from Jayson Williams, Keith Van Horn, Evander Holyfield, Allan Houston, Gary Sheffield, Tommy John, Don Mattingly and Dikembe Mutumbo-to name but a handful.

The man who assisted Dr. Melone on many of these operations was Dr. Keith Raskin. His picture, however, is nowhere in sight. That's because Dr. Melone is mired in an ugly legal war with Dr. Raskin, a man who was once his protégé, partner and, to hear Dr. Melone tell it, surrogate son. At issue is the dissolution of their high-profile and highly profitable surgical practice, which, for reasons neither man can quite explain, has degenerated into a testy, yearlong slap fight.

"It's getting a little unseemly," said one gossiping orthopedist. "Everybody knows they're beating each other up. They just need to end it and move on with their lives."

There is, undeniably, a lot at stake. Over the past decade, the prominence and wealth of sports physicians has grown, along with their clients' fortunes. As a result, the diplomas are tucked in dusty back offices while rainmaker memorabilia-like a signed Patrick Ewing poster-are prominently displayed.

Dr. Melone's clients-and his reputation for restoring them-has made for a profitable practice. According to court papers, the practice paid Dr. Melone and Dr. Raskin an estimated $1.2 million and $750,000 a year, respectively-not counting their academic salaries and lucrative deals with medical equipment manufacturers.

Still, dividing up the assets-and the debts-shouldn't have been too hard. If only the principals could keep their hands off each other.

First, Dr. Raskin and his lawyers charged that Dr. Melone used the practice as his "personal piggy bank," pulling out $530,000 for various expenses without reimbursing the business. They say the famous surgeon was so small-minded and vengeful he tried to swipe the practice's catchy 683-HAND phone number. He also prodded the landlord to evict Dr. Raskin from the 34th Street building both doctors still occupy, they claim. And you never saw such nepotism, according to Dr. Raskin. Dr. Melone paid his daughter $9,000 for office work and even used his cousin's wife as the office comptroller.

"Charlie does this kind of thing because Charlie is a guy with a big ego," Dr. Raskin told The Observer . "He would actually say, 'I'm the king, I'm the king, I'm the king.'"

For his part, Dr. Melone paints Dr. Raskin as an ungrateful apprentice trying to get his paws on his master's business. Among other things, the Melone legal team is charging Dr. Raskin with steering his boss' patients to himself, failing to pay for about $180,000 in old office furniture and whiting out Dr. Melone's name on co-authored academic papers.

"It's a betrayal," said boxing trainer and ESPN fight analyst Teddy Atlas, a close friend of Dr. Melone's. "Charlie feels, you know, like he's been stabbed in the back."

"Until last week, Raskin even had Charlie's nameplate up on his wall so that people would think Charlie was still working there," said another Melone confidant. "It was like telling people they were buying a Sony and giving them a Samsung."

Eventually, all of these grievances will be sorted out by a court-appointed arbitrator, who is expected to rule this spring. But whatever happens, both men will have to learn to live with each other, because they still share the same building on East 34th Street, near the mouth of the Midtown Tunnel. Dr. Raskin is in the practice's old third-floor digs. Dr. Melone's office is a newly constructed medical nirvana on the first floor.

Dr. Melone enters his suite, thankfully, through a separate entrance, so the two principals haven't talked to each other in more than a year. "The funny thing is that we've never actually had an argument," Dr. Raskin said.

The lawyers have. "I've been doing litigation for 25 years, and I've never dealt with anything remotely like this," said an exhausted Rodney Brown, Mr. Raskin's attorney, sitting at a scuffed conference room table, shirttail out, hair tousled, hand atop a two-foot pile of legal papers. "I mean, we've got six files with correspondence alone. Nasty letters back and forth. It just goes on and on and on and on."

Hand Wrestling

Walk through Dr. Melone's cheerful new office and you get the creepy feeling you are about to be grappled. Hands are everywhere-palms carved into bronze ashtrays, grasping fingers popping out of pen-and-inks, posters and pastels. Finally, there's Dr. Melone himself, pinning a visitor's palm between his two steady hands. "Look," he said, "Look at the complexity, the beauty of this thing! That's why I do this!"

Ordinarily, Dr. Melone is not an effusive, or even a chatty, man. But three topics seem to excite him: hands, sports and the endless trouble with Dr. Raskin.

"There's a total lack of respect, a lack of loyalty, a lack of camaraderie," Dr. Melone said. "And this was a guy who was supposed to be part of my family."

The trouble began in early 1998, when Dr. Melone vacated his longtime post as chief of hand surgery at New York University Hospital Center to take over the hand department at Beth Israel's East End Avenue campus. Dr. Raskin, who had a one-quarter share in Dr. Melone's practice for 10 years, stayed behind, in the hopes of securing Dr. Melone's old academic post at N.Y.U. (He didn't, as it turned out.) The younger doctor also hoped to retain a significant piece of the old business the two shared.

Like any bad divorce, the bitterness of the breakup is directly rooted in the innocence of the courtship. The friendship began in the mid-80's, when Dr. Raskin was a talented, somewhat lonely resident who spent evenings with the Melone family eating dinners and listening to his mentor's war stories. From the start, the pair were opposites who attracted. Dr. Raskin is tall, talkative and jokey in a Catskills way. Dr. Melone is laconic, short and trim-he looks like Michael J. Fox in late middle age.

Their skills were similarly complementary. Dr. Melone is an expert on carpal tunnel syndrome and adult trauma injuries-à la Patrick Ewing. Dr. Raskin specializes in pediatric cases and microsurgery. "It was a sort of father-son sort of thing," Dr. Melone said, reflecting dourly in his office, looking at a picture on the wall across from his desk. In it, a 20-something Dr. Raskin is hoisting Dr. Melone up to the rim of a basket for a slam dunk. Everyone in the picture, including Dr. Raskin, is wearing a white "Team Melone" T-shirt.

By the mid-1990's the prosperous Team Melone was becoming frustrated with the lack of support services and available operating rooms at N.Y.U. In 1996, they began shopping their skills to likely suitors, including the Hospital for Special Surgery, the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital and, in 1997, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

But it was the Beth Israel offer Dr. Melone really wanted: The draw was Dr. Melone's pal Norman Scott, team doctor for the Knicks, who is chief of the orthopedics department at Beth Israel. "Charlie's got his Knicks thing," Dr. Raskin said. "He wanted to be close to Norm."

To this day, Dr. Raskin claims that Dr. Melone's defection to B.I. came as a complete shock to him. "He wouldn't even tell me himself," he said. "I got the news from his lawyer."

From there, things got, well, out of hand. Dr. Melone moved into the first floor, putting up a huge shingle on the front of the building almost as big as the "Midtown Tunnel" sign 50 feet away. Meanwhile, Dr. Raskin had to wrangle with the landlord-a friend of Dr. Melone's-just to keep the lease on his $20,000-a-month third-floor space. "I had nothing to do with that," Dr. Melone told The Observer .

Then there was the scrum over 683-HAND-the golden phone number through which the metacarpal millions once flowed. Last May, an annoyed State Supreme Court judge, Ira Gammerman ruled, Solomon-style, that the number should go to no one. Dr. Raskin was given his HAND suffix, but without the old 683. Dr. Melone was left to seek out less promising digits. "This is silly," Judge Gammerman said before slamming the gavel down.

At that point, Dr. Melone decided to proceed with his own lawsuit, the arbitration about the old furniture. Seizing on the opportunity, the Raskin legal team audited the corporation's books. The lawyers now say they have found that Dr. Melone owes the corporation about $530,000 in various pension fund payments, legal fees and unspecified checks totaling $80,000 that Dr. Melone wrote to himself.

"It was revelation," said Dr. Raskin. "It was like, O.K., Charlie owes me a half-million dollars, he's taking the phone number, he's moving downstairs to compete with me, and he wants me out of the building. Hey, that's just great."

Dr. Melone's lawyers say he owes only "a fraction" of the half-million. They counter with the patient-diversion charge. As proof they have submitted the affidavit of a former secretary who claimed Dr. Raskin ordered her to funnel only "bullshit" cases to Dr. Melone.

"Both of those people now work for Charlie at B.I.," responded Dr. Raskin. "That's why they said what they said. I didn't divert anybody, I didn't need to."

And so it goes, on and on. Curiously, while both camps fire their salvos-and hint at future legal action after the arbitration case is settled-both doctors said they yearn only for an end to the war.

And a final handshake for old times' sake.

"This is all very sad," Dr. Melone said. "I'm godfather to Keith's kids, you know."

Dr. Raskin, not surprisingly, denied the allegation. "It's not true," he said. "I'm Jewish, we don't do godfathers."

Several years later, I had an apartment with pirate cable and a Knickerbocker-worshiping roommate. Tired of the snotty remarks every time I walked through the living room during MSG game nights, he offered to share his six-pack with me if I would actually sit and watch a quarter. I stayed until the end of the fourth. And I was hooked. The Knicks weren't a bunch of faceless overachievers or morons. These guys had personality, they had style. They were tough, wore sharp suits off court, and were as New York as high rents, heroin and the Empire State Building.

Every season, by the time playoffs rolled around, I was building little altars of orange and blue candles with offerings of malt liquor around the television. Sometimes it helped. But mostly it didn't, and the team of bruisers that had so enthralled me was scattered from Canada to California. Goodbye to the ever-changing hair of Anthony Mason, adieu to what Clyde Frazier used to call "the rugged grandeur" of Charles Oakley, farewell to John Starks, hero and goat all in one puppy-eyed package. All that remained was Patrick Ewing, crumbling slowly in the sunset like a majestic Roman ruin.

And what did I get in return? Larry Johnson and his bad back. Marcus Camby and his questionable work ethic. But, in the coup de grâce , there was the man who has replaced Dennis Rodman as basketball's Public Enemy No. 1, Latrell Sprewell. Yup, the guy with the cornrows who tried to strangle his coach and got suspended for a year. Him. There was an uproar and outcry from the press and all the appropriate talking heads, but I was psyched.

Say what you like about Latrell Sprewell, the guy plays great basketball-fast, exciting basketball. He is the pure antidote to my main criticism of the Knicks, a slow-moving, nondriving, predictable team. Spree's style is pretty much the exact opposite of their Jurassic pace. He's the sort of player that sparks a game, and the Knicks truly need a god of chaos for a sixth man. Many nights they get lazy, drop a 15-point lead or just go cold and freeze up somewhere in the third quarter, and I imagined Spree running out onto the court to set off one of his coast-to-coast, steal-run-and-jam maneuvers or get on one of those shooting streaks when he just can't miss. The crowd goes ballistic, the other team's coach calls time out, the Knicks start hollering at each other, and their heads are back in the game. Yeah, Spree!

After the trades settled, the unpopular minority who favored the acquisition of the world's most dangerous forward justified their opinion by insisting that he had served his punishment and if the league wants to let him play, he may as well help us win. Patrick Ewing needs a championship and so do the season ticketholders. Others hoped for Spree's eventual reform, figuring that sitting on the sidelines for 13 months thinking about what he's done has changed something inside him. Then, I suppose, there was that small segment watching for the train wreck.

Me, I liked his playing style, but I have to admit I gave him a few punk rock points as part of his stick-it-to-the-man, take-this-job-and-shove-it constituency. I like that's he's a loner, that he's neither embraced the thug tag or tried to be goody-goody to get rid of it. I even respect him for wearing those ugly Cosby sweaters instead of the same snazzy tailoring as his new teammates. And he seems quietly articulate. Sure, he may be trouble, but to me he seems more messed up than malicious. I was hoping another belligerent kid who hated the coach could eventually straighten out.

I became an even stronger defender after I read the scathing profile of Spree in The New York Times Magazine by writer Mike Wise, who didn't even bother to acknowledge that he was a good basketball player, but one who ran up and down the court "without purpose or symmetry." Mr. Wise hit all the bases: neglectful unwed father, disrespectful player, reckless driver, religious hypocrite. Spree doesn't care about the game, doesn't mind losing because he's used to it, doesn't pass, doesn't work hard. Still, Mr. Wise couldn't cut away all the "troubled young man" tinges, aspects of Spree's tough-guy reputation that make him likable or at least forgivable-his fondness for video games and cars, his tendency to hang out with the youngest teammates.

The way I see it, he spent five years with the Golden State Warriors. Every night he was playing to an empty arena and every night-no matter how many points he scored-he lost. He might as well try to score 35 points: The most the rest of the team's going to come up with is 30. And that's a hard habit to break.

Watching the first playoff game on May 8 was déjà vu for a Knicks fan. Here we were again, yet another spring break in Miami, when Jeff Van Gundy faces Pat Riley for his annual ritual attempt at slaying the father. When Patrick Ewing faces his own miscreant protégé in Alonzo Mourning. But out of all the battles in this grudge match, none was as riveting as Latrell Sprewell's struggle with himself … and everyone else.

Was Spree's sparkplug performance the beginning of the redemption of Public Enemy No. 1? After the game, he told reporters, "I'm dying for more … I'm hungry. Feed me." Maybe walking off the court after Game 1 a winner for the first time will speed up the laborious process of turning the lone gunman-rusty after five years in hell and 13 months in limbo-into a team player? Or maybe Spree just read that Times article and got pissed.

Plus, Spree didn't start playing team ball until his senior year in high school. I wonder if everyone bullied him into it.

But he was proud. “I did my job,” he said. “I did everything the guys asked me to do.” And then he said it. He resorted to his perennial preseason wish: “Hopefully, I can get me a championship.” (Who said there’s no “me” in team?)

But for Mr. Ewing, for the Knicks and for the N.B.A., this season is not about championships. It’s about nothing less than the N.B.A.’s future. Resolution of a tiresome labor dispute pitting one group of millionaires against another has been followed by news that Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls’ megastar, who has carried the game for years, will retire. The game, then, will be left in the hands of underwhelming brats who have become a sports marketer’s nightmare.

Even in New York, the supposed Mecca of basketball, fans have soured on the game, and if they’re going to be seduced into caring about it again, one of two men will have to do the seducing: Either Mr. Ewing, who has been blamed for prolonging the lockout, or his antithesis and counterpart on the New Jersey Nets, the charismatic Jayson Williams.

The two men are natural antagonists. Mr. Ewing is stubborn and media-shy, part warhorse, part prima donna, always falling a little bit short and rarely stooping to explain himself. He has never quite won the love of New York fans. Mr. Williams is an accommodating and loquacious cut-up–and a prominent dissenter from Mr. Ewing’s hard line during talks with N.B.A. owners--who has capitalized on his candid-guy shtick and his remarkable biography to put the once-lowly Nets, and himself, on the media map.

As luck (or the N.B.A.’s suddenly savvy marketers) would have it, Mr. Ewing and Mr. Williams will probably face each other in two exhibition games (they’re still not confirmed) before the delayed regular season begins next month. Designed to win back the interest and good will of frustrated fans, these two proposed preseason scraps, one in the Meadowlands, the other at Madison Square Garden, will preview the battle for the soul of New York basketball. Basketball is a marketing construct as much as it is a sport, and in this lockout-shortened season, value will be determined more than ever not by wins or losses (or who gets them) but by Nielsen ratings, purchases of N.B.A. merchandise and the tenor of call-ins on sports-talk radio.

Basketball is integral to New York, but New York is not Indiana. The city’s love for the game is not unconditional. The college game here attracts only the purists and the nerds. But the pro game has, on a couple of occasions, become New York’s hottest athletic commodity, and helped define the city’s image--for better or worse. The Red Holzman Knicks of the late 1960’s and early 70’s were ambassadors of New York style, while the Pat Riley goon squads of the early 1990’s, defiant in the face of nationwide scorn, were caretakers of the city’s rough-and-tumble pride during lean times.

But the Knicks have been in decline for several years now, and they are in danger of losing their hold on the city. Mr. Ewing, the team’s marquee star, is 36 years old and is wearing down. The last thing his creaky knees need is the added burden of carrying the team through another disappointing season.

Meanwhile, a young and exciting Nets team is vying for a piece of the New York limelight. And Mr. Williams, a 30-year-old N.B.A. All-Interview star who positioned himself on the fan-friendly side of the lockout, already has staked a claim to whatever affections New York fans have left for the game.

During the lockout, which the N.B.A. owners imposed on July 1, Mr. Ewing fought to maintain unity and vigilance among the league’s 430 players, who were beginning to tire of non-paydays. But Mr. Williams, eager to play ball and sign a deal in this, his free-agent year, flouted the party line. In late December, he publicly criticized union leadership. (For good measure, he also knocked the owners and their commissioner, David Stern.) He wanted union leaders to allow all of its members to vote on the owners’ proposal, which Mr. Ewing and his allies had deemed unsatisfactory. Out of nowhere, Mr. Williams cast himself as the voice of reason and compromise.

Mr. Ewing lashed back, accusing Mr. Williams of being ill-informed. After all, Mr. Williams had not read the proposal, or participated in the union’s conference calls, or attended any of the meetings. Mr. Ewing also complained that Mr. Williams had aired his grievances in the media, rather than to Mr. Ewing’s face.

But, of course, that was Mr. Williams’ point. As he later said, after the lockout had ended, “They got the message, right?” (Earlier in the lockout, other players who suggested a more moderate stance were shouted down at union meetings.) What’s more, at a time when N.B.A. players were becoming less popular by the day, Mr. Williams attached himself to a widely held stance, especially among the fans--that is, that both sides were being ridiculous and that they should shut up, take their lumps and play some ball.

It was the latest step in the making of Jayson Williams, darling of the fans and the media. He makes good local copy. He’s from the Lower East Side and he played ball at St. John’s University in Queens. He says things like, “But, hey, how much money does one man need?” Last spring, he went on Late Show with David Letterman and cracked up the audience--and himself--with mildly risqué Sinbadian jokes.

Most appealing of all, Mr. Williams has a compelling personal story. His early years were a horror. When he was in high school in the 1980’s, one of his sisters died of AIDS, from a blood transfusion she was given after being injured during a mugging. Then AIDS claimed another sister, and her husband, too. A big kid full of rage, Mr. Williams got into scrapes with the law, opponents and anybody else who crossed him. Early in his N.B.A. career, while playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, he went out boozing and brawling with then-teammate Charles Barkley.

But when he came to the Nets in 1992, he began turning his life around under the influence of coaches Chuck Daly and Butch Beard. He adopted his sisters’ children (as well as his niece’s son, making him the N.B.A.’s only grandfather). He built an immense house in Milford, N.J. (doing much of the work himself), saw an alcohol counselor, and saved his bullying ways for the backboards. Last year, his rebounding prowess earned him a spot in the All-Star Game at the Garden and the spotlight as that rarest of N.B.A. specimens: the late-bloomer. To the casual fan, it was his coming-out party.

Now he has positioned himself, not unshrewdly, as a commentator-comedian. He very likely has a career in broadcasting awaiting him when he retires from the N.B.A. “It’s not that he wants to have a future in broadcasting,” said his agent, Sal DiFazio. “He has a future in broadcasting. The question is which network.”

Mr. Williams’ dissent during the lockout only increased his visibility. Not surprisingly, cynics and supporters of Mr. Ewing and the union’s hard-line stance saw Mr. Williams’ comments as self-serving, and even inadvertently traitorous.

“Jayson was used completely by the N.B.A. He didn’t make Patrick’s job easy at all,” said Spike Lee, filmmaker, Knick fan and F.O.P. (Friend of Patrick). “Every time the media wanted to run to a player who was against what Patrick was trying to do, they just got a quote from Jayson Williams. It was amazing to me that he was talking all this shit and the guy wasn’t even involved. He was running off his mouth and dogging Patrick, and Patrick has every right to get on Jayson Williams’ ass.”

Last year, as Mr. Williams was having the best season of his career, Patrick Ewing was having his worst. He broke his wrist, spent weeks in rehab, then returned to the team in the second round of the playoffs only to disrupt the chemistry the team had found in his absence.

Meanwhile, as he recuperated, the public found out (thanks to an intern’s appearance on the Howard Stern radio show, of all places) that Mr. Ewing had been carrying on an affair with a Knicks City Dancer. Soon thereafter, his wife of seven years divorced him, then published a trashy novel about the indignities endured by N.B.A. players’ wives. (“Damn. Her voluptuous ass always seemed to be perked to attention, Steve thought.”)

Then there was the lockout. Instead of resting his wrist, Mr. Ewing spent the summer and fall in a business suit, attending meetings, putting on fat, struggling to hold the union’s diverse and increasingly impatient membership together. The cancellation of the first portion of the season wound up costing him more than $6 million, and a considerable portion of his remaining stash of good will.

During the dispute, he played the part of valiant warrior on behalf of his fellow workers, but he was often a clumsy spokesman. His comment that he and his fellow millionaires were “fighting for their livelihood” was met with nearly universal ridicule; he also was derided for leaving Red Holzman’s funeral while holding a cell phone to his ear. As the lockout wore on, and the players showed resolve, Mr. Ewing became the scapegoat for the game’s labor problems. Though not necessarily by design, he sacrificed his own public image for the stake future players will have in the N.B.A.

“He stood up to an incredible amount of public ridicule and scorn, which has been completely misplaced,” said Jeffrey Kessler, the union’s lead outside lawyer. “Patrick had nothing to gain from this negotiation. All he did was lose more money than any other player in the N.B.A.”

Mr. Ewing has never been adept at or interested in acquainting the public with his warm side. Because of his reticence, which sometimes borders on the surly, sportswriters don’t like him much. The fans feel cheated: Here is a man who has been so well rewarded, who seems dignified, who is described by friends as charming, generous and full of integrity, yet he won’t share any of it with the fans. There is nothing for fans to hold onto, except the image of the silent warrior.

And so he never has capitalized on the fact that he is a future Hall of Famer, the leader on what was and may still be a blue-chip team in the media capital of the world. He kept the fans at arm’s length, and they did the same to him.

There are reasons, of course, for his distrust of the public and the media. He has been taunted by fans as far back as his days as an oversize high school star in Massachusetts. In high school and college, people pelted him and his team’s bus with banana peels and held up signs insulting his intelligence. His bewilderment hardened into armor.

He is a fiercely proud man. His role in the lockout battle was a big chance for him to show everyone, from the goons to his peers in the league, that he is an intelligent man.

But now, according to people who know him, he is emotionally drained. He rarely seemed to tire as a player, accumulating a heroic number of minutes, but during the lockout, he poured himself into the task, as though he had something to prove.

“Patrick was much more involved in the details of the negotiation, much more than Buck [Williams, the previous union president] ever was,” said Jeffrey Kessler, the union’s lawyer. “Even in 1996, when this last deal was being finalized, and Patrick was just the vice president, Patrick was the one player who sat with the lawyers until 2 in the morning, sometimes going through every detail in the agreement. And I’m talking about the fine print. He has this incredible intensity and pride in whatever he does.”

Nothing hurt him more, perhaps, than the accusation that he was the puppet of his agent, David Falk, the most powerful agent in basketball and the force behind skyrocketing salaries and the fight to preserve them. The fact that their interests coincided, and that Mr. Ewing learned most of what he knows about the business of basketball and the politics of labor relations from Mr. Falk, was enough to convince Mr. Ewing’s detractors that Mr. Falk was pulling all the strings.

But the F.O.P.’s disagree. “Patrick doesn’t do anything because somebody else wants him to do it,” said Mike Jarvis, head coach at St. John’s University and coach of Mr. Ewing’s championship teams in high school in Cambridge, Mass. “That’s why Patrick has become the great player he has: because he doesn’t listen to other people.”

“I think it’s insulting to a human being to say that he is being manipulated by another person,” Mr. Falk said. “It enrages Patrick. People do that to athletes to put them in a weakened position. When Bill Clinton goes in to testify before the grand jury, not only does he bring his lawyers into the room, but the lawyer tells him which questions to answer and which not to answer. Yet no one says it undermines his prestige. No one says that David Kendall is the puppeteer and Bill Clinton is the puppet. Do they? Has anyone ever said that?

“People don’t like athletes to be educated because they question,” he went on. “My role as Patrick’s attorney, advisor and friend is to help educate him. When he came to Georgetown, people held up signs saying ‘Ewing Can’t Read’ and now he’s leading a union in a $2 billion negotiation.”

Ultimately, though, he was forced to give in. Mr. Ewing had to yield to good sense and to those, like Jayson Williams, who spoke up for it. And as with his many doomed championship runs with the Knicks, his best effort, for reasons largely beyond his control, was not good enough.

“Patrick polarizes,” said one basketball executive. “His public persona can be an irritant. Jayson is warm and fuzzy. But the irritant is more challenging.”

the G.M. Building on Jan. 6 half-hidden under a brown leather hood, which

made him look even more distrustful than usual of the media that greeted

him. He had just attended a players' vote that ratified a deal to end

the long National Basketball Association lockout–a deal he neither

made nor approved of–and they had embarrassed him by giving him a

standing ovation.

But he was proud. "I did my job," he said. "I did

everything the guys asked me to do." And then he said it. He resorted

to his perennial preseason wish: "Hopefully, I can get me a

championship." (Who said there's no "me" in team?)

But for Mr. Ewing, for the Knicks and for the N.B.A., this season is not

about championships. It's about nothing less than the N.B.A.'s

future. Resolution of a tiresome labor dispute pitting one group of

millionaires against another has been followed by news that Michael Jordan,

the Chicago Bulls' megastar, who has carried the game for years, will

retire. The game, then, will be left in the hands of underwhelming brats

who have become a sports marketer's nightmare.

Even in New York, the supposed Mecca of basketball, fans have soured on

the game, and if they're going to be seduced into caring about it

again, one of two men will have to do the seducing: Either Mr. Ewing, who

has been blamed for prolonging the lockout, or his antithesis and

counterpart on the New Jersey Nets, the charismatic Jayson Williams.

The two men are natural antagonists. Mr. Ewing is stubborn and

media-shy, part warhorse, part prima donna, always falling a little bit

short and rarely stooping to explain himself. He has never quite won the

love of New York fans. Mr. Williams is an accommodating and loquacious

cut-up–and a prominent dissenter from Mr. Ewing's hard line

during talks with N.B.A. owners–who has capitalized on his candid-guy

shtick and his remarkable biography to put the once-lowly Nets, and

himself, on the media map.

As luck (or the N.B.A.'s suddenly savvy marketers) would have it,

Mr. Ewing and Mr. Williams will probably face each other in two exhibition

games (they're still not confirmed) before the delayed regular season

begins next month. Designed to win back the interest and good will of

frustrated fans, these two proposed preseason scraps, one in the

Meadowlands, the other at Madison Square Garden, will preview the battle

for the soul of New York basketball. Basketball is a marketing construct as

much as it is a sport, and in this lockout-shortened season, value will be

determined more than ever not by wins or losses (or who gets them) but by

Nielsen ratings, purchases of N.B.A. merchandise and the tenor of call-ins

on sports-talk radio.

Basketball is integral to New York, but New York is not Indiana. The

city's love for the game is not unconditional. The college game here

attracts only the purists and the nerds. But the pro game has, on a couple

of occasions, become New York's hottest athletic commodity, and helped

define the city's image–for better or worse. The Red Holzman

Knicks of the late 1960's and early 70's were ambassadors of New

York style, while the Pat Riley goon squads of the early 1990's,

defiant in the face of nationwide scorn, were caretakers of the city's

rough-and-tumble pride during lean times.

But the Knicks have been in decline for several years now, and they are

in danger of losing their hold on the city. Mr. Ewing, the team's

marquee star, is 36 years old and is wearing down. The last thing his

creaky knees need is the added burden of carrying the team through another

disappointing season.

Meanwhile, a young and exciting Nets team is vying for a piece of the

New York limelight. And Mr. Williams, a 30-year-old N.B.A. All-Interview

star who positioned himself on the fan-friendly side of the lockout,

already has staked a claim to whatever affections New York fans have left

for the game.

During the lockout, which the N.B.A. owners imposed on July 1, Mr. Ewing

fought to maintain unity and vigilance among the league's 430 players,

who were beginning to tire of non-paydays. But Mr. Williams, eager to play

ball and sign a deal in this, his free-agent year, flouted the party line.

In late December, he publicly criticized union leadership. (For good

measure, he also knocked the owners and their commissioner, David Stern.)

He wanted union leaders to allow all of its members to vote on the

owners' proposal, which Mr. Ewing and his allies had deemed

unsatisfactory. Out of nowhere, Mr. Williams cast himself as the voice of

reason and compromise.

Mr. Ewing lashed back, accusing Mr. Williams of being ill-informed.

After all, Mr. Williams had not read the proposal, or participated in the

union's conference calls, or attended any of the meetings. Mr. Ewing

also complained that Mr. Williams had aired his grievances in the media,

rather than to Mr. Ewing's face.

But, of course, that was Mr. Williams' point. As he later said,

after the lockout had ended, "They got the message, right?"

(Earlier in the lockout, other players who suggested a more moderate stance

were shouted down at union meetings.) What's more, at a time when

N.B.A. players were becoming less popular by the day, Mr. Williams attached

himself to a widely held stance, especially among the fans–that is,

that both sides were being ridiculous and that they should shut up, take

their lumps and play some ball.

It was the latest step in the making of Jayson Williams, darling of the

fans and the media. He makes good local copy. He's from the Lower East

Side and he played ball at St. John's University in Queens. He says

things like, "But, hey, how much money does one man need?" Last

spring, he went on Late Show With David Letterman and cracked up the

audience–and himself–with mildly risqué Sinbadian

jokes.

Most appealing of all, Mr. Williams has a compelling personal story. His

early years were a horror. When he was in high school in the 1980's,

one of his sisters died of AIDS, from a blood transfusion she was given

after being injured during a mugging. Then AIDS claimed another sister, and

her husband, too. A big kid full of rage, Mr. Williams got into scrapes

with the law, opponents and anybody else who crossed him. Early in his

N.B.A. career, while playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, he went out

boozing and brawling with then-teammate Charles Barkley.

But when he came to the Nets in 1992, he began turning his life around

under the influence of coaches Chuck Daly and Butch Beard. He adopted his

sisters' children (as well as his niece's son, making him the

N.B.A.'s only grandfather). He built an immense house in Milford, N.J.

(doing much of the work himself), saw an alcohol counselor, and saved his

bullying ways for the backboards. Last year, his rebounding prowess earned

him a spot in the All-Star Game at the Garden and the spotlight as that

rarest of N.B.A. specimens: the late-bloomer. To the casual fan, it was his

coming-out party.

Now he has positioned himself, not unshrewdly, as a

commentator-comedian. He very likely has a career in broadcasting awaiting

him when he retires from the N.B.A. "It's not that he

wants to have a future in broadcasting," said his agent, Sal DiFazio. "He has a future in

broadcasting. The question is which network."

Mr. Williams' dissent during the lockout only increased his

visibility. Not surprisingly, cynics and supporters of Mr. Ewing and the

union's hard-line stance saw Mr. Williams' comments as

self-serving, and even inadvertently traitorous.

"Jayson was used completely by the N.B.A. He didn't make

Patrick's job easy at all," said Spike Lee, filmmaker, Knick fan

and F.O.P. (Friend of Patrick). "Every time the media wanted to run to

a player who was against what Patrick was trying to do, they just got a

quote from Jayson Williams. It was amazing to me that he was talking all

this shit and the guy wasn't even involved. He was running off his

mouth and dogging Patrick, and Patrick has every right to get on Jayson

Williams' ass."

Last year, as Mr. Williams was having the best season of his career,

Patrick Ewing was having his worst. He broke his wrist, spent weeks in

rehab, then returned to the team in the second round of the playoffs only

to disrupt the chemistry the team had found in his absence.

Meanwhile, as he recuperated, the public found out (thanks to an

intern's appearance on the Howard Stern radio show, of all

places) that Mr. Ewing had been carrying on an affair with a Knicks City

Dancer. Soon thereafter, his wife of seven years divorced him, then

published a trashy novel about the indignities endured by N.B.A.

players' wives. ("Damn. Her voluptuous ass always seemed to be

perked to attention, Steve thought.")

Then there was the lockout. Instead of resting his wrist, Mr. Ewing

spent the summer and fall in a business suit, attending meetings, putting

on fat, struggling to hold the union's diverse and increasingly

impatient membership together. The cancellation of the first portion of the

season wound up costing him more than $6 million, and a considerable

portion of his remaining stash of good will.

During the dispute, he played the part of valiant warrior on behalf of

his fellow workers, but he was often a clumsy spokesman. His comment that

he and his fellow millionaires were "fighting for their

livelihood" was met with nearly universal ridicule; he also was

derided for leaving Red Holzman's funeral while holding a cell phone

to his ear. As the lockout wore on, and the players showed resolve, Mr.

Ewing became the scapegoat for the game's labor problems. Though not

necessarily by design, he sacrificed his own public image for the stake

future players will have in the N.B.A.

"He stood up to an incredible amount of public ridicule and scorn,

which has been completely misplaced," said Jeffrey Kessler, the

union's lead outside lawyer. "Patrick had nothing to gain from

this negotiation. All he did was lose more money than any other player in

the N.B.A."

Mr. Ewing has never been adept at or interested in acquainting the

public with his warm side. Because of his reticence, which sometimes

borders on the surly, sportswriters don't like him much. The fans feel

cheated: Here is a man who has been so well rewarded, who seems dignified,

who is described by friends as charming, generous and full of integrity,

yet he won't share any of it with the fans. There is nothing for fans

to hold onto, except the image of the silent warrior.

And so he never has capitalized on the fact that he is a future Hall of

Famer, the leader on what was and may still be a blue-chip team in the

media capital of the world. He kept the fans at arm's length, and they

did the same to him.

There are reasons, of course, for his distrust of the public and the

media. He has been taunted by fans as far back as his days as an oversize

high school star in Massachusetts. In high school and college, people

pelted him and his team's bus with banana peels and held up signs

insulting his intelligence. His bewildermenthardened into armor.

He is a fiercely proud man. His role in the lockout battle was a big

chance for him to show everyone, from the goons to his peers in the league,

that he is an intelligent man.

But now, according to people who know him, he is emotionally drained. He

rarely seemed to tire as a player, accumulating a heroic number of minutes,

but during the lockout, he poured himself into the task, as though he had

something to prove.

"Patrick was much more involved in the details of the negotiation,

much more than Buck [Williams, the previous union president] ever

was," said Jeffrey Kessler, the union's lawyer. "Even in

1996, when this last deal was being finalized, and Patrick was just the

vice president, Patrick was the one player who sat with the lawyers until 2

in the morning, sometimes going through every detail in the agreement. And

I'm talking about the fine print. He has this incredible intensity and

pride in whatever he does."

Nothing hurt him more, perhaps, than the accusation that he was the

puppet of his agent, David Falk, the most powerful agent in basketball and

the force behind skyrocketing salaries and the fight to preserve them. The

fact that their interests coincided, and that Mr. Ewing learned most of

what he knows about the business of basketball and the politics of labor

relations from Mr. Falk, was enough to convince Mr. Ewing's detractors

that Mr. Falk was pulling all the strings.

But the F.O.P.'s disagree. "Patrick doesn't do anything

because somebody else wants him to do it," said Mike Jarvis, head

coach at St. John's University and coach of Mr. Ewing's

championship teams in high school in Cambridge, Mass. "That's why

Patrick has become the great player he has: because he doesn't listen

to other people."

"I think it's insulting to a human being to say that he is

being manipulated by another person," Mr. Falk said. "It enrages

Patrick. People do that to athletes to put them in a weakened position.

When Bill Clinton goes in to testify before the grand jury, not only does

he bring his lawyers into the room, but the lawyer tells him which

questions to answer and which not to answer. Yet no one says it undermines

his prestige. No one says that David Kendall is the puppeteer and Bill

Clinton is the puppet. Do they? Has anyone ever said that?

"People don't like athletes to be educated because they

question," he went on. "My role as Patrick's attorney,

adviser and friend is to help educate him. When he came to Georgetown,

people held up signs saying 'Ewing Can't Read' and now

he's leading a union in a $2 billion negotiation."

Ultimately, though, he was forced to give in. Mr. Ewing had to yield to

good sense and to those, like Jayson Williams, who spoke up for it. And as

with his many doomed championship runs with the Knicks, his best effort,

for reasons largely beyond his control, was not good enough.

"Patrick polarizes," said one basketball executive. "His

public persona can be an irritant. Jayson is warm and fuzzy. But the

irritant is more challenging."

When asked why it is so important that the Knicks win, since at the end of the game or even the season nothing in life is affected one way or the other, I can only answer that basketball or baseball or any sport is as dearly important as life itself. After all, why is it such a big deal to work and love and strive and have children and then die and decompose into eternal nothingness? (By now, the person who asked me why the Knicks winning is important is sorry.)

To me, it's clear that the playoffs or 61 home runs, a no-hitter, the Preakness, the Jets, or human existence can all be much ado about nothing, or they can all have a totally satisfying, thrilling-to-the-marrow quality. In short, putting the ball into the hoop is of immense significance to me by personal choice and my life is more fun because of it. Not that I ever thought of becoming a basketball player. My height was insufficient for a serious career, although to this day, if I play in a game with kids 8 years and under, I am a tremendously effective shot blocker.

Now, a favorite crackpot notion of mine is the following: I think the Knicks never regained their past championship form because they sinned by trading Walt Frazier to Cleveland. I can't prove this, but those who have read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner know what the shooting of that bird did. Not that Frazier was an Albatross. Quite the contrary. He was, in my opinion, the greatest of all Knickerbocker players, and he was for a time not only the soul of the team but one of the spirits of this city.

I recall him after a routine night of superb basketball, tooling around in his chauffeured Rolls, dressed, to put it mildly, like an extrovert and lighting up the various night spots of Manhattan like he had just lit up the Garden. Clyde came up with the Knicks and was a major (I think the major) cog in the peerless machine that took two championships. It should have entitled him to tenure in New York forever. Dealing him to the Cavaliers upset some balance in the cosmic order, and the fruit of this curse could be felt from the days of Spencer Haywood, through Bob McAdoo, Michael Ray Richardson, Lonnie Shelton, the Bulls, the Rockets, Rick Pitino, Hubie Brown, Mike Fratello, last year's brawl in Miami, many heartbreaking late baskets by Reggie, by Michael, even by Sam Cassell.

Now once again the curse has made itself felt, and the loss to this year's Indiana Pacers, a team we could have beaten with a healthy Ewing, was particularly ironic since Patrick's courageous return did not help but hurt. Another very personal feeling of mine, while we're on the subject of great Knicks, and they don't come any greater than Frazier and Ewing, is that while Michael Jordan is the finest athlete to toil at his sport and is a quantum leap above almost all other personnel in the history of the N.B.A., Earl Monroe was, for me, more exciting to watch shoot. I'm not saying here that I'd choose Earl over Michael to build a franchise around, but no player was ever as amazing to see in action as the Pearl.

In Spike Lee's newest and best film, he pays appropriate homage to Monroe above all others, and Spike is someone, unlike myself, who truly knows what he is talking about when it comes to this game. (The only deep information I get on basketball comes from watching Peter Vecsey on television because he seems to have a genuine understanding of the sport, and I parrot his insights at parties, often pretending they are my own.) Earl Monroe was such a theatrical talent. There was something so dangerous, so charismatic about how he would pour in 40 points against helpless opposition, and one sportswriter wrote, "His misses are more exciting than most players' baskets."

This leads me to ponder the question of Allan Houston, also a terrific shooter. If the Knicks are to be a force in the coming years, his deadly shooting eye will be a major reason. So why is it more fun to watch Tim Hardaway score 30 than Houston? Are Houston's picture-perfect jump shots and lunging drives any less an achievement? But why was it always more fun to watch Isiah Thomas drop 30 than that great old pro Joe Dumars? Is it because Thomas and Hardaway project danger and Dumars and Houston reliability? I suppose star quality is unmeasurable and what makes one dancer merely great and allows another to be Fred Astaire can only be felt and never understood.

Incidentally, I should mention here that I'm totally prejudiced toward a guard- oriented or small forward-oriented game. I've never enjoyed center-focused basketball, and watching Wilt Chamberlain, great as he was, or David Robinson or Shaquille O'Neal get the ball down low and put in is not my idea of a thrill. That's why, when Patrick Ewing got hurt, the Knicks became a much weaker but much more exciting team. There's no question Ewing is the franchise player and one of the greats in all the years of this sport. Can you imagine if he had been properly staffed over the past decade? Picture the Knicks without him. They would have languished near the bottom.

Now conjure up an image of Patrick over the past decade on the Bulls. With a center like Ewing, given their team, Chicago would have gone undefeated. Ewing would be my all-time Knick center on a team comprised of himself, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere and Bernard King. Some might lobby for Willis Reed and while I'd want him on my team, I wouldn't start him. Yet as soon as Ewing was lost to injury the games became thrilling, often being decided by a point or two in the final seconds. The guards ran the club, the guards and Larry Johnson, a forward of incredible agility (and fragility) with super moves that make him, like Hakeem Olajuwon, an unusually exciting low post player. (Olajuwon is the one center who has been some fun for me to watch perform over the years.)

In Ewing's absence it became clear also about the role of John Starks, who is another veteran of special impact. When Starks first joined the Knicks, he was an out-of-control, sullen and pugnacious player, always spoiling for a fight. Over the years, he was forced to pay his dues. For a while, he was yanked from the starting five, he was seated at times during the final crucial minutes of big games and criticized for taking wild shots, for missing baskets and foul shots and worse, firing up blanks in the closing minutes of playoffs. Starks bore the humiliations with grace and remained loyal and dedicated to the team, wanting only to contribute positively. He has ripened into the heart and soul of the Knicks. Moving him to the sixth-man position has been an inspiration, as he is a player who makes the most of dramatic entrances. He has become a leader who never quits and a galvanizing force who turns on the team and the fans.

As far as the other Knicks guards go, I think both Charlie Ward and Chris Childs have certain fine individual skills and could learn from one another. If a science-fiction machine were available to combine both these guards into a single player, New York would have its great point guard. Childs fell into disfavor this season when he missed a single end-game shot. Ironically, the game before, he had the winning final shot, but after he missed an open jumper the next night as the clock wound down, he could do no right with the fans ever again. His flaws, which he has and which I believe are correctable, were held up to constant disgruntled scrutiny and ridicule.

Years ago, Mark Jackson suffered the fans' ire, too, and was relentlessly booed by the home attendance each time he entered a game. His trade proved to be the Knicks' loss, and he went on to play fine basketball in other cities and most recently to haunt us in the Pacers series. Jackson was the finest point guard the Knicks had since Walt Frazier, and they've had none close since his departure. It was a mistake to let him go but not to trade Rod Strickland, who is more explosive than Jackson but not as grounded. I never bought the story that Jackson was let go because of his feet-that he was too slow. He had become unpopular. His slow feet have not kept him from leading the Pacers to the Eastern Conference Finals.

And finally, what can one say about Charles Oakley? Or can one say enough? Oakley has been a consistently tremendous ballplayer for New York who contributes mightily night after night, season after season, and actually gets better with age. Of course I'd hate to wake up in the middle of the night and find him hovering over my bed with that look on his face, but on the court he's worth every cent they pay him.

I also admire the Knicks' coach, although I, like Larry Bird (one of the many ways we're similar), am a firm believer in the limits of coaching. It has been said that a good coach is someone who, if you give him a good team, will not screw up with it. I've always felt, if Jeff Van Gundy had coached the Bulls over the past decade and Phil Jackson guided the Knicks, that for the most part the record books would stand pretty much the way they are written today. The truth is, I always believed that I could have coached the Lakers in the years of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy and if not me then certainly my mother.

Having given you a number of my emotional feelings about the Knicks, a team I love, let me give you a few of my less socially acceptable notions.

First-I happen to like Reggie Miller. I liked it when he hit the three-pointer that tied the game with the Knicks. It set the stage with a drama that Reggie, who deserves to be a Knick and play in New York, seems to possess. The only thing that went wrong in my fantasy scenario was that the Knicks did not utilize the five-plus seconds they had left to win the game and make the afternoon a thrilling one for New York. If, as Reggie claims, he saw in the eyes of the home team that the heart went out of New York in the overtime, then that is unforgivable. The Knicks had the Pacers in a tie at the end of regulation at friendly Madison Square Garden. It's a situation wherein they should dismantle their opponents.

Another unpopular archvillain I always liked to watch, and wished in years past was on the Knicks, was Bill Laimbeer. Constantly accused of being a dirty player, he would have been a huge plus for New York despite all the derision he got when he competed against us. I feel that way about Dennis Rodman, too. The fans in Chicago love him and we would, too, if he paraded his psychotic vaudeville here.

And what about Marv Albert? I'd like to see him back doing the New York broadcast. I miss that voice, full of city street urgency. He made the games exciting to listen to, and to deny him his place as the voice of the Knicks is unworthy of those who are empowered to hire. (Not to get off the subject of basketball, but I'm a firm believer that a Baseball Hall of Fame that excludes Pete Rose embarrasses itself.)

And what is all this postgame praying? Those new fashionable prayer huddles-what goes on? They can't be thanking God for winning, because how do the teams with the losing records explain things? ("The Lord loves our team-He sabotages us so we can get a high draft pick.") The players also cannot be thanking God for keeping them from injury, because they're injured all the time. My theory is they're thanking God for the huge increases in salaries over the past few years. Only a very benevolent Supernatural Being could be responsible for some of those numbers certain players earn.

My favorite player in the league is Charles Barkley. Not only has he been thrilling over the years, but his performances have been original and funny. I find his attitude of wanting a championship ring, but not letting it be a life-threatening event should he fail to obtain one, quite refreshing. He, like Dennis Rodman (although he brings it off with much more flair and aplomb), does not give an inch to the sanctimony that permeates professional sports.

Incidentally, lest the reader not think I'm totally blasphemous in my tastes and feeling, I should point out that I experienced a true religious epiphany watching the All-Star Game this year when the "torch" was passed from Michael to Kobe Bryant. For a minute, I thought I saw angels at Madison Square Garden. My feeling about Kobe is that he is a knockout talent and they should encourage him to play a complete game with assists, rebounds and defense and not use him to come in and make circus shots. But the concept of passing a torch I did find a hoot, no matter how many times the television announcers used the phrase; it's a concept alien to basketball, which is a team sport, and Michael Jordan has not created a holy order like the papacy, where there is a line of accession. (If the smoke is light gray, the new Pope is Kobe; if it's dark gray, Grant Hill's been chosen.)

Finally, I would not like to end this little rumination without an interview that I dedicate to an old favorite writer of mine, Frank Sullivan, whose appreciation of clichés would have hit a new high had he lived long enough to hear one of today's basketball players.

Interview between Frank Sullivan's cliché expert and an N.B.A. star:

Int: In the upcoming playoff game, where will your team be staying?

Star: We're going to try and stay within ourselves.

Int: But you'll be trying to take your game where?

Star: To another level.

Int: By having your point guard do what?

Star: By raising his game a notch.

Int: And where do you plan on finding the game?

Star: I'm going to just let the game come to me.

Int: By hitting who?

Star: The open man.

Int: And staying-

Star: Focused.

Int: And what kind of minutes will your bench give you?

Star: Quality minutes.

Int: And how would you characterize your aging superstar?

Star: Oh, he's a warrior.

Int: So why didn't you win yesterday?

Star: We didn't take care of business.

Int: What didn't you get done?

Star: We didn't get the job done.

Int: Rather than being voted M.V.P., what would you rather have?

Star: A ring.

(With this, the referee, who has been listening to this drivel, awards a double technical and the show is over.)