The Big East men’s basketball tournament championship game is set for Saturday night, and the jokes about how Patrick Ewing should arrive at Madison Square Garden began when his Georgetown team clinched its berth.
Earlier this week, Garden security found it difficult to identify Ewing. In response, jokesters suggested he should show up in his Knicks uniform. It was something Ewing was not shy to point out.
The unsaid, underlying, less-laughworthy question, unfortunately, was: would that be enough?
Or would the greatest achievement of Ewing’s post-playing, head-coaching career be again tainted by more of the microagressions that every Black person in America is forced to deal with daily – regardless of whether their plaque is in the Hall of Fame, their jersey hangs in the arena rafters, or their institution’s name is stitched on their warmups?
In the time that followed that incident, Ewing’s revelation of how Garden security had treated him was dissected, a process often done in search of holes, justifications and reasons to dismiss him, his complaint and the very notion that he was the victim of anything and entitled to any understanding.
It was a wholly predictable defensive reaction, coming overwhelmingly from a segment of the population that cherishes nothing in big-time celebrities – especially Black ones – more than silence, obedience, humility and gratitude.
The message, sometimes subtle, often not, was that Patrick Ewing needed to get over himself.
The rest of us know differently, though, and if there were any questions about what Garden security did to him – and truth be told, was there even a question? – they fell into the category of, “Man, even you?”
It struck a nerve on so many levels. Levels as broad as every place in American society where Black people are assumed that we don’t belong and have to prove that we do – and as specific as an extremely recognizable figure in his very recognizable former and current workplace. A workplace in which those in charge of gatekeeping are required, by policy and common sense, to understand implicitly and explicitly where they are, why they are there and who is supposed to be there.
Every Black person who has covered a major sports event felt Ewing’s anguish immediately. They all know about walking around an arena during the Final Four, a ballpark during the playoffs, the stadium concourse during a Super Bowl or a college bowl game … and getting stopped every few feet as somebody official grabs the large credential hanging off the large lanyard around their neck and scrutinizing it just those few seconds too long, while their colleagues stroll freely past without a glance to get to the field, press conference or locker room.
None of us is a 7-foot basketball legend, either. In the gear of the team you’ve coached for four years. In the building where, as he should never stop reminding everybody, his name and number are in the rafters. And where he dominated as a college player constantly over four years (while facing, there and at other Big East venues, arguably the most openly-racist opposing crowds any college star has ever seen).
But history tells us that anything is possible.
It can happen to them, it can happen to us.
This incident occurred in the same venue where Knicks’ owner James Dolan had Garden security physically carry Charles Oakley out of the building four years back. Now it happened to Patrick Ewing, just as it still happens to us.
And as it happened to Masai Ujiri.
It hasn’t yet been two years since a sheriff’s deputy unilaterally decided that Ujiri, the president of the Toronto Raptors, did not belong on the court in Oakland in the minutes after his team won its first NBA championship. The cop shoving Ujiri, the angry retaliation, Kyle Lowry rescuing him, fans screaming for the cop to let him through, were all caught on video. Ujiri was still charged with assault. The deputy still sued him.
And far too many people took the cop’s word for it, that Ujiri was in the wrong, should have complied, shouldn’t have assumed he was allowed to be there, should have done something beyond display the giant credential in his hand to satisfy the need to justify his existence.
Ujiri’s ultimate moment was stolen by a badge deep in the thrall of protecting something much bigger than the Warriors’ home court. It seems that Garden security felt the obligation to protect that same much-bigger thing from the encroachment of the tall middle-aged Black guy in gray sweats whose face and stature didn’t, shockingly, ring a bell.
Ujiri’s and Ewing’s crimes: WATAWB (Walking Around The Arena While Black) and CYSWB (Celebrating Your Success While Black).
Ewing also suffered from CWB (Coaching While Black). The emotion dripping off of every moment of Georgetown’s Cinderella run to the Big East final barely six months after John Thompson’s passing – that ties into this, too.
In the excellent autobiography published soon after his death, “I Came As A Shadow,’’ Thompson pointed out frequently, when discussing not only the causes he championed and the educational responsibilities he shouldered but the lens through which he was viewed, that “I never had the luxury of just being a basketball coach.’’
If any of the other Big East coaches in the building this week encountered what he did, they appear to have kept it to themselves. If they had any feelings about it, they have yet to surface. If this is a routine occurrence for coaches at the numerous conference tournaments over the last two weeks, it isn’t readily apparent.
The majority of coaches can just coach their teams. One segment has to run a gauntlet the majority doesn’t. It isn’t imaginary. It isn’t something they’re being too sensitive about. It isn’t ego talking. It’s “Let me see if you’re really supposed to be here.’’
Ironically, Georgetown’s championship-game opponent, Creighton, is coached by a man who had been suspended for a game last week for telling his players behind closed doors that they needed to decide if they want to stay “on the plantation.’’ No word yet on whether anyone at the Garden has questioned his credentials.
But for Ewing, it’s GTWWB (Going To Work While Black).
Patrick Ewing, of the Georgetown Ewings and the Springfield Ewings and the Only Worthwhile Knicks Team Of The Last Half Century Ewings, couldn’t just go about his job of coaching his underdog program at the Big East tournament without having to show proof he was supposed to be there.
The Knicks’ Hall of Famer was in the Garden, the self-proclaimed “World’s Most Famous Arena”.
And he had to show his papers.
Maybe if he shows the No. 33 in orange-and-white he will be approved for entry.
