i grew up idolizing Ewing... but I could never get to see him play because at that time, you know, people actually wanted to see the Knicks, unlike today. The waiting list for season tickets was something like 50 years long... now so many people have dropped off the list that you can actually go right up to the box office and get season tickets if you'd like... quite sad, quite isiahish.
anyhoo... i only got to see three knick games durring the Ewing era... one was a preaseason game at the Nassau Coliseum in which Ewing didn't play, and the other two was the year Ewing broke his arm (i got the tickets because i was going out with a chick with season tickets... i think i made a thread about that once
).
finally... when i was in school in new hampshire, i went to see the Celtics play the Magic. finally got to see the man I grew up loving play in person for the first time... and man oh man it was a sad sad site. made me feel really really old. i did manage to get his attention though... we had pretty good seats, a few rows off the baseline by the magic bench (ok actually we had 10 dollar nosebleeds, but with the oh so spectacular security at the fleet center, we managed to sit 5 rows off the baseline... one game i sat at midcourt in the second row... best 10 bucks i ever spent... jalen rose yelled at me... i loved it... but i digress). in the 4th quarter i actually moved to a seat directly behind the magic's bench (again... wonderful fleet center security... if i tried that at the garden, even with the putrid knicks, i would have been beaten down like a rented mule)... in the closing seconds of the game, patrick tossed one of his patented 2 foot long wrist bands that he's always worn throughout his career from the bench towards me. i reached out and grabbed it... at the exact same moment as some 8 year old kid who was sitting like 5 seats down from me ran down and also grabbed it... so here we were, a 21 year old man and an 8 year old kid, each with a grip on one of ewing's sweaty, disgusting wristbands (ewing? sweaty? nooooo... ya don't say). for about a split second i actually considered ripping the wrist band away from the little twirp... but i relented and let the kid have it.
this still pisses me off to this very day.