More than two decades after the heyday of the Patrick Ewing/Pat Riley Knicks, fans in New York still pine for those teams, wishing for a chance to revisit the defensive toughness, the Hall of Fame offensive repertoire of Ewing, and the supporting cast who largely overachieved relative to their individual reputations.
The good news is that the 2016 New York Liberty are a pretty spot-on recreation of those Ewing Knicks teams. Having earned the WNBA’s No. 3 seed, they will host their playoff opener Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
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The comparison starts with Tina Charles, a player so similar to Ewing it’s a shock she isn’t wearing knee pads. Try and pick out which three seasons belong to Ewing and which three belong to Charles here:
Player A
PER
TS%
Reb%
Win Shares/48
23.2
53.9
21.3
.236
23.3
53.8
18.3
.240
23.8
49.9
16.6
.199
Player B
PER
TS%
Reb%
Win Shares/48
25.8
59.9
15.7
.205
23.7
56.1
16.8
.198
22.9
55.1
16.9
.211
Player A is Tina Charles in 2010, 2012, and 2016. Player B is Patrick Ewing in 1989-90, 1990-91, and 1993-94.
Both players thrive on the long two, something common to Ewing’s era. Charles actually began incorporating the three-pointer into her arsenal this season, attempting 47 and making them at a 34.7 percent clip, or about as frequently as Diana Taurasi makes them. It is easy to imagine Ewing in today’s game doing the same thing, especially if you remember the fourth quarter of Game 5, Boston Garden, 1990.
The players share more than similar statistical profiles. Ewing led his Knicks to the playoffs every year from 1987-88 through 1999-2000. His best teams—those mid-90s Knicks that came within a Hakeem Olajuwon fingertip of a NBA title one year, were a Ewing finger-roll away from the NBA Finals the next, and an inexplicable Charles Smith sequence from defeating Michael Jordan’s Bulls a third year—simply didn’t have a second star. Not really. John Starks? Anthony Mason? Charles Oakley? Important players, all of them. But Ewing had no Scottie Pippen, no Reggie Miller, no Tim Hardaway, no Clyde Drexler.
So it is with the 2016 Liberty. Tina Charles may not win the MVP because the Los Angeles Sparks’ Nneka Ogwumike completed the most efficient offensive year in WNBA or NBA history, but Ogwumike has a legitimate star with her in Candace Parker. The Liberty have such a player in Epiphanny Prince, but Prince missed most of 2016 recovering from knee surgery, and has been a role player since returning—the Rolando Blackman of this Liberty team.
The second best player on the Liberty this year? Sugar Rodgers, the Starks of this team, who never met a three she didn’t want to take and worked to make herself into a starter after an early career as a role player. Or maybe Kiah Stokes, a bully of an interior defender, an elite rebounder, and a deft passer out of the high post, this team’s Anthony Mason.
Amanda Zahui B. is their Charles Oakley, Brittany Boyd their Greg Anthony, Rebecca Allen their Hubert Davis, Tanisha Wright their Derek Harper and Doc Rivers rolled into one, Shavonte Zellous their Anthony Bonner, Swin Cash their Herb Williams, Carolyn Swords their Charles Smith (though it is hard to imagine her failing to finish late in a game at Chicago Stadium).
Like those Knicks, the Liberty exist in a time of a remarkable superstar, Maya Moore, armed with a gifted supporting cast on the Minnesota Lynx and the best coach of this era, Cheryl Reeve. So Charles and the Liberty, for all the parallels that their talent draws to the Riley Era Knicks, may also fall short of winning it all.
But New York basketball fans eager to relive those days, and perhaps even exorcise those ghosts, probably should get to the Garden and see for themselves.
