One of Michael Jordan’s closest friends in the NBA was Patrick Ewing. Ewing and Jordan knew each other before entering the league, playing in the 1984 Olympics. Both Jordan and Ewing found success in the league, elevating themselves to superstar status. Both players had a massive impact on the game during the 80s and 90s, enough to earn them a spot on the NBA’s 50th-anniversary team.
Ahead of the ceremony in 1997, Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, and other NBA players were relaxing backstage. While talking with each other, Jordan sent some friendly barbs the way of Ewing, calling him a black hole, and saying that Dikembe Mutombo was the better center to have come out of Georgetown. Both Jordan and Ewing were laughing throughout, so it was clearly two friends bantering.
Jordan and Ewing were friends off the court, with Ewing being a part of MJ’s Space Jam movie, and the two even shared the same agent.
But on the court, Ewing and MJ were always battling and trying to get the better of each other. After the Detroit Pistons, the New York Knicks became Jordan and the Bulls’ biggest rivals, as they were the only team that could pose a threat to the Bulls and their desire for dominance in the Eastern Conference.
Jordan and Ewing almost became teammates as well, as MJ was negotiating with the New York Knicks in 1996 when he became a free agent for the first time. But it turned out that Jordan was only using the Knicks to leverage a better contract from Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf. One has to imagine Ewing would have loved to play with one of his closest friends in the league and at the time, the best in the world.
