Alonzo Mourning recently opened up on The OGs Podcast about a pivotal moment in his career — when he had the opportunity to team up with fellow Georgetown legend Patrick Ewing on the New York Knicks but was ultimately told to go a different direction. According to Mourning, not only did Ewing not push for him to join the Knicks, he directly told Zo to take his talents to South Beach instead.
The story begins in the mid-1990s when Mourning, then a rising star with the Charlotte Hornets, was up for a big payday after the team had just extended Larry Johnson. Mourning was expecting a similar deal, but the Hornets’ owner George Shinn had other ideas.
“The owner of the team, George Shinn, he paid LJ. And I was next up. My agent said, I can get you this with five different teams. You just gotta choose which team you wanna play for. I said, no, I wanna stay in Charlotte.”
“David Falk said, I don’t think Charlotte’s gonna pay you this number. I said, well, I’ll take less money to stay. So we started having conversations with George Shinn—he said, and these were his exact words—’You’re not worth that.'”
“When he told me that, I had to get out of there, man. That was the basis of the conversation. During that process, I reached out to Patrick. I asked him about playing under Pat Riley. And I said, I heard his practices are hard, man. And Pat was like, ‘Boy, you went to Georgetown.”
“As hard as our practices was, you ain’t gonna be intimidated by them practices.’ He said, ‘Go to Miami, go.’ And I said, ‘Patrick, I had a chance to come to New York and play with you.’ He was like, ‘Nah, I don’t want you here. Go to Miami.'”
“So that put me over the top right there. That was the deciding factor right there. I had a conversation with Big John and Patrick, and they both told me to come to Miami.”
That decision would go on to define Mourning’s career. He joined the Miami Heat in 1995 and immediately became the face of the franchise. Over the course of 11 seasons in Miami (spanning two stints), Mourning averaged 16.0 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 2.7 blocks per game. He was a seven-time All-Star, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year (1999, 2000), and a key pillar of the team’s culture under Pat Riley.
Despite serious kidney issues that nearly ended his career in the early 2000s, Mourning returned to Miami in 2005 and played a critical role off the bench during the Heat’s 2006 NBA Championship run — the first title in franchise history.
His legacy with the Heat was cemented when the team retired his jersey in 2009, and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014.
In hindsight, Patrick Ewing’s advice might not have helped the Knicks, but it helped shape the career of one of Miami’s most beloved icons.
