Legendary center Patrick Ewing recently agreed to become the associate head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats, working under new 'Cats head coach Steve Clifford, with whom Ewing served long stretches as an assistant coach with both the Houston Rockets and Orlando Magic.
The decision to join Clifford's staff also means that Ewing will now (kind of) be on the same team as longtime nemesis Michael Jordan, whose Chicago Bulls waged annual battles with Ewing's New York Knicks throughout the 1990s.
Before Jordan and Ewing ever reached the professional level, though, they very nearly became teammates at the University of North Carolina ... until the Ku Klux Klan ruined the prospective future Hall-of-Fame team-up. (As the Klan so often does.)
During a visit to Dan Patrick's nationally syndicated radio show on Thursday to discuss his gig with the Bobcats and he was to see newly minted Brooklyn Nets head coach Jason Kidd lock down an NBAhead coaching job mere days after his retirement, the talk turned to Ewing's feelings about linking up with Jordan, which led the big man to discuss their missed collegiate connection.
The story begins with Ewing — then a much coveted recruit who'd played his high school ball for Cambridge Rindge & Latin School in Cambridge, Mass. — taking a trip down south to visit Chapel Hill:
Ewing: You know, I was close. I was close. North Carolina was a very good school, but when I went down there, they put me in that Carolina Inn and there was a big Ku Klux Klan rally in North Carolina when I was there. And I was like, "You know what? I'm not coming down here. I'm staying my butt back in Boston."
Patrick: So the reason why you didn't go, or the main reason, is the KKK had a rally going on at the time?
Ewing: Big rally, man.
Ewing also told Patrick that found himself bugged out (nailed it, via being a professional writer) by the nighttime sounds he encountered down south:
Ewing: And you know in North Carolina, you hear all the crickets? So they had me, stuck me in that Carolina Inn, and nights down in North Carolina, it gets pitch black, and I'd hear all the crickets. And I'm jumping, and I'm like, "What the heck?" So I said, "No, no, I'm going back."
crickets and KKK well they both are night lovers guess they don't like the light shining on them revealing the who's who, that tends to say they are either ashamed of themselves and what they represent or they know they break the law and don't want to be identified
