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The New Year, 2018, was only a few days old when a call came from a Times editor wondering if I was interested in profiling Ewing, whose post-playing career had taken a fascinating turn: He was now the head coach at Georgetown University, his alma mater. I accepted the assignment without hesitation and immediately called Michelle to tell her I was heading to Washington, D.C. “Of course you should write that story,” she said. I had covered so many twists and turns of Ewing’s career, so why not the latest one?
The progression from player to coach has historically been a more likely career track for charismatic players, often point guards, well-practiced as they are in both verbal and tactical on-court leadership. You could practically tag and identify a future coach by the sound of his voice in media interviews—personable, polished, imperturbable, and generally self-promoting. But until very late in his playing days, Ewing’s was deliberately muted, his leadership evidenced almost exclusively by the weight of his much-admired work ethic. He came off as reticent, distant, deliberately dull. He honored minimum media requirements but stonewalled reporters in most other ways. He was allergic to schmoozing with them before a game and never seemed to have a favorite media confidant. Until late in his career, he hardly ever addressed any of us by name.
As unreachable as he was for those of us scavenging for a quote, Ewing was just as remote to the Knicks’ fan base at large—even to those, like Michelle, who on a regular basis across the years were practically in his face. Never shy about using her proximity to establish a rapport with coaches, players, and assorted others, she found Ewing’s invisible shield to be impenetrable. She could never get him to interact, not so much as a smile or a nod. Was Ewing just locked in on the task at hand? Indifferent? Uncaring? Too shy? Understandably distrustful of outsiders after the racist taunting he endured as a high school prodigy in the Boston area and to a lesser degree at Georgetown?
Teammates and opposing players sang a different tune about Ewing. They raved about his easy demeanor, his mischievous sense of humor. At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, he developed a teasing friendship with Larry Bird—an improbable bond between a black native Jamaican and the white “Hick from French Lick,” the small Indiana town from where Bird hailed.
This charming side of Ewing was strictly hearsay to Michelle and to me until Lori Hamamoto, a Knicks employee, convinced her—and by extension, us—otherwise. Hamamoto had come to the Knicks from the public relations team of the Orlando Magic and, after serving time in New York as an assistant, was promoted in 1996 to communications director. It was an impressive ascent for someone in her late twenties and even more notable for a woman in the male-dominated sports industry. More than most, Michelle took notice. With no relationship with Hamamoto to speak of, she walked up to her one game night and handed her a note, offering congratulations and the advice to continue pushing through glass ceilings. Hamamoto appreciated that someone she correctly assumed to be a successful career woman—what else would explain her choice seat location without a leveraged man by her side?—had taken the time to contemplate her success, much less go out of her way to acknowledge it. In the way Michelle had connected to others at the Garden, including me, a close friendship resulted, lasting long after Hamamoto’s departure from the Knicks in 2001.
With her own family a day trip away in the Washington area, Hamamoto would periodically take the train to Stamford from Grand Central Station and look for Michelle’s vanity license plate—always some abridged version of her first name—in the parking lot. When the two were out to dinner, Michelle would introduce her as her “adopted daughter” because Hamamoto was actually young enough to be her daughter. Their relationship was also—however abstractly—another example of Michelle’s journalist’s instincts leading her to information that was otherwise unavailable. In her time with the Knicks, Hamamoto had developed a close working friendship with Ewing. Her loyalty and professionalism would have never allowed her to reveal any secrets, but she would on occasion tout behind-the-scenes gestures unknown to reporters because Ewing had no interest in making them public and certainly not in going out of his way to ingratiate himself with the media. Michelle, in turn, would pass along these insights to me, which helped to humanize him in my columns.
In her early days in the director’s job, Hamamoto was understandably cautious around me, a Times columnist who had taken my fair share of shots at Ewing—most aggressively for clumsily handling a management lockout that delayed the 1998–99 season as president of the players’ union. Hamamoto wasn’t pleased with the column and mentioned it to Michelle. Determined to bring her friends together, Michelle arranged a dinner, where I explained to Hamamoto that, labor criticism aside, I admired Ewing and, in fact, had vigorously defended him during leaner times earlier in his career. I also told her that I would never evaluate any athlete based on his cooperation—or lack thereof—with the media. That was the last thing readers cared about. We reached an understanding, forged our own friendship, and through the years would plan the occasional dinner in
