Alonzo Mourning has staked his claim time and time again as one of the greatest Miami Heat players of all time. From playing a key role off the bench in Miami’s 2006 title run to being the first player in franchise history to have his jersey retired, the Hall of Fame center has always exemplified the epitome of “Heat Culture” to a tee.
But on Tuesday, Mourning admitted that he nearly went in an entirely different direction with his career before he moved down to South Florida in 1995. The Miami legend said that he had a chance to play with the New York Knicks alongside fellow legendary big man Patrick Ewing — but the latter told him to go to Miami instead.
“I reached out to Patrick, I asked him about playing under Pat Riley,” Mourning said. “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.’”
As history would have it, Mourning was shipped from the Charlotte Hornets to the Heat, where he would go on to notch a pair of All-NBA team selections and spend the majority of his remaining career. Interestingly enough, Miami and New York had a rather intense rivalry in the back-half of the 1990s, with Mourning and Ewing serving as the workhorses of their respective teams.
The tensions came to a boiling point when the eighth-seeded Knicks stunned the top-seeded Heat in the first round of the 1999 NBA playoffs. New York went on to lose to the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals — somewhere it hasn’t been since then.
