Payback is fair play for NBA greats ex
By MICHELE INGRASSIA
DAILY NEWS FEATURE WRITER
Rita Ewing uncovers the steamy side of gym life in book.
The Knicks ended their season in the Atlantic Division cellar, but for Rita Ewing, it’s something of a championship season.
The ex-wife of ex-franchise player Patrick Ewing is already a nurse and lawyer with an MBA. She has three daughters (the oldest wears No. 33 on her school basketball uniform). She’s also a co-founder of Harlem’s formidable Hue-Man bookstore and co-author of “Homecourt Advantage,” a 1998 novel that dished the tawdry side of NBA spousehood. Now Ewing is going solo. “Brickhouse” (Avon Trade, $12.95), out today, is a novel set in a Harlem gym. The plot involves a stunning gym owner, a steroid-abusing trainer, a bulimic daughter, a conniving local minister and an unhappy NBA wife. Which isn’t necessarily a stretch for Ewing, whose marriage hit the skids in 1998 amid stories that the $64 million center was having an affair with a Knick City Dancer. As she chats at Hue-Man, she juggles book-promoting with the realities of getting a plumber for the store’s only toilet, which has just conked out.
Your character Leila is an NBA wife whose husband is cheating on her — and she’s cheating on him. Did you draw on reality?
Absolutely! Leila was the character I had the most fun with. She was the essence of vindication for those women who are married to anyone who’s cheating on them. What better way to pay him back than to have an affair with a teammate?
We’ve all heard about NBA groupies in hotel elevators. Is it worse than we imagine?
I remember being part of the rookie transition program, and players who had been in the league were coming back and telling us: “Watch out, there are people who will just be there lying in wait to work a game on you.” With the Knicks, they had these policies that wives couldn’t travel to the road games, so you weren’t able to observe firsthand what was going on.