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Smoke billowed out of tenement-building windows on East 101st Street. An up-stretched fire ladder reached the sixth floor. On the asphalt basketball court below, four kids, oblivious to it all, competed in a feverish game of two-on-two. That moment, frozen in a photo, conveys a lot about East Harlem in the 1970s: Buildings blazed and …
Smoke billowed out of tenement-building windows on East 101st Street. An up-stretched fire ladder reached the sixth floor. On the asphalt basketball court below, four kids, oblivious to it all, competed in a feverish game of two-on-two. That moment, frozen in a photo, conveys a lot about East Harlem in the 1970s: Buildings blazed and streetball raged.
Day to day on the asphalt, there were no refs, criminals lurked in the shadows (often providing grease for shorts and sneakers) and creative showboating was de rigueur. The setting served as a breeding ground for world-class NBA stars. They included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor), Julius “Dr. J” Erving and Metta World Peace (then known as Ron Artest). Former Knicks great Walt “Clyde” Frazier, who grew up in Atlanta, took his talent to at least one of New York’s wildly competitive outdoor courts while a pro. He likened the experience to “being a gunslinger in the Old West.”
“[Frazier] said that when he played those games, he didn’t know what he’d be in for,” Vincent Mallozzi, author of “Asphalt Gods,” told The Post. “There was pushing, trash-talking, taking four steps to the rim. Everyone looked the other way as long as the dunk was good.”
NYC’s hard-edged, sharp-elbowed iteration of basketball, as practiced on courts in schoolyards, parks and projects, is celebrated in “City/Game: Basketball in New York.” It’s an exhibit at the recently reopened Museum of the City of New York as well as the title of an accompanying book.
As the book and exhibit make clear, splashy moves created on NYC courts still inform the NBA. “LeBron [James], at this year’s All-Star Game, dribbled down the court in a fast break and went behind his back [with the ball], like he was passing to his trailer,” said Bobbito Garcia, co-director of the New York basketball documentary “Doin’ it in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC.”
“The defender went for the trailer and LeBron dunked it. Everybody went crazy. But I saw that move [on a playground court] in 1981. And it was probably done by somebody else here in the ’60s. That is what New York presents.”
Like most great things in life, New York’s scrappy basketball scene rose organically. The game had been invented by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. By the turn of the 20th century, hoops had spread east. This migration coincided with a push for parks that were designed to provide refuge for the city’s exploding population of newcomers.
Outdoor basketball courts seemed like a no-brainer. But there was a catch. Due to limited space, said William Gibbons, basketball historian and assistant professor at City College of New York, “the courts were small. Playing on them, you had to cut and pass and move a lot.” From the start, he added, “New York basketball was constant motion and freestyle.”
Inconsistent conditions added to the improvised nature of it all. “The rim, for example, is not always 10 feet [above the ground],” said Garcia. “It can be 9 and ¾ on one end of the court and 11 feet on the other because the asphalt is unlevel to allow for draining. Every court is a new experience.”
Joe Lapchick, Knicks training camp, 1948.
Kenneth Eide Museum of the City of New York
109th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, August 1968.
Katrina Thomas Courtesy New York City Parks Photo Archive
West 4th Street, 1996.
Doug Lynn Courtesy New York City Parks Photo Archive
Ballplayer practicing as the sun goes down at a schoolyard on 135th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues, Harlem, 2004.
Bobbito Garcia
Jay from Above, 2010.
Museum of the City of New York Exhibit
In the 1950s, the former NBA pro Holcombe Rucker brought organized basketball leagues to a park on West 155th Street (since named Holcombe Rucker Park, home of the Rucker Tournament). Harlem brimmed with local basketball talent and the tournaments were designed to keep kids on the straight and narrow: “Either you got in trouble or you played basketball,” said Gibbons.
Some people, of course, managed to do both. Among the best, if most misguided, players to soar across the urban asphalt were Richard “Pee Wee” Kirkland (he participated in jewel thefts, according to Mallozzi), Earl “the Goat” Manigault (a heroin habit landed him in jail, but weeks after his death, the city named a group of West 99th Street basketball courts in his memory) and the legendary Joe “the Destroyer” Hammond. He famously scored 50 points against Dr. J in the 1971 Rucker Park championship.
Despite the fact that Hammond never played high-school ball, much less college, scouts with the Los Angeles Lakers were impressed by his raw talent. For a trip east to take on the Knicks, Lakers management made the unusual move of sending its team early and renting the gym at Pace University so the Destroyer could try out.
Coaches matched Hammond in a one-on-one showdown against Lakers shooting-guard and future Knicks coach Pat Riley. The latter got so frustrated, said Mallozzi, “that he threw Joe to the ground.” Lakers brass offered Hammond a $50,000 contract, and he did the unthinkable: He passed. Years later, he told Mallozzi, “They didn’t understand how a poor kid from Harlem was turning them down. What they couldn’t have known was that I had more money than that in a pillowcase on my bed.”
Soon after, Joe “the Destroyer” Hammond (who also spurned an offer from the Nets) was busted for dealing cocaine. “I think he was scared to leave his environment,” said Mallozzi. “And I think he regrets it. Joe said to me, ‘When I look at what I turned down in terms of professional basketball, I was just another knucklehead.’ ”
Some playground legends do graduate to the NBA. Other times, it’s the pros who hit the asphalt for a blast of adrenaline.
In 2011, NBA stars Kevin Durant and Michael Beasley made surprise appearances at The Bronx’s Dyckman Park — a streetball hot zone, along with places such as Soul in the Hole in Brooklyn, Mullaly Park near Yankee Stadium and the LeFrak City courts in Queens — where they made three-pointers as surely as lesser players hit layups.
Over the years, Rucker Park has also attracted marquee-worthy names. Although Stephon Marbury, Willis Reed and Allen Iverson have all showed up to play there — and the future Abdul-Jabbar was once called out of the stands to join a team that found itself a man short — the most electrified buzz of all was generated in 2002 when the late Kobe Bryant rolled in.
At the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibit, footage can be viewed that captures the NBA great making buckets while being covered by all five opposing players.
Mallozzi, who was there that day, remembers it best for Bryant’s initial flub: “He took his first shot and missed everything. But in 60 seconds, he got acclimated. Then he hit every shot as if he had been playing there all his life.”
This past July, after the coronavirus pandemic simmered down and public basketball courts reopened, a lesser-known pro by the name of Roman “da Gift” Perez laced up his Jordan XXXIVs and hit the asphalt. “I couldn’t wait to get back out there,” he told The Post. “Without basketball, it would have been an empty summer for all hoopers in the city.”
He would know. Back in 2009, after struggling through high school and a couple years of college, Perez found himself doing the thing he loved best: playing basketball at Rodney Park, near where he grew up in Williamsburg. That was when his fortunes changed. “I led the league in scoring, with 28 points per game,” he said. “A scout from the Dominican Republic saw me, and he recruited me to play there.”
Since then, Perez, now 34 and a 6-foot-tall point guard, has been plying his trade in places like France, Spain and Russia. But every summer he comes home for streetball in NYC. “Play on an organized team and you have to follow the instructions of your coach,” said Perez, who gave back to the community this summer by personally supplying and hanging 113 nets on 51 of the city’s reactivated courts. “In the park, I have freedom and creativity. I perfect moves — like faking a shot with the ball under my legs — and there are no refs. So nobody will call me for ball carrying.”
But sometimes the no-rules atmosphere can bring on the kind of heat that even a ref wouldn’t want to get in the middle of. “I walked into Wingate Park [in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn] for a ghetto tournament called Dunkers Delight,” Perez said, explaining that each dunk was worth three points. “I can’t dunk, but I was hitting a lot of threes. I was the only Spanish guy there and a guy in the stands said, ‘You scored again, No. 4? You score again, and I’m gonna pop you.’ ”
Perez told The Post that he handled the threat in stride and later found out that the loudmouth was just talking big. “Stuff like that, it toughens you mentally and physically,” he said. “It takes balls to play in New York, and it’ll prep me for playing around the world this fall. The crowd will be yelling and cursing and trying to get me off focus. I’ll be ready for ’em.”
