July 1, 2024 • 19 mins
In this episode, we take a nostalgic trip back to the summer of 1974, a pivotal time for Brooklyn basketball. Featuring interviews with Albert King, John Salley, World B. Free, and Rick Telander, this episode highlights the unique culture of playground basketball and the characters who made that summer unforgettable. Discover the stories behind Albert King's rise to fame, Fly Williams' playground legend, and Rick Telander's classic book, Heaven is a Playground.
- 02:01 - 06:00: Albert King on the essence of Brooklyn playground basketball
- 06:01 - 12:00: Rick Telander's journey to Brooklyn and the birth of Heaven is a Playground
- 12:01 - 22:00: The legend of Fly Williams with insights from Albert King, John Salley, and World B. Free
- 22:01 - 28:00: Rodney Parker’s role as a connector in Brooklyn basketball and his influence on Jim McMillian
- 28:01 - 34:00: Albert King's basketball family and his rise from Fort Greene to national fame
- 34:01 - 38:00: The impact of Heaven is a Playground and Albert King’s reflections on his legacy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Brooklyn basketball is the best basketball. I was playing basketball
in the seventies in Brooklyn, and whenever you talk about
Brooklyn basketball, it's not just the basketball. You have to
put playground basketball. We might have played in high school,
you might have played in college in Brooklyn, but Brooklyn
was known for Brooklyn playground basketball. There was nothing like it.
(00:25):
You see people line up against the fence, and I
can always remember. I could just visualize it now. I
used to walk in the park. They used to have
a cold cutting fence in the playground. You walk through
the fence and all you hear, yo, al King's here.
It made me feel good to walk into playground basketball,
and playground basketball is Brooklyn basketball.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Albert King, You think his name rang out a bit
on those Brooklyn playgrounds back in the seventies. This was
the day when Brooklyn's playgrounds were a pipeline to the NBA,
but there were also a world that they own. You
could be a legend without ever leaving your block. But
in the summer of seventy four, Albert King's name was
already known all over Basketball's borough. He was getting recruited
(01:10):
by high schools the way most guys get recruited for college.
By the time that day came, he was known all
over the country. See that summer of seventy four was
the same year a guy named Rick Tellen has showed
up at Foster Park in Flatbush with an idea of
writing a book about Brooklyn basketball. Albert King, the fourteen
(01:31):
year old phenom, was at the center of it all,
and when Heaven as a Playground came out a few
years later, it became an instant classic, one of the
best books ever written about basketball. Amichi Darko from the
Flatber Zombies And this week on Basketball's Borough, we're looking
back on the baller, the writer, and all the characters
(01:52):
of that summer of seventy four. We're telling that is
one of the most successful and most honored sports riders
of the last fifty years, riding for Sports Illustrated, ESPN
(02:15):
and the Chicago Sun Times. In the summer seventy four, though,
he was just getting started, an ex college football player,
trying to figure out what was next when he showed
up in Brooklyn. That made he didn't even have a
place to stay.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I popped up and there I am like in Oz,
only I'm in Flatbush, Brooklyn and It wasn't exactly like OZ.
I think it was a New Kirk station. I was
about half a block, maybe a little bit more, I
don't know, two blocks from the park. And as I
got closer, I could see basketballs going through the air.
As I got really close, I could hear the sound
(02:51):
of basketballs dribbling on asphalt. Never leave my mind. This
was a hotbed of basketball. Every day he could go
down to Foster Park and there be games going. There
might be maybe one full court game with really good players,
a lot of half court games. It was just basketball cauldron.
It's like a frying pant of basketball. And at summer.
(03:13):
And you know, this park was pretty cool too. I
find it was a great place to call home base.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
This wasn't Rick's first trip to basketball's burrough. The whole
idea for the book came from a story he had
done for Sports Illustrated the year before. S I asked
him to check out some college stars on their home
turf and see what they were doing for the summer.
So Rick went to Long Island and New Jersey and Rockaway,
(03:38):
and he came to Brooklyn to check out a playground
legend out of Brownsville named Fly Williams, who had just
averaged twenty nine points a game as a freshman at
Austin p Here's how Albert King remembers the fly.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Why Williams to try to put it so you could
imagine if you take doctor j and you took George Gerden,
and you can buying those two together. That was Flyway.
He was one of the smoothest playground legend players I
have ever seen. He could score on anyone, He could
trash talk with anyone. We used to play at Foster
(04:13):
Park and I used to just watch him. I was
thirteen at the time, and they said fly is coming
to play. He just comes down and he's talking trash
and he's just going to the whole. There was no
one for stop Flyway. Every city might have had their legends,
but he's in the top. He's one of the top
in New York City and definitely.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
In Brooklyn before he won four NBA championships, two with
the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons. John Sally graduated Brooklyn's Kanassi
High School. Sally took Brooklyn's basketball to heart, bouncing around
the borrow for the best games he knew. Everyone played everywhere.
It started for him in the seventies, watching those playground
(04:56):
legends like Fly Williams.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
I watched Slyway going against World Be Free. I've seen
the greatest players, I feel, do some of the most
unbelievable things on a really bad junior high school basketball gym.
It was right next to the BRC. It was a
junior high school right or Rockaway Parkway and Linden in
the summertime. They would come in Fly with check it
(05:20):
up from behind the top of the key. World would
come down do the same, and I got to watch,
like I consider a greatness. I've seen a lot of
games in my life that one sticks, that won sticks
because you know, Fly Williams was said to be one
of the greatest players ever. And he decided the state
of the streets as opposed to going into the NBA
(05:42):
so he can make more on the streets. Just that
mentality of a street hustler with so much potential, of
so much talent. I guess most people think go on
to waste. But it didn't go to waste on me
because I learned that if you focused, or whatever you
focused on, is what you can become. I watched World
Be Free play for the Philadelphia seventy six. Person was
(06:02):
a fan because I know somebody from Brooklyn that was there.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
His world be free himself, another Kanassi high school guy,
World could light it up. He averaged thirty points a
game for the Clippers in nineteen eighty and only the
iceman himself, George Gervin, kept World from winning back to
back NBA scoring titles.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Well, Me and Fly went head to head basically. That
was probably when I was in high school, finishing off
high school, probably going to Guildford College in my freshman year.
We used to battle Me and Fly. The Fly is
about sixty six long arm. He had it all left hand,
right hand, dribble in between games, long far three point game.
I mean, he gets you further than the three points.
(06:45):
This guy, he would come to the park or to
the games, he'll get you fifty points and then he'll
walk out.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
You know. He get mad and said, I don't know
what to play them.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
That's the kind of guy he was, though, But far
playing and me and him going at it, we were
that you get yours, I'm getting mine. We both couldn't
stop each other. He was just a fit just to guard.
You couldn't guards. I taught the guys in the NBA
because I played in the NBA here for thirteen years,
and they always asked me who was the toughest guy
that you really had to play against and throughout doing
(07:16):
all your time. And I've played against Law, for Michael Jordan,
down the Magic, down to all these guys I played against,
And I'm telling you, the toughest guy for me, really
the guy was Clyd Williams.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
The guy had it, he got it all at one time.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
People were like what I say, Yeah, look him up,
you would see what I was talking.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
In the end, Fly didn't go much further than Forced
the Park. He never went back to Austin p after
that summer of seventy four, and Steady signed with the
Spirits of Saint Louis in the ABA. Fly fit right
in there. It was a team of crazy characters that
went thirty two point fifty two then somehow beat Doctor
(07:56):
J and the Nets in the ABA playoffs. That was
the only season of pro ball for the Fly, but
that didn't do anything to cut into his legend on
the Brooklyn playgrounds. But even with Fly around, the biggest
personality in Heaven is a playground wasn't even a ballplayer.
It was a guy named Rodney Parker. Here's Rick Tellingder.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
What a character to this day, one of the most
astounding characters I've ever met. He was a ticket scalper
by trade. He was a talent scout by aspirations, and
he was a mentor and role model who were a
lot of kids even though nobody really knew what the
hell he was doing. But he could get kids into college.
(08:41):
He was the rainmaker. He could do that, and he
liked the attention. He had a great personality. He dropped
out a grade school. I believe had a shoeshine stand
up in the Bronx. But the guy probably at an
IQ on a genius level, in my opinion, if he'd
had the right whatever structure, God, he would have been
a super salesman for a Google or something incredible. But
(09:03):
he loved what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Rodney kept everybody connected. He was the god college coaches
came to when they were looking for a player. He
was the god players came to when they were looking
for college. It went back to his days hanging around
the boys' high legends Lenny Wilkins and Connie Hawkins, one
of Rodney's guys was Jim McMillan, who had starred at
(09:26):
Thomas Jefferson High School. That's one of those Brooklyn schools
that was always churning out top end guys like Tony Jackson,
the original net we talked about on last week's ABA episode.
It was Rodney Parker who stared McMillan to the Ivy
League at Columbia, where he won the Haggerty Award three
times as the best college player in the New York area.
(09:49):
For all he did for McMillan, Rodney never asks for
anything in return, even as Jim made the jump to
the NBA. Jim was drafted by the Lakers, where he
averaged nineteen points a game while playing with Jeffrey West
and Wilts Chamberlain on the nineteen seventy two team that
won thirty three straight games and an NBA championship. Ray Haskins,
(10:12):
a championship winning coach at Brooklyn's Alexander Hamilton High and
Long Island University, was at Boys High when McMillan was
starring at Jefferson. Jim McMillan he was a solid assassin.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
He went to Thomas Jefferson High School and He was
brought on the scene by Rodney Parker, and he would
always drag about this guy, Jim McMillan. Jim straight no chaser,
went on to Columbia. You know, they had a great
run at Columbia, you know, really helped put the Ivan
leagues on the map.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Here's World be Free who made it to the league
to play against Jim McMillan. He was a beast.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
He wasn't that tall, but he was a monster when
you talked about jump shots. He was one of those
kind of guys that had one of the best tuppers
in the world back then.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Jim.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
He was tough dude, tough too.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
In the summer seventy four, Rodney Parker was busy trying
to figure out if Fly Williams was going to be
able to go back to college and what he would
do if he couldn't. But he also had a new project,
and that was Albert King. Prep schools from all over
to northeast were trying to get Albert out of Brooklyn.
Here's Rick Tellinder.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
He's fourteen years old, He's six foot six. He's got
talent that you can tell. He could have played right
there in college. There's no question, everybody wanted a piece
of him, everybody, even agents. At age fourteen, of course,
colleges did. I saw recruiting letters. They'd come to see him.
They'd want him to go to this high school or
that one, and the press runner was just incredible. He
(11:42):
was one of, if not the most recruited and known
grade school kid in the country. Just going to high school.
For him to be known anywhere outside of his neighborhood
would be incredible. But people knew about Albert King. If
I had to say one thing about him, he just
wanted at that stage of his life, that age, he
wanted to fit in. He wanted to be with his
(12:02):
palace in a regular school, regular high school, regular neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They just couldn't.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
They wouldn't let him.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Albert didn't come out of nowhere. The Kings were basketball family,
and that summer of seventy four, his older brother Beranad
was about to head off to the University of Tennessee.
The Nets back when they weigh in New Jersey made
Bernard the first player that ever drafted in the NBA
in nineteen seventy seven. He was inducted into the Hall
(12:30):
of Fame in twenty thirteen. Here's Albert King.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Grew up in an area call for Green, right around
where the Barkleys and is at. I say, the old
four Green. It is a little different than it is now,
but the projects are still there. I'm born and raised
in the projects Four Green. We grew up on the
twelfth floor. Five boys, one girl. We had a basketball family.
We all loved to play basketball. Lived on the twelfth floor.
(12:57):
When I was younger, I couldn't go outside to play
out and up I used to watch from the window,
go from window to window watching my brother play on
the playground, and I always said, I'm gonna get down
on that court one day.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
By the time he was fourteen, Albert was known on
every court in Brooklyn. Forster Park wasn't too close to
the Fort Green projects, but Albert's buddy, Winston Karm lived
across the street. Rick Tellinder was spending the summer crashing
on Winston's floor in a sleeping bag. Of course, they
all knew Rodney Parker.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Rodney Parker introduced me to Rick and this was at
Forester Park. One day We're at Forster Park and this
white guy shows up. We were like white guy doing
at Forster Park, and he said that he's I guess
he was gonna write a book. So he used to
follow us around everywhere, not just me, but just a
lot of guys that played, even fly Wayim. He used
(13:50):
to follow us around and he had his camera. This
guy was just taking pictures all the time and writing
stuff down. I spent a lot of time with Rick.
He used to follow me the game as it came over.
I was impressed. Even came to the neighborhood in Poor Green.
I was impressed by that. We used to got to eat.
It was different to have someone that didn't look like
(14:10):
you in the neighborhood and just being normal.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
He was cool.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Even to today, we're still good friends.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Heaven Is a Playground took Albert King's growing fame out
of Brooklyn and spreading nationwide.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
When the book came out, I probably didn't even read
it at the time because I was so shy and
embarrassed that, wow, I'm in a book. I'm in a
book and people throughout the country can see it.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
But now I have it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Probably it said my bookcase somewhere. It's something that made me.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Feel good now.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
I think back then it was something that I probably
just shied away from it. Was a lot of attention,
It was a lot of notoriety. But I say that
looking back at it now, I probably didn't handle it
as well because I was really shying away from it.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
Now I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I love attention now, but growing up, it was a
little different back then. And you have different colleges coming
at you throughout the whole country. It was totally different
perspective that I had at that particular time. I think,
sitting here talking to you, I'm a different person. Everyone
is as they grow older. When I was thirteen, fourteen fifty,
I was a very quiet person, very shy, intervert, really
(15:18):
didn't get out and meet people. I used to love
play basketball, so that was my getaway whenever I got
on the court.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
On the court, Albert was doing just fine. He stayed
in Brooklyn to go to Fort Hamilton, where he scored
two thousand and seventy one career points, a couple baskets
more than another hugely hyped NYC high schooler from a
decade earlier, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. By the time he was
finishing another high school in nineteen seventy seven, Albert was
(15:47):
the top ranked play in the country in the graduating
class that included Magic Johnson. There have only been two
Brooklyn players named the national High school Player of the Year.
One was Pearl Washington, and we're gonna talk a lot
about the Pearl next week. The other was Albert King.
Here's Hall of Famer Chris Mullen, who grew up in
Flatbush and was starting high school at the same time
(16:09):
Albert went off to college.
Speaker 7 (16:11):
I saw Albert play up Saint Thomas aquinas he came
in and I'm figuring what team he played for, maybe
Saint James or something down here in downtown Brooklyn, and
watching him as in eighth or ninth grade was like
watching an NBA player. He was so good at a
young age.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And John Sally he remembers Albert coming to play at Kanassie.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Albert King came in and it was place was packed.
I'm just watching and he came out at our cheerleaders
were tearing for him like it was crazy. I watched,
how you know he's not supposed to dunk on a
laplind come and do something rock a bye baby down
getting duncted. Referee said nothing, and I watched him score
fifty Kanazi squad. My boy, oh May that was it.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
There were plenty of playground legends in high school phenoms
that never quite make it, but that's not Albert's story.
He went to Maryland, where he was named the ACC
Player of the Year in nineteen eighty. Maryland even retired
his number fifty five jersey, and he was named one
of the greatest fifty players in ACC history. He played
(17:21):
six years with the Nets after they drafted him in
the first round in nineteen eighty one, and helped them
get to the playoffs five straight years. Buck Williams, his
teammate at Maryland and with the Nets, remembers the first
time he saw Albert King.
Speaker 8 (17:37):
I was at a University of Maryland now on a visit,
and I walking to the gym with coach left the Brazils,
and this skady kid is on the basketball court. Can't
waiting more like one hundred and eight, one hundred and
ninety and I'm watching this guy in amazement because he's
doing things that I've never seen before in terms of
creativity he was bringing to the game. He were doing
(17:57):
jack knives. He was just so exciting to watch that
day in the gym when I first saw Albert are
the man. If I could just play with this guy
would be phenomenal, And he really is the reason why
I decided to attend the universe of Maryland.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Albert King made it beyond forced to park Fly Williams
did it, Rodney Parker. He was still hustling the hoops
scene when Rick Tellingder came back to revisit it twenty
years later. Rick was looking for another street ball legend,
Fort Green's Buger Smith, but he mostly found another Brooklyn guy,
(18:30):
Charles Jones, who was going from game to game in
the summer between the two years. He led the country
in scoring that lu Rick Tellender didn't know what he
was gonna find when he popped out of that subway
station in the summer of seventy four without much of
a plan. He found a heart of Brooklyn hoops, and
he found friends and an experience that changed his life.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It was hard to explain at the time. People said, Rick,
what are you doing? Looking back on it doesn't seem
it's like any young guy's dream. But back then, and
even for years and years, why did you do this
crazy thing? I have friends to this day from there.
That's almost fifty years ago. We're still palaced. It's a wonderful,
most amazing thing I elady did, and I had no
idea what's going to turn out like that?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
None Coming up next week on BASKETBALLS Burrough Brooklyn Bales
the Big East in the eighties, a new league to
go for college hoops at the front of the revolution.
With two guys from basketballs Borrough Syracuses Pearl Washington and
Saint John's Chris Mullin.
Brooklyn basketball is the best basketball. I was playing basketball
in the seventies in Brooklyn, and whenever you talk about
Brooklyn basketball, it's not just the basketball. You have to
put playground basketball. We might have played in high school,
you might have played in college in Brooklyn, but Brooklyn
was known for Brooklyn playground basketball. There was nothing like it.
(00:25):
You see people line up against the fence, and I
can always remember. I could just visualize it now. I
used to walk in the park. They used to have
a cold cutting fence in the playground. You walk through
the fence and all you hear, yo, al King's here.
It made me feel good to walk into playground basketball,
and playground basketball is Brooklyn basketball.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Albert King, You think his name rang out a bit
on those Brooklyn playgrounds back in the seventies. This was
the day when Brooklyn's playgrounds were a pipeline to the NBA,
but there were also a world that they own. You
could be a legend without ever leaving your block. But
in the summer of seventy four, Albert King's name was
already known all over Basketball's borough. He was getting recruited
(01:10):
by high schools the way most guys get recruited for college.
By the time that day came, he was known all
over the country. See that summer of seventy four was
the same year a guy named Rick Tellen has showed
up at Foster Park in Flatbush with an idea of
writing a book about Brooklyn basketball. Albert King, the fourteen
(01:31):
year old phenom, was at the center of it all,
and when Heaven as a Playground came out a few
years later, it became an instant classic, one of the
best books ever written about basketball. Amichi Darko from the
Flatber Zombies And this week on Basketball's Borough, we're looking
back on the baller, the writer, and all the characters
(01:52):
of that summer of seventy four. We're telling that is
one of the most successful and most honored sports riders
of the last fifty years, riding for Sports Illustrated, ESPN
(02:15):
and the Chicago Sun Times. In the summer seventy four, though,
he was just getting started, an ex college football player,
trying to figure out what was next when he showed
up in Brooklyn. That made he didn't even have a
place to stay.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I popped up and there I am like in Oz,
only I'm in Flatbush, Brooklyn and It wasn't exactly like OZ.
I think it was a New Kirk station. I was
about half a block, maybe a little bit more, I
don't know, two blocks from the park. And as I
got closer, I could see basketballs going through the air.
As I got really close, I could hear the sound
(02:51):
of basketballs dribbling on asphalt. Never leave my mind. This
was a hotbed of basketball. Every day he could go
down to Foster Park and there be games going. There
might be maybe one full court game with really good players,
a lot of half court games. It was just basketball cauldron.
It's like a frying pant of basketball. And at summer.
(03:13):
And you know, this park was pretty cool too. I
find it was a great place to call home base.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
This wasn't Rick's first trip to basketball's burrough. The whole
idea for the book came from a story he had
done for Sports Illustrated the year before. S I asked
him to check out some college stars on their home
turf and see what they were doing for the summer.
So Rick went to Long Island and New Jersey and Rockaway,
(03:38):
and he came to Brooklyn to check out a playground
legend out of Brownsville named Fly Williams, who had just
averaged twenty nine points a game as a freshman at
Austin p Here's how Albert King remembers the fly.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Why Williams to try to put it so you could
imagine if you take doctor j and you took George Gerden,
and you can buying those two together. That was Flyway.
He was one of the smoothest playground legend players I
have ever seen. He could score on anyone, He could
trash talk with anyone. We used to play at Foster
(04:13):
Park and I used to just watch him. I was
thirteen at the time, and they said fly is coming
to play. He just comes down and he's talking trash
and he's just going to the whole. There was no
one for stop Flyway. Every city might have had their legends,
but he's in the top. He's one of the top
in New York City and definitely.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
In Brooklyn before he won four NBA championships, two with
the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons. John Sally graduated Brooklyn's Kanassi
High School. Sally took Brooklyn's basketball to heart, bouncing around
the borrow for the best games he knew. Everyone played everywhere.
It started for him in the seventies, watching those playground
(04:56):
legends like Fly Williams.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
I watched Slyway going against World Be Free. I've seen
the greatest players, I feel, do some of the most
unbelievable things on a really bad junior high school basketball gym.
It was right next to the BRC. It was a
junior high school right or Rockaway Parkway and Linden in
the summertime. They would come in Fly with check it
(05:20):
up from behind the top of the key. World would
come down do the same, and I got to watch,
like I consider a greatness. I've seen a lot of
games in my life that one sticks, that won sticks
because you know, Fly Williams was said to be one
of the greatest players ever. And he decided the state
of the streets as opposed to going into the NBA
(05:42):
so he can make more on the streets. Just that
mentality of a street hustler with so much potential, of
so much talent. I guess most people think go on
to waste. But it didn't go to waste on me
because I learned that if you focused, or whatever you
focused on, is what you can become. I watched World
Be Free play for the Philadelphia seventy six. Person was
(06:02):
a fan because I know somebody from Brooklyn that was there.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
His world be free himself, another Kanassi high school guy,
World could light it up. He averaged thirty points a
game for the Clippers in nineteen eighty and only the
iceman himself, George Gervin, kept World from winning back to
back NBA scoring titles.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Well, Me and Fly went head to head basically. That
was probably when I was in high school, finishing off
high school, probably going to Guildford College in my freshman year.
We used to battle Me and Fly. The Fly is
about sixty six long arm. He had it all left hand,
right hand, dribble in between games, long far three point game.
I mean, he gets you further than the three points.
(06:45):
This guy, he would come to the park or to
the games, he'll get you fifty points and then he'll
walk out.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
You know. He get mad and said, I don't know
what to play them.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
That's the kind of guy he was, though, But far
playing and me and him going at it, we were
that you get yours, I'm getting mine. We both couldn't
stop each other. He was just a fit just to guard.
You couldn't guards. I taught the guys in the NBA
because I played in the NBA here for thirteen years,
and they always asked me who was the toughest guy
that you really had to play against and throughout doing
(07:16):
all your time. And I've played against Law, for Michael Jordan,
down the Magic, down to all these guys I played against,
And I'm telling you, the toughest guy for me, really
the guy was Clyd Williams.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
The guy had it, he got it all at one time.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
People were like what I say, Yeah, look him up,
you would see what I was talking.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
In the end, Fly didn't go much further than Forced
the Park. He never went back to Austin p after
that summer of seventy four, and Steady signed with the
Spirits of Saint Louis in the ABA. Fly fit right
in there. It was a team of crazy characters that
went thirty two point fifty two then somehow beat Doctor
(07:56):
J and the Nets in the ABA playoffs. That was
the only season of pro ball for the Fly, but
that didn't do anything to cut into his legend on
the Brooklyn playgrounds. But even with Fly around, the biggest
personality in Heaven is a playground wasn't even a ballplayer.
It was a guy named Rodney Parker. Here's Rick Tellingder.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
What a character to this day, one of the most
astounding characters I've ever met. He was a ticket scalper
by trade. He was a talent scout by aspirations, and
he was a mentor and role model who were a
lot of kids even though nobody really knew what the
hell he was doing. But he could get kids into college.
(08:41):
He was the rainmaker. He could do that, and he
liked the attention. He had a great personality. He dropped
out a grade school. I believe had a shoeshine stand
up in the Bronx. But the guy probably at an
IQ on a genius level, in my opinion, if he'd
had the right whatever structure, God, he would have been
a super salesman for a Google or something incredible. But
(09:03):
he loved what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Rodney kept everybody connected. He was the god college coaches
came to when they were looking for a player. He
was the god players came to when they were looking
for college. It went back to his days hanging around
the boys' high legends Lenny Wilkins and Connie Hawkins, one
of Rodney's guys was Jim McMillan, who had starred at
(09:26):
Thomas Jefferson High School. That's one of those Brooklyn schools
that was always churning out top end guys like Tony Jackson,
the original net we talked about on last week's ABA episode.
It was Rodney Parker who stared McMillan to the Ivy
League at Columbia, where he won the Haggerty Award three
times as the best college player in the New York area.
(09:49):
For all he did for McMillan, Rodney never asks for
anything in return, even as Jim made the jump to
the NBA. Jim was drafted by the Lakers, where he
averaged nineteen points a game while playing with Jeffrey West
and Wilts Chamberlain on the nineteen seventy two team that
won thirty three straight games and an NBA championship. Ray Haskins,
(10:12):
a championship winning coach at Brooklyn's Alexander Hamilton High and
Long Island University, was at Boys High when McMillan was
starring at Jefferson. Jim McMillan he was a solid assassin.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
He went to Thomas Jefferson High School and He was
brought on the scene by Rodney Parker, and he would
always drag about this guy, Jim McMillan. Jim straight no chaser,
went on to Columbia. You know, they had a great
run at Columbia, you know, really helped put the Ivan
leagues on the map.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Here's World be Free who made it to the league
to play against Jim McMillan. He was a beast.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
He wasn't that tall, but he was a monster when
you talked about jump shots. He was one of those
kind of guys that had one of the best tuppers
in the world back then.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Jim.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
He was tough dude, tough too.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
In the summer seventy four, Rodney Parker was busy trying
to figure out if Fly Williams was going to be
able to go back to college and what he would
do if he couldn't. But he also had a new project,
and that was Albert King. Prep schools from all over
to northeast were trying to get Albert out of Brooklyn.
Here's Rick Tellinder.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
He's fourteen years old, He's six foot six. He's got
talent that you can tell. He could have played right
there in college. There's no question, everybody wanted a piece
of him, everybody, even agents. At age fourteen, of course,
colleges did. I saw recruiting letters. They'd come to see him.
They'd want him to go to this high school or
that one, and the press runner was just incredible. He
(11:42):
was one of, if not the most recruited and known
grade school kid in the country. Just going to high school.
For him to be known anywhere outside of his neighborhood
would be incredible. But people knew about Albert King. If
I had to say one thing about him, he just
wanted at that stage of his life, that age, he
wanted to fit in. He wanted to be with his
(12:02):
palace in a regular school, regular high school, regular neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They just couldn't.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
They wouldn't let him.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Albert didn't come out of nowhere. The Kings were basketball family,
and that summer of seventy four, his older brother Beranad
was about to head off to the University of Tennessee.
The Nets back when they weigh in New Jersey made
Bernard the first player that ever drafted in the NBA
in nineteen seventy seven. He was inducted into the Hall
(12:30):
of Fame in twenty thirteen. Here's Albert King.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Grew up in an area call for Green, right around
where the Barkleys and is at. I say, the old
four Green. It is a little different than it is now,
but the projects are still there. I'm born and raised
in the projects Four Green. We grew up on the
twelfth floor. Five boys, one girl. We had a basketball family.
We all loved to play basketball. Lived on the twelfth floor.
(12:57):
When I was younger, I couldn't go outside to play
out and up I used to watch from the window,
go from window to window watching my brother play on
the playground, and I always said, I'm gonna get down
on that court one day.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
By the time he was fourteen, Albert was known on
every court in Brooklyn. Forster Park wasn't too close to
the Fort Green projects, but Albert's buddy, Winston Karm lived
across the street. Rick Tellinder was spending the summer crashing
on Winston's floor in a sleeping bag. Of course, they
all knew Rodney Parker.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Rodney Parker introduced me to Rick and this was at
Forester Park. One day We're at Forster Park and this
white guy shows up. We were like white guy doing
at Forster Park, and he said that he's I guess
he was gonna write a book. So he used to
follow us around everywhere, not just me, but just a
lot of guys that played, even fly Wayim. He used
(13:50):
to follow us around and he had his camera. This
guy was just taking pictures all the time and writing
stuff down. I spent a lot of time with Rick.
He used to follow me the game as it came over.
I was impressed. Even came to the neighborhood in Poor Green.
I was impressed by that. We used to got to eat.
It was different to have someone that didn't look like
(14:10):
you in the neighborhood and just being normal.
Speaker 7 (14:13):
He was cool.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Even to today, we're still good friends.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Heaven Is a Playground took Albert King's growing fame out
of Brooklyn and spreading nationwide.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
When the book came out, I probably didn't even read
it at the time because I was so shy and
embarrassed that, wow, I'm in a book. I'm in a
book and people throughout the country can see it.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
But now I have it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Probably it said my bookcase somewhere. It's something that made me.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Feel good now.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
I think back then it was something that I probably
just shied away from it. Was a lot of attention,
It was a lot of notoriety. But I say that
looking back at it now, I probably didn't handle it
as well because I was really shying away from it.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
Now I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
I love attention now, but growing up, it was a
little different back then. And you have different colleges coming
at you throughout the whole country. It was totally different
perspective that I had at that particular time. I think,
sitting here talking to you, I'm a different person. Everyone
is as they grow older. When I was thirteen, fourteen fifty,
I was a very quiet person, very shy, intervert, really
(15:18):
didn't get out and meet people. I used to love
play basketball, so that was my getaway whenever I got
on the court.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
On the court, Albert was doing just fine. He stayed
in Brooklyn to go to Fort Hamilton, where he scored
two thousand and seventy one career points, a couple baskets
more than another hugely hyped NYC high schooler from a
decade earlier, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. By the time he was
finishing another high school in nineteen seventy seven, Albert was
(15:47):
the top ranked play in the country in the graduating
class that included Magic Johnson. There have only been two
Brooklyn players named the national High school Player of the Year.
One was Pearl Washington, and we're gonna talk a lot
about the Pearl next week. The other was Albert King.
Here's Hall of Famer Chris Mullen, who grew up in
Flatbush and was starting high school at the same time
(16:09):
Albert went off to college.
Speaker 7 (16:11):
I saw Albert play up Saint Thomas aquinas he came
in and I'm figuring what team he played for, maybe
Saint James or something down here in downtown Brooklyn, and
watching him as in eighth or ninth grade was like
watching an NBA player. He was so good at a
young age.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And John Sally he remembers Albert coming to play at Kanassie.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Albert King came in and it was place was packed.
I'm just watching and he came out at our cheerleaders
were tearing for him like it was crazy. I watched,
how you know he's not supposed to dunk on a
laplind come and do something rock a bye baby down
getting duncted. Referee said nothing, and I watched him score
fifty Kanazi squad. My boy, oh May that was it.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
There were plenty of playground legends in high school phenoms
that never quite make it, but that's not Albert's story.
He went to Maryland, where he was named the ACC
Player of the Year in nineteen eighty. Maryland even retired
his number fifty five jersey, and he was named one
of the greatest fifty players in ACC history. He played
(17:21):
six years with the Nets after they drafted him in
the first round in nineteen eighty one, and helped them
get to the playoffs five straight years. Buck Williams, his
teammate at Maryland and with the Nets, remembers the first
time he saw Albert King.
Speaker 8 (17:37):
I was at a University of Maryland now on a visit,
and I walking to the gym with coach left the Brazils,
and this skady kid is on the basketball court. Can't
waiting more like one hundred and eight, one hundred and
ninety and I'm watching this guy in amazement because he's
doing things that I've never seen before in terms of
creativity he was bringing to the game. He were doing
(17:57):
jack knives. He was just so exciting to watch that
day in the gym when I first saw Albert are
the man. If I could just play with this guy
would be phenomenal, And he really is the reason why
I decided to attend the universe of Maryland.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Albert King made it beyond forced to park Fly Williams
did it, Rodney Parker. He was still hustling the hoops
scene when Rick Tellingder came back to revisit it twenty
years later. Rick was looking for another street ball legend,
Fort Green's Buger Smith, but he mostly found another Brooklyn guy,
(18:30):
Charles Jones, who was going from game to game in
the summer between the two years. He led the country
in scoring that lu Rick Tellender didn't know what he
was gonna find when he popped out of that subway
station in the summer of seventy four without much of
a plan. He found a heart of Brooklyn hoops, and
he found friends and an experience that changed his life.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It was hard to explain at the time. People said, Rick,
what are you doing? Looking back on it doesn't seem
it's like any young guy's dream. But back then, and
even for years and years, why did you do this
crazy thing? I have friends to this day from there.
That's almost fifty years ago. We're still palaced. It's a wonderful,
most amazing thing I elady did, and I had no
idea what's going to turn out like that?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
None Coming up next week on BASKETBALLS Burrough Brooklyn Bales
the Big East in the eighties, a new league to
go for college hoops at the front of the revolution.
With two guys from basketballs Borrough Syracuses Pearl Washington and
Saint John's Chris Mullin.
Host
Meechy Darko
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