June 3, 2024 • 18 mins
In our premiere episode, we celebrate the legends who laid the foundation of Brooklyn Basketball. Featuring interviews with basketball greats such as Stephon Marbury, Chris Mullin, and World B. Free, this episode takes you through the playgrounds, high schools, and professional careers that shaped these iconic figures. Discover how the gritty, competitive spirit of Brooklyn basketball not only created stars but also influenced the entire sport. Explore the legacy of legendary teams, the culture of streetball, and the communities that supported these athletes from their humble beginnings to their grand achievements.
- 02:01 - 06:00: Interviews with Ray Haskins, World B. Free, and Stephon Marbury
- 06:01 - 10:00: Discussion on iconic Brooklyn playgrounds and high schools featuring Larry Brown and Albert King
- 10:01 - 14:00: The cultural impact of Brooklyn basketball with insights from Lenny Wilkens and Chris Mullin
- 14:01 - 18:00: Tales of streetball legends and playground heroes narrated by John Salley and Rod Strickland
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Brooklyn basketball. That's where it all began for a lot
of people.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Brooklyn basketball, that means some of the best ever. When
you talk about Brooklyn, talking about basketball, talking about legends
of the game.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You think about all of the deaferent great players that
come from Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
You know, you got so many.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
People from Lenny brook As, Connie Hawkins, Albert.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
King, not only Albert King, but Art King, but Odd
King is one of my all time favorites.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
Lindo Blackman, Pearl Washington, Fly Williams, John Sally, Sidon Green,
Vinnie Johnson, the Jumping Kangaroo, which is in Billy Cunningham,
Roderick Brown, had Boogers Smith, We'll all be free, Hebert
Steve Descent, Mark Jackson, Chris Mullett.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I had left Chris Weller out. How could I leave
Molly out? Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:02):
There were so many great coaches and there were so
many great teams, and you know, you'd meet somebody and
then all of a sudden they'd start talking about Erasmus
and Billy Cunningham and County of Hawkins. I mean, the
history of Brooklyn basketball was incredible, and that tradition still
carries on. I mean there's been so many great players
coming out of Brooklyn, but Brooklyn basketball, to me was excellence.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
That's a pretty good list. All stars, Olympians, NBA champions,
Paul of Famous, like Kanasi's World Be Free said, legends,
some of the best to ever do it. And that's
just the start of the story. We've got a lot
more coming up on our new podcast series giving you
(01:58):
the truth about basketball Burrough Brooklyn, New York. This is
Michie Darko from the Flat of Zombies, and I'm gonna
be your God to all of them. The attitude, the places,
the teams, and most importantly the people, the ones who
went out and did it ten years ago or twenty
(02:20):
or fifty, who is still talking about to this day.
We're going to tell you some stories about the pioneers,
Bill Brooklyn's foundation and the ballers who came behind them
to take it to New Heights, the legendary high school
dynasties at Boys High in Lincoln and their rivals like Jefferson,
Erasmus Hall, and more. You know about the ABA, the
(02:44):
renegade basketball league that gave us the red, white and
Blue ball and the three point line. Did you know
it was Brooklyn ballers like Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown,
who were some of the Leags's first biggest stars when
the ABA gave them a second chance. Or how about
another league that changed the game, the Big East, when
a bunch of Northeast schools got together, they turned college
(03:06):
basketball upside down, with Brooklyn's Chris Mullen and Pearl Washington
leading the revolution. Brooklyn gave the NBA some of the
best coaches of all time, and now some of the
best players in the world called Brooklyn their home court
right hand Barclay Center at Flatbush in Atlantic. But we
got to start talking about what makes Brooklyn basketball its
(03:28):
own thing. That's the playground. When they took doctor Nasmith's
game outside, they made it their own. That's the Brooklyn
game that Rick Tellon have found when he spent the
summer hanging around Flatbush and ended up writing one of
the best books ever written about Who's Heaven is a playground?
Speaker 7 (03:46):
To me, Brooklyn is Sarler Street basketball. Well, it starts
with New York City, a city of stone, asphalt, steel,
not a lot of open spaces or some beautiful parks.
But when they designed New York, I don't know who
it is. It's one of a historical fact. I think
there's more little parks in New York than any other city.
They're everywhere, small parks, postage, snap size. You can play
(04:08):
basketball anywhere. You need a rim, backboard, asphalt, a pole, shoes,
and you know sorthy to play with.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
One of the players that tell them to found at
Foster Park was Albert King, a fourteen year old phenom
who later plays six seasons for the Nets.
Speaker 8 (04:26):
Brooklyn basketball is the best basketball. 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.
(04:47):
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 a 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 9 (05:09):
The parks were popular. We played a lot of games
on the playground Saturday. Fans would stand outside and watch
the kids play. So it was popular. It wasn't just
in gyms. We played in some gyms, but during the
summer the game was outside and everybody came to the playgrounds.
The playgrounds was a big thing.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That was Lenny Wilkins, the man who once said I
learned my basketball on the playgrounds of Brooklyn.
Speaker 9 (05:37):
The most notable court in Brooklyn at the time was
Madison Street Park. That was a huge playground. Everyone gravitated there,
and then later Kingston Park because the hoops were pretty
good there, and then the Brevot Houses. That park there
all of a sudden became huge Reese Park. We used
(05:58):
to go out to res Speech on the weekends on Sundays,
and they had basketball courts there, so other than swimming,
we would be on the courts. It was just a
wonderful time.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Billy Cunningham won NBA titles as a player with Wilt
Chamberlain and as a coach with Doctor.
Speaker 10 (06:15):
Cham The game at that time was three on three,
and the difference I know from Philadelphia and New York
is that if you scored in three on three, you
kept the ball, whereas in Philadelphia and in other cities,
in many cases you rotated. If you scored that you
would give the ball to the other group. I think
(06:35):
it made you a tougher player.
Speaker 11 (06:38):
In some ways because you knew if the team just
kept scaring, they were just going to beat your tail
and your net weren't going to have a chance to
come back, so you had to maybe played a little
more physical. Maybe the intensity was a little higher, but
it was great.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Billy c played in North Carolina with another guy born
in Brooklyn, Hall of Fame coach Larry.
Speaker 12 (07:01):
There was always three on three. If you lost, you
might sit for hours. If you won, you had a
chance to stay on the court. You never took a
bad shot. If you took a bad shot, somebody might
attack you. But it was a great way to learn.
The players were the kind of people that wanted to
help young guys. I took advantage of that. I went
(07:22):
all over, but my cousin ran the Bronswell Boys Club,
so on weekends I got to go out there at
an early age and realized there are a lot of
better players than I was.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Bronswell Boys Club at the.
Speaker 12 (07:34):
Time, guys from wind Gate and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
Places like that were frequently there, so I got to
play against guys that I normally wouldn't have played at,
you know, on my playground. It was a learning experience.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Chris Mullen went from Flatbush to the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 13 (07:55):
Growing up, there was always a place to go play
and we have video game. We weren't off all. We
were going around trying to find the best competition. And
back then you had to earn your respect on a
daily basis. Just because you had a good game on well,
a good day at the park on Monday, I had
nothing to do with it was gonna happen on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
You gotta do it again. That kind of.
Speaker 13 (08:14):
Built in competitive spirit, the fact that you had to
prove yourself every day, and to a degree I wouldn't
say pressure, but the fact that you had a witness
day on the court. Laura went to be invited back
to play. So that waking up and going to perform
on a daily basis thought looking back, it was something
that really benefited me.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Later on in life. World be Free played thirteen years
in the NBA, an average thirty a game with the Clippers.
In nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
When I was coming up, I watched the older guys
you know, out there all the courts and beating each
other half to death. I sat on the sidelines with
my basketball that didn't have any grip, was for the hood,
so I didn't really have a new basketball. But by
the time they picked me to get into their games,
I was a little older, but I watched the levels
at junior high school and just wanted to be on
(09:04):
their court. Now, I said to myself, if I get
an opportunity to be with these guys, just get an
opportunity to play with them, even if it's just one game.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Because if you knew the game.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Fact there were those guys, you won't get on until
the next day. So they took the game very, very serious.
And I saw how they took the game serious like that,
and I wanted to be a part of that.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And Billy Cunningham.
Speaker 10 (09:24):
Playing at school yards and it's Wendy little Chili. You
wanted to get as close to the basket as you
possibly could, so you found ways to drive to the basket,
many times running into a pole, which I can say
that I had the opportunity to do a couple of
times to knock myself out. That's Brooklyn basketball, I think
you know the hard nose, taking the ball to the basket.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
This was the game that they grew, the Brooklyn game.
And what's on the line the chance to keep playing,
and what's bigger than that. So you got to play
smart and you gotta play tough. Don't lose your court
just because you wasn't ready to get after it. Omar
Cook knows it. He just finished up a twenty year
(10:06):
pro career.
Speaker 10 (10:08):
Toughness swider Brooklyn. We have a certain way we walk,
a certain way we talk. You know, Brooklyn basketball player,
Brooklyn person from just kind of looking at him.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Brooklyn native Glenn Breker was the head coach at Saint
Francis for thirteen years.
Speaker 14 (10:24):
I think there's a certain grid to it, a certain
tough list. I think it has to do with the
way we grew up back in the day. You know,
you basically well let out in the street at a
young age and you had to figure things out for yourself.
People didn't coddle you. You know, you had to learn
life lessons at a young age, and I think that
prepared you to participate in sports. And I think that's why,
(10:47):
you know, Brooklyn players are known to be tough and competitive.
I know in this day and age, guys exchanged.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Jerseys after the game.
Speaker 14 (10:55):
That wasn't going on back in the eighties, so you're
more likely to have a brawl. But not that was good,
but that's just the way it was back then. We
played in the park a lot, We played in open gyms.
There were night centers available to us where we could
go and play at night during the week that you
really don't.
Speaker 10 (11:12):
See much today.
Speaker 14 (11:13):
And you know, it developed a certain competitiveness. If you
went to the park on a Saturday, Sunday afternoon or
late morning and you lost, there might be fifty people
in the park, so you may not play for a while,
so you had to really fight for what you what
you wanted. There are a lot of arguments, oh you know,
and you knew if you lost, you may not get
(11:33):
off for a bit. So it kind of built a
certain competitiveness to you.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And that made everyone who they were. Rod Strickland may
be from the Bronx with that. Former NBA point guards
saw that Brooklyn style of close.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
What stood out playing against Brooklyn players or probably chuffles.
You always had to be almost a big fight. You
have a very brestler style, very confident, very still when
he was up against Brooklyn team, you know he was
in for a flight.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Could it be literally? John Sally won four NBA championships,
including two with the Bad Boy Pistons.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
Yeah, it's very aggressive. I'm gonna say it's it's bully basketball.
It served me so well in the NBA that you know,
dunk car, you get out of the park mentality.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Here's Lenny Wilkins.
Speaker 9 (12:27):
It was physical, but also guys prided themselves on making
great passes, on being able to penetrate to the basket,
find the open man. We didn't come down the court
and just chucked the ball up from the three point line,
because that wasn't what the game was. Then there was penetration.
It was hitting the man in the low post, finding
the open guy, fast breaks, stuff like that. And I
(12:50):
thought it was exciting. I mean, I liked it. I
liked the quickness of the game, the physicalness of the game.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Mike Boynton, former head coach at Oklahoma State.
Speaker 15 (13:00):
We played all We played all the time. I mean
we just played basketball. We played during launch at school,
we played after school. When this is not talking about
organized like basketball practice. We just hooked. And then the
summertime we did the same thing. Basketball was just everything
for us. We played until we got the five oh five.
If there was two guys, you played one on one.
(13:23):
If there was four guys, you played two and two.
Whoever showed up the next time you got the even number,
you played that many guys versus that many guys.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
They built legends in those courtyards the way legends are
supposed to be built by word of mouth, tales of
extraordinary feats, the condat de fied reality, Nerland terant At
Nanny Goat Park, Chink Gains dunking on Wilt Chamberlain, Jackie
Jackson grabbing change off the top of the backboard. Was
(13:51):
there a little extra to, some exaggeration, some embellishment. Sure,
that's okay, they say, when the legend becomes fat print
the legend. That's Brooklyn basketball. That's what Rick telling the
found in the summer, forced to Park with Albert King
and Fly Williams.
Speaker 7 (14:10):
Nobody's documenting anything, So it's like urban legend braves sitting
around the campfire at night telling stories. That's almost what
I saw. They are what I heard stories about So
and so did this man you made a shot Bible
twenty his legs, spun around and made a shot from
forty feet falling out of bounds, you know, and they're like, oh,
oh man, something dunk from ten feet beyond the free
(14:32):
throw life. They were epic American legend. Might think King
of the River, Paul Bunyan type stories, but they have
to do it basketball, which was fabulous.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Jack Armstrong has been broadcast in Toronto rapped his games
for twenty five years, and those are the stories he
grew up on.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
It's there every day every school yard you go play.
Is this guy that was hey, this guy was a
great player at Lincoln High School. This guy was really
good player at Erasmus. You meet an old guy and say, oh, yeah,
you know, I play with Doug Bow at Eraspez Hey,
Billy Cunningham Miss, all the different legendary guys Connie hawkinsis
or Lenny Wilkins. This it's a never ending thing. So
(15:13):
it's there all the time, whether it be from the
guys you're playing with or against, the guys that are
older that you're looking up to playing. Are your coaches,
people that come to the games, the people that run
the League's just there. It's all the time. It's a
never ending thing. I loved it.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I loved it.
Speaker 16 (15:35):
You looking at neighborhood heroes, looking at heroes, and some
guys dress in a bass neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
That's Charles Jones, who let the country and score in
two straight years. That ally you. During the summers, he
teamed up with the street ball legend Brother Smith.
Speaker 16 (15:52):
There was so many tournaments. People would always joke about
me showing up at halftime, but I would get to
halftime at because I was trying to go play every
but somebody asked me to play, and I had love
for my show up and sometimes that forced me to
get to certain places late. Some people thought it was
my ego, but you know it was tough. It's tough
(16:13):
riding a bike or trying to get in a cab,
running from place to place to place. You get out
and play before you know what. Nobody to play four
or five.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Legitimate games in the day.
Speaker 16 (16:22):
So the whole you had the tournament in Marsy Marshon
Houses where jay Z is from. You had Kingston Park
and you leave there. You had Duncan's Delight, you had
Howard Houses, had a tournament. Greway, you had a tournament.
Then eventually it came with Caton Park, Tillery Park, everywhere
(16:42):
you went. There were crowds, there were people. I'm watching
really great basketball and I'm watching how many people are there?
You know, they never disappointed. They just never disappointed. Probably
for me is everything people say, like where you're from.
I said, I'm from Brooklyn. I said, heavy on the Brooklyn,
Heavy of Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Let's go back to Jack Armstrong and let him wrap
it up.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
What you see is what you get a lot of
times of Brooklyn people. There's no agenda. It's pretty straightforward.
People are real, they're authentic, and I like that. It's
always been something. But it's the same thing as basketball.
There's a there's an element of soul and passion and
love that goes into it. There's not a lot of
(17:26):
places around that have that. The other thing, too is
I look at my life now. I mean my best friends,
A lot of guys I hung out with playing basketball
and baseball with in Brooklyn. These guys are all my
buddy since I was seven years old. And what brought
us together that orange ball. So to me, that's the journey,
(17:47):
that's the celebration, and that's Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Coming up next week on Basketball's Burrow the pioneers from
the Black Fives at the start of the twentieth century
to a college powerhouse at Long Island University at the
dawn of the NBA Brooklyn Talent Forge Basketballs Foundation
Brooklyn basketball. That's where it all began for a lot
of people.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Brooklyn basketball, that means some of the best ever. When
you talk about Brooklyn, talking about basketball, talking about legends
of the game.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You think about all of the deaferent great players that
come from Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
You know, you got so many.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
People from Lenny brook As, Connie Hawkins, Albert.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
King, not only Albert King, but Art King, but Odd
King is one of my all time favorites.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
Lindo Blackman, Pearl Washington, Fly Williams, John Sally, Sidon Green,
Vinnie Johnson, the Jumping Kangaroo, which is in Billy Cunningham,
Roderick Brown, had Boogers Smith, We'll all be free, Hebert
Steve Descent, Mark Jackson, Chris Mullett.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I had left Chris Weller out. How could I leave
Molly out? Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:02):
There were so many great coaches and there were so
many great teams, and you know, you'd meet somebody and
then all of a sudden they'd start talking about Erasmus
and Billy Cunningham and County of Hawkins. I mean, the
history of Brooklyn basketball was incredible, and that tradition still
carries on. I mean there's been so many great players
coming out of Brooklyn, but Brooklyn basketball, to me was excellence.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
That's a pretty good list. All stars, Olympians, NBA champions,
Paul of Famous, like Kanasi's World Be Free said, legends,
some of the best to ever do it. And that's
just the start of the story. We've got a lot
more coming up on our new podcast series giving you
(01:58):
the truth about basketball Burrough Brooklyn, New York. This is
Michie Darko from the Flat of Zombies, and I'm gonna
be your God to all of them. The attitude, the places,
the teams, and most importantly the people, the ones who
went out and did it ten years ago or twenty
(02:20):
or fifty, who is still talking about to this day.
We're going to tell you some stories about the pioneers,
Bill Brooklyn's foundation and the ballers who came behind them
to take it to New Heights, the legendary high school
dynasties at Boys High in Lincoln and their rivals like Jefferson,
Erasmus Hall, and more. You know about the ABA, the
(02:44):
renegade basketball league that gave us the red, white and
Blue ball and the three point line. Did you know
it was Brooklyn ballers like Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown,
who were some of the Leags's first biggest stars when
the ABA gave them a second chance. Or how about
another league that changed the game, the Big East, when
a bunch of Northeast schools got together, they turned college
(03:06):
basketball upside down, with Brooklyn's Chris Mullen and Pearl Washington
leading the revolution. Brooklyn gave the NBA some of the
best coaches of all time, and now some of the
best players in the world called Brooklyn their home court
right hand Barclay Center at Flatbush in Atlantic. But we
got to start talking about what makes Brooklyn basketball its
(03:28):
own thing. That's the playground. When they took doctor Nasmith's
game outside, they made it their own. That's the Brooklyn
game that Rick Tellon have found when he spent the
summer hanging around Flatbush and ended up writing one of
the best books ever written about Who's Heaven is a playground?
Speaker 7 (03:46):
To me, Brooklyn is Sarler Street basketball. Well, it starts
with New York City, a city of stone, asphalt, steel,
not a lot of open spaces or some beautiful parks.
But when they designed New York, I don't know who
it is. It's one of a historical fact. I think
there's more little parks in New York than any other city.
They're everywhere, small parks, postage, snap size. You can play
(04:08):
basketball anywhere. You need a rim, backboard, asphalt, a pole, shoes,
and you know sorthy to play with.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
One of the players that tell them to found at
Foster Park was Albert King, a fourteen year old phenom
who later plays six seasons for the Nets.
Speaker 8 (04:26):
Brooklyn basketball is the best basketball. 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.
(04:47):
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 a 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 9 (05:09):
The parks were popular. We played a lot of games
on the playground Saturday. Fans would stand outside and watch
the kids play. So it was popular. It wasn't just
in gyms. We played in some gyms, but during the
summer the game was outside and everybody came to the playgrounds.
The playgrounds was a big thing.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
That was Lenny Wilkins, the man who once said I
learned my basketball on the playgrounds of Brooklyn.
Speaker 9 (05:37):
The most notable court in Brooklyn at the time was
Madison Street Park. That was a huge playground. Everyone gravitated there,
and then later Kingston Park because the hoops were pretty
good there, and then the Brevot Houses. That park there
all of a sudden became huge Reese Park. We used
(05:58):
to go out to res Speech on the weekends on Sundays,
and they had basketball courts there, so other than swimming,
we would be on the courts. It was just a
wonderful time.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Billy Cunningham won NBA titles as a player with Wilt
Chamberlain and as a coach with Doctor.
Speaker 10 (06:15):
Cham The game at that time was three on three,
and the difference I know from Philadelphia and New York
is that if you scored in three on three, you
kept the ball, whereas in Philadelphia and in other cities,
in many cases you rotated. If you scored that you
would give the ball to the other group. I think
(06:35):
it made you a tougher player.
Speaker 11 (06:38):
In some ways because you knew if the team just
kept scaring, they were just going to beat your tail
and your net weren't going to have a chance to
come back, so you had to maybe played a little
more physical. Maybe the intensity was a little higher, but
it was great.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Billy c played in North Carolina with another guy born
in Brooklyn, Hall of Fame coach Larry.
Speaker 12 (07:01):
There was always three on three. If you lost, you
might sit for hours. If you won, you had a
chance to stay on the court. You never took a
bad shot. If you took a bad shot, somebody might
attack you. But it was a great way to learn.
The players were the kind of people that wanted to
help young guys. I took advantage of that. I went
(07:22):
all over, but my cousin ran the Bronswell Boys Club,
so on weekends I got to go out there at
an early age and realized there are a lot of
better players than I was.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Bronswell Boys Club at the.
Speaker 12 (07:34):
Time, guys from wind Gate and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
Places like that were frequently there, so I got to
play against guys that I normally wouldn't have played at,
you know, on my playground. It was a learning experience.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Chris Mullen went from Flatbush to the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 13 (07:55):
Growing up, there was always a place to go play
and we have video game. We weren't off all. We
were going around trying to find the best competition. And
back then you had to earn your respect on a
daily basis. Just because you had a good game on well,
a good day at the park on Monday, I had
nothing to do with it was gonna happen on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
You gotta do it again. That kind of.
Speaker 13 (08:14):
Built in competitive spirit, the fact that you had to
prove yourself every day, and to a degree I wouldn't
say pressure, but the fact that you had a witness
day on the court. Laura went to be invited back
to play. So that waking up and going to perform
on a daily basis thought looking back, it was something
that really benefited me.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Later on in life. World be Free played thirteen years
in the NBA, an average thirty a game with the Clippers.
In nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
When I was coming up, I watched the older guys
you know, out there all the courts and beating each
other half to death. I sat on the sidelines with
my basketball that didn't have any grip, was for the hood,
so I didn't really have a new basketball. But by
the time they picked me to get into their games,
I was a little older, but I watched the levels
at junior high school and just wanted to be on
(09:04):
their court. Now, I said to myself, if I get
an opportunity to be with these guys, just get an
opportunity to play with them, even if it's just one game.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Because if you knew the game.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Fact there were those guys, you won't get on until
the next day. So they took the game very, very serious.
And I saw how they took the game serious like that,
and I wanted to be a part of that.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And Billy Cunningham.
Speaker 10 (09:24):
Playing at school yards and it's Wendy little Chili. You
wanted to get as close to the basket as you
possibly could, so you found ways to drive to the basket,
many times running into a pole, which I can say
that I had the opportunity to do a couple of
times to knock myself out. That's Brooklyn basketball, I think
you know the hard nose, taking the ball to the basket.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
This was the game that they grew, the Brooklyn game.
And what's on the line the chance to keep playing,
and what's bigger than that. So you got to play
smart and you gotta play tough. Don't lose your court
just because you wasn't ready to get after it. Omar
Cook knows it. He just finished up a twenty year
(10:06):
pro career.
Speaker 10 (10:08):
Toughness swider Brooklyn. We have a certain way we walk,
a certain way we talk. You know, Brooklyn basketball player,
Brooklyn person from just kind of looking at him.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Brooklyn native Glenn Breker was the head coach at Saint
Francis for thirteen years.
Speaker 14 (10:24):
I think there's a certain grid to it, a certain
tough list. I think it has to do with the
way we grew up back in the day. You know,
you basically well let out in the street at a
young age and you had to figure things out for yourself.
People didn't coddle you. You know, you had to learn
life lessons at a young age, and I think that
prepared you to participate in sports. And I think that's why,
(10:47):
you know, Brooklyn players are known to be tough and competitive.
I know in this day and age, guys exchanged.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Jerseys after the game.
Speaker 14 (10:55):
That wasn't going on back in the eighties, so you're
more likely to have a brawl. But not that was good,
but that's just the way it was back then. We
played in the park a lot, We played in open gyms.
There were night centers available to us where we could
go and play at night during the week that you
really don't.
Speaker 10 (11:12):
See much today.
Speaker 14 (11:13):
And you know, it developed a certain competitiveness. If you
went to the park on a Saturday, Sunday afternoon or
late morning and you lost, there might be fifty people
in the park, so you may not play for a while,
so you had to really fight for what you what
you wanted. There are a lot of arguments, oh you know,
and you knew if you lost, you may not get
(11:33):
off for a bit. So it kind of built a
certain competitiveness to you.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And that made everyone who they were. Rod Strickland may
be from the Bronx with that. Former NBA point guards
saw that Brooklyn style of close.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
What stood out playing against Brooklyn players or probably chuffles.
You always had to be almost a big fight. You
have a very brestler style, very confident, very still when
he was up against Brooklyn team, you know he was
in for a flight.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Could it be literally? John Sally won four NBA championships,
including two with the Bad Boy Pistons.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
Yeah, it's very aggressive. I'm gonna say it's it's bully basketball.
It served me so well in the NBA that you know,
dunk car, you get out of the park mentality.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Here's Lenny Wilkins.
Speaker 9 (12:27):
It was physical, but also guys prided themselves on making
great passes, on being able to penetrate to the basket,
find the open man. We didn't come down the court
and just chucked the ball up from the three point line,
because that wasn't what the game was. Then there was penetration.
It was hitting the man in the low post, finding
the open guy, fast breaks, stuff like that. And I
(12:50):
thought it was exciting. I mean, I liked it. I
liked the quickness of the game, the physicalness of the game.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Mike Boynton, former head coach at Oklahoma State.
Speaker 15 (13:00):
We played all We played all the time. I mean
we just played basketball. We played during launch at school,
we played after school. When this is not talking about
organized like basketball practice. We just hooked. And then the
summertime we did the same thing. Basketball was just everything
for us. We played until we got the five oh five.
If there was two guys, you played one on one.
(13:23):
If there was four guys, you played two and two.
Whoever showed up the next time you got the even number,
you played that many guys versus that many guys.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
They built legends in those courtyards the way legends are
supposed to be built by word of mouth, tales of
extraordinary feats, the condat de fied reality, Nerland terant At
Nanny Goat Park, Chink Gains dunking on Wilt Chamberlain, Jackie
Jackson grabbing change off the top of the backboard. Was
(13:51):
there a little extra to, some exaggeration, some embellishment. Sure,
that's okay, they say, when the legend becomes fat print
the legend. That's Brooklyn basketball. That's what Rick telling the
found in the summer, forced to Park with Albert King
and Fly Williams.
Speaker 7 (14:10):
Nobody's documenting anything, So it's like urban legend braves sitting
around the campfire at night telling stories. That's almost what
I saw. They are what I heard stories about So
and so did this man you made a shot Bible
twenty his legs, spun around and made a shot from
forty feet falling out of bounds, you know, and they're like, oh,
oh man, something dunk from ten feet beyond the free
(14:32):
throw life. They were epic American legend. Might think King
of the River, Paul Bunyan type stories, but they have
to do it basketball, which was fabulous.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Jack Armstrong has been broadcast in Toronto rapped his games
for twenty five years, and those are the stories he
grew up on.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
It's there every day every school yard you go play.
Is this guy that was hey, this guy was a
great player at Lincoln High School. This guy was really
good player at Erasmus. You meet an old guy and say, oh, yeah,
you know, I play with Doug Bow at Eraspez Hey,
Billy Cunningham Miss, all the different legendary guys Connie hawkinsis
or Lenny Wilkins. This it's a never ending thing. So
(15:13):
it's there all the time, whether it be from the
guys you're playing with or against, the guys that are
older that you're looking up to playing. Are your coaches,
people that come to the games, the people that run
the League's just there. It's all the time. It's a
never ending thing. I loved it.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I loved it.
Speaker 16 (15:35):
You looking at neighborhood heroes, looking at heroes, and some
guys dress in a bass neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
That's Charles Jones, who let the country and score in
two straight years. That ally you. During the summers, he
teamed up with the street ball legend Brother Smith.
Speaker 16 (15:52):
There was so many tournaments. People would always joke about
me showing up at halftime, but I would get to
halftime at because I was trying to go play every
but somebody asked me to play, and I had love
for my show up and sometimes that forced me to
get to certain places late. Some people thought it was
my ego, but you know it was tough. It's tough
(16:13):
riding a bike or trying to get in a cab,
running from place to place to place. You get out
and play before you know what. Nobody to play four
or five.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Legitimate games in the day.
Speaker 16 (16:22):
So the whole you had the tournament in Marsy Marshon
Houses where jay Z is from. You had Kingston Park
and you leave there. You had Duncan's Delight, you had
Howard Houses, had a tournament. Greway, you had a tournament.
Then eventually it came with Caton Park, Tillery Park, everywhere
(16:42):
you went. There were crowds, there were people. I'm watching
really great basketball and I'm watching how many people are there?
You know, they never disappointed. They just never disappointed. Probably
for me is everything people say, like where you're from.
I said, I'm from Brooklyn. I said, heavy on the Brooklyn,
Heavy of Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Let's go back to Jack Armstrong and let him wrap
it up.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
What you see is what you get a lot of
times of Brooklyn people. There's no agenda. It's pretty straightforward.
People are real, they're authentic, and I like that. It's
always been something. But it's the same thing as basketball.
There's a there's an element of soul and passion and
love that goes into it. There's not a lot of
(17:26):
places around that have that. The other thing, too is
I look at my life now. I mean my best friends,
A lot of guys I hung out with playing basketball
and baseball with in Brooklyn. These guys are all my
buddy since I was seven years old. And what brought
us together that orange ball. So to me, that's the journey,
(17:47):
that's the celebration, and that's Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Coming up next week on Basketball's Burrow the pioneers from
the Black Fives at the start of the twentieth century
to a college powerhouse at Long Island University at the
dawn of the NBA Brooklyn Talent Forge Basketballs Foundation
Host
Meechy Darko
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