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Excerpts
"Our ravaged tenement was on the verge of being condemned but no one seemed to care, not even the people living there."
1960's East Harlem, NY
"It was an ironically contradictory time. Black people were still running north to escape the repressive south, but almost as soon as they arrived, they were trying to escape the violent oppressive ghettos of the north."
-1950-60s BLACK MIGRATION
"By the time I learned to do crossovers and dynamic spin moves to the basket, the issue between the ABA and NBA wasn’t about a lesser league trying to keep up with the bigger, better, NBA. People started realizing the best ABA guys were on par with the best NBA guys."
-On the 1975-76 ABA/NBA Merger
"It didn't matter that Connie Hawkins had never harmed anyone or that he was a nice human being. The NBA lawyers still attempted to crush the only life he had, a life of basketball."
-On the NBA imposed exile of Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins
"I and 22 other 12 and 13-year-old Harlem boys sat with bended knees on a hard-cold gym floor waiting for our names or numbers to be called. Black, brown, and a few yellow boys, were wearing canvass pro-keds, converse and puma’s, vehicles that would carry us to our dreams."
-Mnisink Center Basketball Tryout 1976
Intermediate School 10 was known as I.S. 10, “The Dime” on the streets. It was named after Fredrick Douglas and attended by prominent historical figures like James Baldwin and Congressman Charlie Rangel. By the time I got there in 1975 it was just a school with the same old problem as most public schools in Harlem, too many kids and too few resources.
-Jr. High School 1976
"Both Larry Bird and Magic Johnson put in long, hard hours of preparation, both were winners with heart and determination and neither happened to be very athletic. They were more alike than any two players in the NBA. But in the media, much of what the non-basketball public tapped into was that Bird was white, playing for a great white team, and Magic was black, playing for a mostly black team. Bird was in Boston, Magic in LA, Bird was a workaholic, Magic an entertainer, Bird was smart, Magic was talented and that’s how the script was rolled out across the American basketball landscape"
-On the Bird vs Magic rivalry 1980
118th Street and Madison Ave - My Old Neighborhood
Nate "Tiny" Archibald - a Harlem playground mainstay in the 1970's.
Earl "The Goat" Manigault - Harlem legend portrayed in Hollywood movie REBOUND.
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