Norman Einstein's
ISSUE 10 (03/10)
"The Queens Of Queens: Finding the City's Game In a Dismal Winter"
by Cian O'Day
[Cian spends his days in photos and his nights advancing the cause of the Einsteins... well, most nights anyway. If you like the magazine, he would really like it if you joined our mailing list.]
The wind whips down Fashion Avenue on a chilly February night. Crowds swell, recede, and swell again as traffic lights click away their perfectly timed rhythm. Less perfectly the throng bumbles to and fro. Caught between the bright lights and the bodies pouring out from every direction, natives and tourists jostle one another while cutting their paths of varying purpose.
Take a step back from the fray. Recline against a lamp post to await friends, tickets snug in an overcoat pocket. A man bearing a wide-eyed expression approaches cautiously.
"Do you know where I can find the Garden?"
One bright sign down the Avenue bears his answer: Madison Square Garden.
If it's the home of the Knicks he seeks, the man has found it. If it's the heart of New York City basketball, however, he will be sorely disappointed...
The Kurt Thomas Appreciation Society
New York City is the mecca. At least, that's how the saying goes. On most days, it hardly seems true any more. The hometown Knicks have been terrible for a long time now. They haven't posted a winning record in nearly a decade, a decade in which the team's management has squandered money and draft picks for immediate results, results never attained.
Yet, for many reasons, New York City remains the mecca. If New York City is the basketball mecca then Madison Square Garden is the hardwood Masjid al Haram, the site upon which the hoops pilgrimage converges.
The faithful still make their way in droves. And talented opponents still bow their heads to the Garden's majesty... even if the team defending that court no longer commands the same respect that their holy site of hoops does.
"It should be a show," says Brandon Jennings to Howard Beck of the New York Times. Jennings, the Milwaukee Bucks rookie sensation, feels slighted by the Knicks organization that passed him over in the 2009 NBA draft. He admits before his first game in the Garden that it feels "a little bit more personal."
"Every time I’m in New York, I play good," he says. "So, we’ll see now."
The Garden is two-thirds full for Jennings's debut. It's a partisan crowd. A friend informs me he crossed paths with only one Bucks fan while fetching our food and drinks, described as a terrified youth wearing Bucks green amidst the sea of Knicks blue. The crowd lustily boos the visitors, especially Jennings, during the introductions.
As the Knicks are introduced the crowd cheers wildly. A mostly anonymous, thoroughly undermanned squad, these Knicks, the fans roar more for the logo on the front of the jerseys than the names on the back.
The game begins.
Jennings did not play "good." No one did. Bucks center Andrew Bogut left the game just five minutes in with migraines. As Bogut lumbered to the locker room he apparently took with him any semblence of competent defense for both teams.
Thus the flow of the game evaporates. It's as if someone spliced together two different versions of the game: one a highlight reel, one a blooper reel. A Jennings pass sails behind its intended target on one play. Knicks forward David Lee spins around no one in particular and executes a monster dunk. Jennings drives furiously, a blur of skinny arms and elbows, disappearing into a crowd of defenders before suddenly reappearing ball extended at the hoop's base. Knicks forward Danilo Gallinari hucks up a three that clangs off the rim to a collective groan.
At the end of a routine timeout, from the nosebleeds above, a tightknit group yells in unison: "KURT THOMAS!!!!"
Thomas, a reserve for the Bucks, wanders languidly onto the court below. His fanclub cheers and claps wildly as his bulky frame finds its position on defense. The continued, exaggerated outburst provokes surprised laughs from around the Garden. The joke is a good one, retold each time Thomas shuffles on or off the court for his eight and half minutes of play.
Thomas was a Knick for the first half of the Aughts. Undersized at center, Thomas was never a superstar, merely a solid pro who once in his career averaged a double-double on the season. In his seven seasons as a Knick, Thomas grabbed boards at a respectable pace and knocked down open shots. He left New York in 2006, a respectable if unspectacular journeyman every since.
Of every players on the court below, however, Thomas is the sole link to last good Knicks teams of a decade ago. I would wager it's a fact every member of the Kurt Thomas Appreciation Society is keenly aware of even as they jokingly exalt his everyman into a deity. The best jokes always draw a little blood.
The Knicks lead at half by five but are overrun by a 36-point Bucks surge in the third quarter. The Knicks attempt a late rally, their players weaving through the porous Milwaukee defense. Jennings, however, snuffs out any chance at a comeback with a couple lightning quick drives in the middle of the fourth. The heart is taken out of the Knicks and the crowd.
The note of finality rings out from the assembled. A chorus of boos reverberates in every corner of the Garden out of the final timeout. The few scant minutes left to play are a mere formality. The game is over. The Knicks have lost again.
The scoreboard reads 00.0: Knicks 107, Bucks 114. Heads down, dejected, the Knicks slump off the court. The remaining hearty fans stand up, twisting this way and that, gathering their belongings to go. As the Bucks jog to their visitor's locker room, a lone member of the Kurt Thomas Appreciation Society launches one last shout of "Kurt Thomas!" into the suddenly solemn arena. Scattered weary chuckles meet the lasp gasp of a joke run its course.
No one yet knows how long Knicks fans will have to wearily laugh to keep from crying.
The City's Game
"Basketball is the city game," Pete Axthelm writes in the introduction to his classic tome on the Knicks, New York City, and the franchise's first NBA championship.
Willis Reed. Walt Frazier. Dave DeBusschere. Bill Bradley. The first Knicks to ascend to the top of the mountain. Axthelm devotes much of his book to the team's season and the players' backstories.
But The City Game is no mere pro sports chronicle. Axthelm boldly explores the context of Knicks basketball and why the city fell so hard for this team. Axthelm profiles streetball legends from the courts in Harlem and Bed-Stuy. He shares the harsh realities of those who never made it off the streets, out of the tangled web of drugs and crime.
More than anything, Axthelm writes of a love story between a city and a team. It's not that the Knicks merely won a championship in 1970. No, it's that the Knicks won it playing New York-style ball. A tough, gambling defense. A fast-paced, fluid offense. A gritty style for a gritty city. The City already defined that style on its numerous playgrounds and gymnasiums before the Knicks climbed the mountain. The Knicks simply brought New York ball to its inevitable conclusion.
Axthelm wrote The City Game exactly forty years ago. The game has certainly changed since then. Its objective is still to put the ball in the hoop and, conversely, to stop the other guy from putting the ball in the other hoop. Yet all hustling in-between and around those two objectives has changed utterly.
Bird and Magic transformed first the college game then the pros. Larry Bird and Ervin Johnson's rivalry put the NCAA tournament on the map, dialing in the coordinates for the territory it now occupies on the sporting landscape. They then changed the NBA into an arms race, the talented big guns amidst impressive collections of dangerous weapons, Bird in Boston, Magic in Showtime L.A.
Air Jordan followed, followed by Air Jordans. The rise of the sport's most dominant player ushered in an era of iconography and hype. Just like the Jumpman logo on Jordan's eponymous sneakers. You know the one. A full-body silhouette. Legs splayed wide astride some unearthly gust of wind. One arm shoving downward any would-be challengers, the other guiding skyward a simple sphere... or is it being held triumphantly aloft? That icon still looms over basketball.
AI. Shaq. Kobe. King James. The sneaker trade sponsored by Nike. Max contracts. Press agents. Dress codes. Million-dollar foundations. Endorsement dollars. Summer camps. One-and-dones. March Madness. Multi-million dollar training facilities. AAU traveling teams. Year-round personal trainers. Scouts tracking down twelve year old kids. Shady characters connecting all the hidden dots.
Yes, the game is changed, changed utterly.
The Knicks recently traded for Tracy McGrady's two bad knees, expiring contract, and All-Star name recognition while dumping all manner of payroll obligations. Gone are half the starters and rotation players I witnessed in the early February game against the Bucks. The Knicks hope to turn a stockpile of salary into two star players when the NBA's free-agency period commences this summer. Until then the team is the walking dead. It's a dangerous gamble, but one the Knicks, the demands of their market, their terrible personnel decisions of late, have been forced into.
The Knicks wait to see if they can sign LeBron. Maybe Dwyane Wade. Maybe Chris Bosh or Joe Johnson or Carlos Boozer. And maybe they get no one except Raymond Felton, DJ Mbenga, and the ghost of Grant Hill. The Knicks hope to construct a team in one fell swoop. No future, no past.
New York may be the mecca... yet the question remains, will any stars make the pilgrimage this summer?
A Classic & a Cathedral
The Garden is the alpha and omega of the City's professional hardwood temples, home to the NBA's Knicks and the WNBA's Liberty (a truth unshakeable for the foreseeable future as a planned Brooklyn move by the New Jersey Nets melts into air). But the City offers no shortage of lesser temples, some more regal than others.
As the coffers of major and mid-major college athletic departments swelled over the last decade or so, shiny new arenas have sprung up around the City. St John's Carnesecca Arena in Queens, Wagner's Spiro Sports Center in Staten Island, and Long Island's Wellness, Recreation, and Athletic Center in Brooklyn are all Division I facilities raised in this period of new prosperity. All are modern avatars of the arena age, albeit on a sliding scale of resources and ambition. All hardly compare to the gleeming arenas across the Hudson River in New Jersey, the Prudential Center and the Izod Center. Yet, even in their modest aspirations, all break with the past inasmuch as any basketball venue bound by the necessities of the sport - floorboards, backboards, scoreboards - can.
The patterns of history forge tradition. New York suffers from no shortage of tradition. But where to find it written in brick and stone in a dismal Winter? To seek out the City's few gymnasiums continuous with, not broken from, their thread of history, the Bronx is the destination.
Manhattan College in Riverdale and Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the north Bronx are home to two such gymnasiums. Manhattan's Draddy Gym and Fordham's Rose Hill Gym are hoops temples but for dramatically different reasons. Rose Hill is a true cathedral. Gothic stonework allows it to blend with Fordham's Gothic campus yet renders it apart from the vast majority of college hoops venues. Draddy, on the other hand, is a throwback, a classic. Draddy possesses an everyman appeal. Its persistance radiates an unintended antidote to the arena age. Basketball is played here. Championships are won here. What more does here have to be?
Draddy isn't the easiest temple for the acolyte to find. The sole direction on Manhattan's website is a mysterious "at the top of the hill." Up a seemingly unrelated series of stairs is an understated brick- and aluminum-sided fieldhouse.
And that's what Draddy Gym is: a fieldhouse in the classic style. A green track forever runs round the edge of the interior reminding the visitor of Draddy's versatility. So many green banners hang from the rafters reminding of its celebrated hoops history. Perhaps the commemoration borders on overkill. Each conference championship, whether by regular season or tournament record, as well as every tournament appearance, whether in the NCAA's or the NIT's, is gifted its own banner. Yet the banners multiplide speak to the pride the Jaspers take in their successes.
Credit: raymond's photos (Flickr)
So far this year for the Manhattan Jaspers has been anything but a success.
As the Jaspers prepare to host the Towson University Tigers at Draddy on a mild winter Saturday, I run into Stephen Dombroski, Manhattan's Sports Information Director. When asked about this season, Stephen lapses into vague statements on the close margins of loss. He quickly shifts focus to the conference tournament: the automatic bid for the NCAA tournament. Stephen voices hope that the Jaspers can get hot at the right moment and snatch that autobid.
And that's what college basketball is all about at a base level: timing and hope.
But back to Draddy. With so much change in this new era of college hoops is Draddy's time drawing near?
"Right now, there are no official plans to change the place," says Manhattan's Athletic Director Robert Byrnes. Minor improvements may be on the way, but "nothing outrageous."
Draddy Gym opened in 1979. In that time, the Jaspers have completed a couple undefeated seasons on their home court, no mean feat in the fluid world of mid-major ball. AD Byrnes rattles off a series of big wins. A buzzer-beater over Wisconsin-Green Bay while hosting an NIT Tournament game. An upset of La Salle during their stretch of dominance in the 90s. An upset of big-time, big-budget Rutgers.
Manhattan is a few years off its glory years of the middle Aughts. Bobby Gonzalez coached the team to back-to-back tournament appearances in 2003 and 2004 in the middle of a dominating stretch in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). In a well-worn story of mid-major success, Gonzalez moved on, across the Hudson River, to Seton Hall and major Big East basketball. (Currently, Gonzalez has his Pirates fighting for their tournament lives after four mostly disappointing seasons.) The Jaspers have struggled to assert themselves under current coach Barry Rohrssen.
"I hear it everywhere," Byrnes says. "From March to November people ask me, they don't say 'Hello' or anything, they tell me the we should be out recruiting... Recruiting is the lifeline."
As I speak with AD Byrnes, the frustrations of the season is apparent in his carefully weighed comments. He glances up from time to time to the glut of green banners, like so many postcards stuck on the fridge, reminders of better times.
"How do you cope... it's not fun," says Byrnes. "With the advent of email and other things, people are not afraid to let you know [their feelings]."
So what's the plan going forward?
"I think it's important for people to know we haven't gone away from our core values. We are running an institution of higher learning, that we are putting up with no nonsense, that we are graduating the players that we bring here, that we're doing a lot of good things, too, and we still want to win... we're committed to doing that."
The game begins and, as if on cue, the Jaspers storm out to a daunting 20-0 lead over the Tigers. Maybe hopes of the Jaspers getting hot at the right moment are not so farfetched. The crowd sees it in Rico Pickett's breathtaking moves. Time and again, the junior guard produces points on seemingly improbable plays. Cutting across the basket, Pickett hops to the side and hangs for a second longer than physics indicate possible, shifting the release point of his shot around the upstretched arms of a defender. He finally lets go a soft floater whose swish releases the cheers of the assembled. For the first eight minutes of the game, the rout is on.
As the Jaspers attack inevitably slows then fragments, the Tigers claw their way back into the game, down twelve points at half. Out of the break, Pickett offers an answer. He drives, leans in then pulls back his body, catapulting up an underhanded floater for two. After a defensive stop, Pickett lets go a fall away jumper in the face of a defender for two more. Four dirty points, the kind that smear mud on an opponent's face. It shows in the Tigers' play. Their rotations on defense are undertaken at half speed allowing the Jaspers to score easy buckets inside. Pickett helps administer the dagger plunge, tossing up an alley-oop to fellow guard Darryl Crawford who slams it down unleashing a thunderous roar from the partisan crowd.
At the final buzzer the crowd files out of their modest temple, buzzing themselves with the thrill of victory.
Across the Bronx, Manhattan College's neighbor and rival Fordham University is beset by a different kind of buzz.
The Fordham Rams play their home games in Division I's oldest in-use venue: Rose Hill Gym. Rose Hill opened in 1925. In that time it's been an impressive constant in a time of so much change.
"I've probably been coming to this gym since the late 1950s," says Fordham AD Frank McLaughlin. McLaughlin, Fordham's AD since 1985, was first a high school student then student-athlete at the Fordham. He recalls much of Rose Hill's long past. An undefeated season his senior year. A laundry list of upsets.
"NYU was third in the country when Fordham beat them here. St John's was ranked when they came in here and lost. There have been some great games in this gym," McLaughlin says.
McLaughlin oversaw Rose Hill's last renovation in 2002. The concessions to the modern age - bright lights, an understated scoreboard, a new hardwood floor - don't obscure Rose Hill's classic style. An intricate latticework of steel beams brace the high arched roof above. On the far sides of the court a tall triangle-shaped row of frosted windows permits the insinuation of natural light during the daytime. The maroon bleachers roll up to courtside. And behind it all dark gray stone and mortar walls stand impressively silent.
"It's a great atmosphere here," says McLaughlin. "When people come here for the first time they can't believe how close the seats are, right on the floor, the action so close... If you have a good team, this is a great homecourt advantage."
The fact is, however, Fordham does not have a good team right now. It's not for a lack of effort. But these Rams are young. Four underclassmen start while three more log significant minutes each game. Even a middling conference rival like the St Bonaventure Bonnies contend more with their own miscues than Fordham's valiant yet ultimately futile challenges.
Interim head coach Jared Grasso was promoted from the ranks after Dereck Whittenburg's dismissal early in the season. If it hadn't already, the Rams season soon unraveled completely. Star sophomore guard Jio Fontan applied for transfer shortly thereafter. Grasso's trotted out a lineup since whose only consistency is a lack thereof. Well, save senior guard Brenton Butler, a steady hand lost amidst the dust storm kicked up by his running mates.
I witness the Rams attempt to keep apace with the Bonnies during a late-season midweek game. The Rams top scorer, freshman forward Chris Gaston, in a way typifies his team. One minute he's improbably spinning his way out of a trap then tossing up an under-the-basket layup with enough backspin off the backboard to find the dead center of the hoop. The next minute he's driving into the waiting arms of three defenders only to have the ball stripped. Fearless to be sure but hardly effective.
It's clear that the Rams are a program in flux, on the court as much as off of it. What's not clear is what part this old cathedral will play in the Fordham's future. Rose Hill, despite all its history and homecourt advantage, is considered a relic in the recruiting game. The Athletic Department is exploring its options.
"We played Villanova at the Izod Center in the Meadowlands and it was a big success," McLaughlin says. "We're looking to play more games over there. [Rose Hill] could be a practice facility, play a few game here, but also to have the availability to play some games in a major arena like the Izod Center would really help us in our recruiting."
It's clear that Fordham feels its on the cusp of bigger and better things. Once the season ends, the head coaching situation goes under review. AD McLaughlin assures me interim coach Grasso is a strong candidate for the job. He also makes it clear that Grasso won't be the only candidate.
"The Board of Trustees and the President have just made a strong commitment budgetwise to move us from the bottom of the A-10 up to the top quarter," says McLaughlin. "With these new financial resources, with the availability of the Izod Center, with the fact that we have over 125,000 alums in the greater New York area, and being in the A-10, one of the top leagues in the country, there's the potential here that this could be a very good job."
Right now, however, it's a tough job. The Rams give chase but the Bonnies pull away decisively in the final minutes. The student section, boisterous all game, has been silenced and gradually thins as seconds slip off the clock. Soon enough Rose Hill will be emptied for the night.
At one point, I ask AD McLaughlin, somewhat naively, if there are any plans to raze Rose Hill.
"I don't think it would be possible," says McLaughlin. "The stonework, I think, it would be impossible to take it down."
I leave the Bronx, the classic fieldhouse and the cathedral, behind. Both are worthy temples. Draddy and Rose Hill will be ready when the game comes back. But, like the Garden, the City's game cannot be found there now.
The Queens Of Queens
The campus of St John's is, like the rest of New York, buried under a foot and a half of snow. But the air is warm and wet on an overcast Saturday afternoon, a reminder that spring will come again.
I've traversed the City searching for its hoops heart. My pilgrimage ends in Queens where the best team in New York holds court. The women of St John's are ranked 18th in the country. It's no mean feat in the top-heavy Big East Conference. The Red Storm are perhaps a notch below the UConn's and Nebraska's and Baylor's of the women's world. But coming off a major upset of Notre Dame, the women of St John's are serving notice that they can play with anyone.
On this Saturday, "anyone" is Big East rival Villanova. The Lady Wildcats are a solid if unspectacular squad hoping at best to play the role of upsetter in what remains of their season. They bear their claws in the opening minutes. Soon however they struggle with the Red Storm's speed and athleticism.
Critics of the women's game often deride it as slow-paced and earthbound. These critics have never witnessed this St John's squad. As a team, coach Kim Barnes Arico's squad averages ten steals a game. The Red Storm thrive off turning turnovers into fastbreaks. Guard Nadirah McKenith's quick hands threaten every dribble and pass on the perimeter. In the post, forwards Joy McCorvey and Da'Shena Stevens engulf their opponents in a blur of probing arms and elbows.
More than anything, the Red Storm thrive off a fast pace. Within a few minutes, the Red Storm is up two, four, six points. Then, suddenly, they pick up more speed. Guards Shenneika Smith and Eugeneia McPherson come off the bench and the Red Storm launch a full-court press for several minutes. They harrass their opponents mercilessly, trapping and poking. Halfway through the first, St John's has already racked up five steals by my count. What's more difficult to measure is the effect of this unrelenting assault on the Wildcats, but it is clearly taking its toll.
St John's starting lineup scores capably. But guard Shenneika Smith off the bench is a revelation. A crossover dribble leads to a fearless drive. She twists her body in midair around the defender. The bucket is a foregone conclusion. She bounces around as if the court can barely contain her. She spins. She fakes. She executes a pretty bounce pass, whirring with backspin past a defender to Stevens for an easy layup.
Smith's game isn't perfect. Her handle is like glue as she dribbles her way through a gauntlet of defenders. Then suddenly she flubs a routine pass her way. Perhaps her mind is already two or three steps ahead. The lapses are infrequent, though. And she's surrounded by a talented team that cleans up each other's mistakes. Stevens and McCorvey attack the offensive boards again and again, Stevens scoring on several putbacks.
But the heart of the Red Storm is their aggressive defense. Sometimes their gambles gift the Wildcats easy points. But it's a price the women of St John's seem willing to pay to keep their opponents on edge, fearing a swipe or a swat at every moment.
Credit: MarkJ Sports Fanatic (Flickr)
All of sudden I think of the Knicks team Axthelm describes in The City Game: daring, deep, and dangerous. This is New York City ball. It's not simply about winning. It's about winning with tenacity and with flash. With toughness and with style. A gritty style for a gritty city.
Make no mistake, these ladies are writing their own story. Senior forward Joy McCorvey is clearly the leader on court. She huddles up her charges at each foul. She barks orders up and down the court. Junior guard Sky Lindsay and junior forward Coco Hart offer steady, active defense shuffling in and out of the lineup.
And, while it may be Senior Day when Villanova comes to Queens, the day really belongs to the kids. The talent of the team lies with the underclassmen. Stevens is a sophmore. Shenneika Smith, Nadirah McKenith, and Eugeneia McPherson are all freshman. A scary thought for the rest of the Big East. The youngsters never slack, never lay back.
At the half, St John's leads by fourteen. There's no looking back. The scoreboard reads 62-32 with five minutes left. The game has long been over. But the women of St John's keep up that pace, keep driving and scratching. They dive for loose balls. They crash the boards. They swat, swipe, and steal. If more hoops heads in this city paid attention to their game, the Red Storm might steal hearts, too.
The Big East and NCAA Tournaments are yet to-come, battlefields looming on the horizon. For now, the Red Storm wear the City's crown, the queens of Queens, guardians of the city's game.
New York City is the mecca. Basketball is the city game. And royalty is always holding court somewhere within its five boroughs.
Spring will thaw winter's icy grip on the City's hoops heart. The City game will return to the streets. The courts of Harlem and Bed-Stuy and West 4th in the Village will reverberate with majestic swooshes and triumphant whoops.
The women of St John's are the city's royalty now, how long with their reign last? The Knicks toil among the NBA's worst, will they linger there forever? Draddy and Rose Hill gyms won't raise any banners this year, will they again soon?
The only thing sure thing? There's always somebody, somewhere in the City with game.