KAREEM OF CROP
Early N.Y. hoops heroes lauded in exhibit
Before there was LeBron or Jordan or Magic or Bird, even before there was Kobe, there was Lew Alcindor, tall as a skyscraper and skinny as a stop sign, dominating New York City’s basketball landscape.
Alcindor, of course, would change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, but not before lording over everything basketball as a Harlem high school hoops legend.
Abdul-Jabbar’s meteoric rise, as well as New York’s schoolyard basketball saga, is chronicled in a new exhibition that opened Friday at the Museum of the City of New York.
Abdul-Jabbar, along with basketball legends Bernard King, Kiki Vandeweghe and Felipe Lopez, tipped off the exhibit days earlier at a museum gala filled with tall people whose love of the game reached higher than the fiberglass backboards at Harlem’s famed Rucker Park, one of more than 1,800 outdoor courts in the city.
“I will always enjoy those memories,” Abdul-Jabbar told the Associated Press. “I remember I was still in grade school when I started to go to NBA games at Madison Square Garden and that had an effect on me.”
The exhibit, entitled “City/ Game: Basketball in New York,” is a decade-by-decade look at basketball in the mecca, from full court wars on neighborhood blacktops to the hardwood glory of two New York Knicks championships in the 1970s.
The team is well represented in the show. Artifacts include a Bill Bradley warmup jersey and the Knicks’ 1970 championship banner.
With little to celebrate in recent years, museum officials are reaching back five decades to honor the Knicks’ first championship in 1970 with another show. “When the Garden was Eden: Remembering the 1970s New York Knicks” will open in May.
Among the “City/Game” highlights is a sweater from Hall of Fame St. John’s coach Lou Carnesecca and a signed Jeremy Lin Knicks jersey from the height of “Linsanity.”
There is also a nod to women’s contributions to the city game. The exhibit includes video of Queens College and their legendary coach Lucille Kyvallos. The team played the first women’s game at Madison Square Garden in 1974 against Immaculata.
“Basketball’s history and development is inextricably tied to New York,” said Whitney
Donhauser, the director and president of the museum. “City/Game captures the excitement and evolution of this quintessentially urban game and the energy of the diverse New Yorkers who play it and love it.”
Museum curator Lilly Tuttle said it took about 18 months to pull this exhibit together. It runs through January.
“The exhibition is a way to celebrate the long history of basketball in New York and the legacy of talent that’s come through the city,” she said.