“THE GREATEST STREETBALL GAME EVER PLAYED” and "BRODEUR OVER BLUE"
#942/#941
942. WESTSIDERS VS MILBANK COMMUNITY CENTER
JULY 25, 1971
RUCKER PLAYGROUND
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.25
DRAMA—7.45
STAR POWER—9.12
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—5.42
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.11
LOCAL IMPACT—5.98
TOTAL: 42.33
“THE GREATEST STREETBALL GAME EVER PLAYED”
Holcombe Rucker was a Harlem-based educator, a recreation worker, and a basketball coach. When just 26, in 1953, he had the idea to provide an outlet for the explosive basketball talent he saw all around him, and organized a tournament in a playground at 168th Street. When he tragically passed away in 1965, from cancer at just 38 years old, the playground, and the tournament he created, were named for him.
Since, the Rucker Playground and the legendary basketball played there have become a cultural landmark and testimony to the importance of street ball in the City. That the games there haven’t been overly commoditized or televised or publicized into oblivion remains something of a modern miracle. The amazing doings that happen at Rucker still belong to the street, and the lucky few who witness them, and not to the greater world at large.
It was here that Herman “The Helicopter” Knowlings grabbed a quarter off the top of the backboard. It was here that Wilt Chamberlain dunked a ball so hard it rebounded off the asphalt and flew over a 15-foot high fence. It was here that Earl “The Goat” Manigault reverse-dunked 36 times in a row to win a bet. It was here that Kevin Durant put up 66 points and called it one of the best games he’s ever played.
Or that’s what people said, anyway. For the most part, these feats belong to our roundball oral tradition, and that ethereal quality makes them all the more fascinating.
The magic of Rucker was that NBA all-time greats mixed with playground legends, guys who for one reason or another, usually narcotics-related, never made it out of the streets. In New York, the names Goat and the Helicopter and Swee’Pea and Skip To My Lou and Pee Wee and Fly ring out every bit as loudly as Durant or Chamberlain or Kareem or the other Hall of Famers who took their talents to Rucker.
Perhaps the two greatest players, one from each category, to ever show off and show down at Rucker were Julius Erving and Joe “The Destroyer” Hammond. When they tangled in an officially sanctioned game in July of 1971, the result was a game that is still talked about, half a century later, in awed tones across the five boroughs.
Erving was not yet “Dr. J.” He had been called “The Doctor” or just “Doctor” by a friend at Roosevelt High on Long Island, Leon Saunders. Julius called Leon “The Professor.” While playing college ball at UMass he was occasionally known as “Doctor,” but to cognoscenti he was simply “Julius From New York.” After seeing Erving sky to the hoop, “Doctor” and “JFNY” were far too prosaic a moniker. “Black Magic” and “Houdini” were commonplace. Julius would eventually inform the street ballers to go ahead and stick with “Doctor” instead of those more occult nicknames.
Erving would periodically play at Rucker in the summertime while an undergrad, and after declaring hardship and entering the ABA draft after his junior season in 1971, his appearances uptown became far more regular. He wanted to play close to home with the New Jersey Nets, but it was the Virginia Squires who got him for those first seasons in the red, white and blue league—for the official games, anyway. During the offseason, the Nets sponsored a summer league team—the Westsiders—that would play on the streets of the City as an outreach and publicity maneuver. When Erving got wind of it, he agreed to play a few games with the team. His nickname that summer of ‘71 was “Little Hawk,” in homage to the great “Hawk,” high-flying Brooklyn native and future NBA Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins.
Pete Vecsey, the legendary NBA writer, was at the time a 28-year old covering all things b-ball for the Daily News. His side gig that summer was helping to run a summerlong round-robin tournament called the Harlem Professional Basketball League, which took place at Rucker. He also coached the Westsiders, and was instrumental in getting Erving to play that day.
On a scalding hot July Sunday in 1971, the “true believers in basketball,” as Vecsey put it, “skipped the beach or whatever” to watch a Summer League game between the Milbank Community Center—the organization that officially ran Rucker in those days—team and the Westsiders. It would go down as the most memorable in the long lore of NYC streetball.
Usually the games drew around 3,000 (non-paying) customers. Given the astonishingly high level of play, fans at Rucker got incredibly good value. But for this afternoon, roughly 7,000 crammed the playground at 156th and Eighth Avenue. “A temporary palisade of cars completely surrounded the park,” Vecsey wrote. “Teenagers perched in nearby trees and hung precariously from fences. Late comers stood three and four deep out into the street., awaiting the 4:30 tipoff. The air was electric with anticipation.”
It was a scene unique to New York City and the basketball culture that permeated its streets. “The only way to appreciate the scene is to be part of it,” according to Vecsey. “The skill…is almost always enhanced by the enthusiasm and savvy of the spectators, and the players always add a little extra—for the crowd, you understand. If your opponent burns you at one end of the court, it’s your profound duty to smoke him at the other end. It’s one-on-one basketball lifted to dizzying heights. And anyone can afford the experience—it’s free.”
Aside from Erving, the Westsiders featured a host of NBA stars, including Charlie “Great” Scott, soon to explode on the scene for Phoenix and later Boston; Mike “Blood and Guts” Riordan, a Knicks favorite who was about to be traded to Baltimore for another playground legend, Earl Monroe; St. John’s grad and Suns guard Joe “Rock and Roll” DePre; and Billy “The Rejector” Paultz, also from St. John’s and, more importantly, a seven-footer who had long dreamed of playing at Rucker.
“I’ve looked forward to playing in this league all my life,” he told Vecsey.
When the pro stars were introduced to the Rucker throng, the place went nuts. But then the Milbank Five was brought out, and the overflow crowd took their cheering to another level.
The man they all came to see was “The Destroyer.” Joe Hammond. The legend of all legends. A skinny 6’2” sniper with a devastating bank shot and ups that rivaled Erving’s, Hammond set the Rucker League scoring record with a 73-point outburst, then topped it by going for 74 after showing up to Rucker, according to a witness, “incoherently high” on drugs. A close friend dunked his head in an open fire hydrant, and Hammond recovered to demolish NBA player Larry McNeill and drop nearly three-quarters of a century on him.
The son of an NYC subway driver and a mother who passed away when he was young, Joe never played college or even high school ball. He was a true cage man, saving his runs for the Harlem hardcourts. The only things he loved more than hoops were gambling and drugs, and they cost him dearly.
The other guard for Milbank was another playground great, Pee Wee Kirkland, also known as “Stick Man,” either for his excellence with the ladies or at armed stickups. Larry Cheetum, the “Butterfly Man,” was a rail-thin 6’7” but he was what passed for a big man on the amateur team. He would have a great game, “with moves that would astonish Masters and Johnson,” according to Vecsey. Vincent “The Judge” White and Carl “No Nickname Recorded” Crump rounded out the group.
Unfortunately for Milbank, the game began and Hammond was nowhere to be seen. The 22-year old Destroyer was ambivalent about playing, since the presence of Erving had blown the hype into the stratosphere. “Everywhere I go,” he told a friend, “people are asking me how I think I’m going to do against Julius. They should be asking Julius how he’s going to do against me.”
Somehow, even without their superstar, and with a serious height discrepancy, Milbank hung with the pros. “The lead changed hands faster than Hubert Humphrey’s stand on Vietnam,” thought Vecsey. At halftime the game was tied at 50-50.
In the second half, the pros began to establish dominance, thanks to their size advantage and the greatness of Erving, who poured in some 40 points in the game. Westside took a 12-point lead with only a few minutes to go. Then, a roar erupted from the masses. The throng parted like the Red Sea, and Joe Hammond strode on to the court.
It was a signal moment in the history of New York City basketball. The rumor was that enough cash had finally been raised for the Destroyer to show, and a signal sent out to the streets. But the truth, according to Hammond, was more prosaic. He had thought the game had started at 3 PM, when in actuality it began at 2. He had been shooting dice, and tried to make a fashionably late and dramatic entrance. Instead, he almost missed the entire encounter.
He couldn’t get into the park by the main entrance, because the crowd was so enormous, and his fans wouldn’t let him in without some worship. After all, as Joe would say, “Like Ringling Brothers, when they seen me they know they’ve seen the Greatest Show on Earth.” Finally making it through a side entrance, he told the Milbank coach he was ready to play. “Are you out of your mind, Joe?” replied his shocked coach. “Look at the score!”
Fortunately, enough time was left for The Destroyer. He immediately checked in and went on an unimaginable binge. “Faster than amphetamines, he single-handedly dismantled the margin,” wrote Vecsey. He busted Erving over and over again on both sides of the court, scoring over Little Hawk and stopping him on defense. With seconds to go, Hammond threw in a long heave to tie the game.
Or did he?
As with most streetball stories, the truth is highly elusive. Vecsey maintains that Hammond played the whole game, and that “Joe did not destroy Julius. They didn’t guard each other.” Dr. J. lauds Hammond’s skills but agrees they weren’t up against each other for most of the day.
Probably that’s true—it defies logic that Milbank could hang with the pros without Hammond. But as the saying goes, when fact meets legend, print the legend…
All versions of the tale agree that a five-minute overtime was required to settle matters. It was here that Pee Wee Kirkland made his fateful error. Kirkland had been a Manhattan prep star at Hughes High and starred at Norfolk State before turning down the NBA because he made more cash dealing drugs in Harlem. That fall, he would be arrested and sent to prison for the first of several incarcerations.
While still a free man during the summer, Kirkland had some unknown beef with Charlie Scott. Pee Wee called out the former Stuyvesant High star. “At that time, I had my girlfriend with me,” Scott says in a documentary, “A Cut Above.” “You can’t show me up in front of my girlfriend. That’s what it was about.” Whether Kirkland was jealous or just was trying to get under Scott’s skin isn’t clear, but whatever his motive, the ploy backfired. Scott dominated overtime, “hitting on four straight 15-foot turnarounds,” while his “magical ball handling” sent the crowd into a frenzy. “Only the music of ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ was missing,” wrote Vecsey. Led by Scott, the Westside pros won in overtime, 117-108.
According to Scott, “I had about 40 [points], Joe had about 40, Julius about 30, Pee Wee had about 30.” Time surely has inflated the numbers, but the final box score paled in importance to the action. Rucker’s mystical aura was taken to new heights by the game.
Erving, Hammond and most of the others disappeared quickly. Not Charlie Scott. He stayed and soaked in the ambience. His reverie was broken when a friend of Hammond’s came over to say, “Good game.” Then he added,
“Don’t come past 116th Street any more or you’ll be dead.”
Scott took him at his word, and never returned.
AFTERMATH
The Destroyer had a shot at the big time. Hammond was drafted by the Lakers, despite his complete lack of organized ball, in a special hardship draft. He had a semi-legendary game of one-on-one with the 12th man on the team, Pat Riley, a combative affair that saw Hammond get the best of the future coach, to the point Riley supposedly body-slammed Hammond after losing (Riley maintained that he merely knocked Hammond down in the course of playing a few times, rough but clean plays). Shortly afterward, Hammond got into a shouting match with Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke, whom Hammond says blackballed him from the NBA. An offer from the ABA Nets also went nowhere, despite a 3-year, $105,000 contract reportedly on the table. “There were a lot of nights I won $20,000 playing craps,” Hammond explained. In short, it wasn’t enough moolah to lure The Destroyer from the streets.
Drug abuse and gambling debts took their toll, and Joe never resurfaced. But his reputation as the greatest street player in NYC history remains. As a 2018 profile in the Daily News put it, “At 69, Hammond has lost his teeth and money, but certainly not his wit or status on these Harlem streets.”
WHAT THEY SAID
“I can’t believe there isn’t room in pro ball somewhere for all this talent. I’ve never seen so many tricks in one game. If I can run with these guys, I feel I won’t be embarrassed anywhere I play.”
—Billy Paultz
FURTHER READING:
“Meet Joe Hammond” by Stefan Bondy, New York Daily News
VIDEO:
941. NEW JERSEY DEVILS VS NEW YORK RANGERS
EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS
GAME ONE
MAY 2, 1997
CONTINENTAL AIRLINES ARENA
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.89
DRAMA—7.71
STAR POWER—6.07
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.85
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.57
LOCAL IMPACT—7.25
TOTAL: 42.34
“BRODEUR OVER BLUE”
Martin Brodeur was one of the NHL’s all-time great goaltenders, but for a long time, he had mixed results against the Broadway Blues. In his first 25 starts against the Rangers, Brodeur was pulled from the game in seven of them, an incredible rate given his storied career. Marty had some great outings as well over this early span against New York, but the simple fact is that if there was one team that felt comfortable in its ability to defeat Brodeur, it was the blueshirted assemblage that skated across the river.
So in the 1997 playoffs, with the Devils and Brodeur the top seeds, the last team they wanted to see was the Rangers. Naturally, that is what happened, after Jerz took out Montreal in five games (Brodeur actually scored a goal during the series) and the fifth-seeded Rangers whipped Florida in the same number of contests. Brodeur had something to prove when the two teams opened the Eastern Conference Semifinals at Continental Airlines Arena on a Friday night, May 2, 1997.
It was the first playoff meeting between the two teams since they hooked up in the fabled 1994 Eastern Conference Finals. The Devils had won the Cup in 1995, and for the first time, the sellout crowd of 19,040 fans in the Big Airplane wasn’t noticeably pro-Rangers. The visitors wore their alternate jerseys that night, ones that depicted the Statue of Liberty on a deep blue background. Given the contention between the states of New York and New Jersey over exactly who governed Lady Liberty, the logo choice was appropriate.
New York goalie Mike Richter was mostly Brodeur’s equal between the pipes. The only goal he allowed came seconds after a stunning stop on Bobby Holik, a power-play goal by Scott Neidermeyer on a give-and-go with defenseman Shawn Chambers. “Usually, the first goal isn’t the game winner,” noted Neidermeyer. But given how Brodeur was playing, it was enough. He stoned the Rangers for two periods, and then turned up his level of play for the final twenty minutes.
In the third period, Marty made a pair of spectacular saves, one on a face-off dot blast from Doug Lidster, another on a point-blank rebound from Shane Churla. He also stymied Patrick Flatley and Esa Tikkanen. Brodeur cruised the rest of the way, and New Jersey popped in a late empty-net goal. The Devils took Game One, 2-0. It was Brodeur’s second shutout of the playoffs, on 21 saves, and his second straight against the Rangers. The tide had turned on New York—now it was Brodeur’s turn to dominate.
The Rangers lost a Game One for the eighth straight series, amazingly enough. They came back to win five of the previous seven, so they were confident enough, even though Brodeur seemed to have solved his fear of Blue at last.
AFTERMATH
Make it six of eight for the Rangers. They stormed back to sweep the next four games against New Jersey to stun the top seed and advance to the conference semis. Richter was the hero, pitching a pair of shutouts and surrendering just three goals in the last four affairs. Things changed in the following series, however, as Richter was beaten for twenty goals in a five-game defeat at the hands of Philadelphia.
WHAT THEY SAID
“We have to get desperate again—quickly.”
—Colin Campbell, Rangers head coach
FURTHER READING:
Rangers Right Back In A Hole Again After Game One by Joe Lapoint, The New York Times