Rucker Park · Harlem

Each one,teach one

1950

A tournament to keep Harlem’s kids in school

Holcombe Rucker ran playgrounds for the Parks Department and had one rule: each one, teach one. His summer tournament gave Harlem’s kids somewhere to be and something to prove, and he checked their report cards before he checked their jump shots. Some 700 college scholarships came out of it.

Three boys at an iron fence in Harlem, 1943, photographed by Gordon Parks

1965

The pros come uptown to play in his name

Rucker dies in 1965, not yet forty. His protégés Bob McCullough and Fred Crawford start a pro league in his name, and every summer the best in the world come to 155th Street to find out whether Harlem’s own can guard them: Wilt, Kareem, Dr. J, Tiny Archibald.

Wilt Chamberlain in a Harlem Globetrotters uniform, 1959

1970

Harlem swears Joe Hammond scored 50 on Dr. J

Nobody filmed it and the box score is gone. Ask ten people who were there and you get ten versions, but in every one The Destroyer walks off with fifty. He turned the Lakers down and never played a minute in the NBA. He never had to. Harlem had already seen him.

Julius Erving, Dr. J, in a New York Nets sweatshirt, 1975

1974

His name goes on the gate

The schoolyard on 155th Street, opened in 1956 as P.S. 156 Playground, becomes Holcombe Rucker Park. The kids he coached asked the city for it. He had been gone nine years.

Neighbourhood kids at the gate of Holcombe Rucker Park, under the Polo Grounds Towers (generated picture)

1982

Greg Marius starts the EBC

A rapper from the Disco Four turns a challenge between rap crews into the Entertainers Basketball Classic. Within a few summers it moves to Rucker, and the entertainers bring the NBA with them. In 2002 Kobe Bryant shows up with three rings, and the MC names him on the spot: Lord of the Rings.

Courtside at a Harlem summer game in 1982: a red Kangol, a velour tracksuit, a boombox, a layup (generated picture)

2003

Jay-Z’s team against Fat Joe’s
The lights go out
It never tips

August 14, 2003, the EBC final: S. Carter against Terror Squad, and the whole city waiting for it. At ten past four the Northeast blackout takes the power. The game is never played, and it has only grown since.

2011

Durant scores 66
Not even the record

August 1, 2011. The NBA locks its players out, and Kevin Durant comes uptown with the team from D.C.’s Goodman League and scores 66 against the Sean Bell All-Stars. The EBC record, 68, still belongs to Steve Burtt Jr.

The renovated court at dusk, empty, the lights on, the Polo Grounds Towers behind (generated picture)

2021

A new floor
The same summer

Greg Marius dies in 2017, and the city names the court for him. In 2021 the NBA players’ union rebuilds it: new hoops, new bleachers, a mural by A$AP Ferg. It reopens on October 9. Every June, Harlem comes back to the fence.

2025