What March Madness? Way Too Much Sanity in New York
This basketball season in New York is mighty bleak on both the pro and college fronts. The Knicks are hard to take, but this city used to be a breeding ground for great college players. Now it looks like the well has run dry.
The fall of St. John's six seasons ago sounded the death knell for local college ball. Now we are dependent on smaller schools like Manhattan or Iona to (maybe) sneak into the NCAA and squeak out one win. They are not getting anywhere near the Sweet 16, never mind the Final Four. This is the city that gave this game its face, and we are now the dungeons of basketball. Basketball has left New York like Elvis has left the building. And it doesn't look as though it is coming back anytime soon.
The rest of the country has caught up and passed New York by. The South and the West are producing outstanding high school basketball players. Guys like Jason Kidd from the Left Coast learn the real way to play ball and school undisciplined players. High schools outside of New York actually make basketball players get an education. Our ballers are no longer considered the cream of the crop. Most are labeled head cases and babies and are not at the top of a lot of schools' lists.
I asked various sports writers and basketball fans why this is. No one had a good answer. But the fact remains that you would have to go out to New Jersey-specifically, to Seton Hall-to find a "local" team with any real hope of winning more than one game in the NCAA tournament.
Some even argued the University of Connecticut is a local team. UConn is 130 miles from New York. That is not local. East Coast, yes, but not a New York area team. We are stuck with smaller colleges with little or no national cred.
So we can embrace small. Watching Columbia University get killed in the Ivy League has its charms; and Iona, Fordham and Manhattan manage to pull out a few surprise wins. But if you were around in the mid-'80s, when St. John's was always in the mix of the top schools, this is humbling.
One high-school coach told me that this city does not produce the players we used to because most New York high-school players are incomplete and obsessed with being a pro. They rarely even think about college. And then when the reality sets in that they are not pro material at 18, they have to scramble to even get into a college because of poor academics and lifestyle choices.
The answer may be found in the playgrounds of New York. The popular street game now in New York is one kid taking on five guys. It used to be hard-fought team battles were played in New York schoolyards. Now the game has become one man shows. No passing, no boxing out. Just you and the ball, taking it to the iron. It makes for good penetration players, but it is so one-dimensional and so easy to stop by players grounded in fundamentals.
New York high schools are an academic joke, so even the kids that can play struggle to meet the minimum SAT scores required for Division I schools. This city once produced the best players in the world. Like Jabbar, Billy Cunningman, Nate "Tiny" Archibald, Jayson Williams and Mark Jackson. Now we produce good players, but men that do not win championships, like Marbury and Artest, known more for their immaturity than basketball leadership.
So March Madness rules outside of all-too-sane New York. We all bet on the pools, but I feel a pain of regret that it is always some team far away from here that will rule college ball. We have the players and the raw skill; we just need better high schools and college programs that are legitimate to attract players.
But college is all about growing and changing. One can't blame a kid for wanting to see the rest of the country. And our local colleges are not set up to compete with the Duke's and the North Carolina's of the country. America has always resented New York. In this argument, at least, they have won. We are the country bumpkins of college basketball.