The coronavirus pandemic has put all sports on pause. New York City has a historic city basketball culture and that to has been halted. Legendary parks are closed, hoops haven been taken down, and some lives have been lost.
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00:00They say ball is life, and that is the case in New York City, as basketball has come to
00:09a halt, sort of.
00:10For more, I'm joined by Kevin Armstrong for this edition of The Daily Cover.
00:14Kevin, can you walk me through a little bit about what's going on with the basketball
00:18culture in New York City right now?
00:20Yeah, the city game has come to a complete halt.
00:24There are a number of basketball rims around the city that have been taken down.
00:28The parks are closed, Rucker Park, Dykeman, West Forth.
00:32The rims are all down in those legendary playgrounds.
00:36And coronavirus has also claimed a few lives, Lee Green among them, a former St. John's
00:42player.
00:43So the basketball community in New York is essentially mourning, as it's the epicenter
00:48of the epidemic at this point.
00:51You know, and anyone who's ever played on those courts would know how tough those rims
00:54can be.
00:55So it must have been quite an endeavor to both take them down and to get the true hoopers
01:00out there to stop playing.
01:02Yeah.
01:03You know, there were teams dispatched across the city, essentially within each borough.
01:07The parks department assembled these groups that went around, and whether it's screwdrivers
01:12or, you know, any number of tools that they're using to get these rims that aren't always
01:18friendly.
01:19Plenty of unforgiving rims out there, too, and really a sign of the, you know, a mark
01:24of the city over the years in terms of how many people are, all you need is a rim and
01:29a ball, you know, to go out and play in those city parks.
01:33Have there been people trying to find some sort of workaround?
01:35Oh, no doubt.
01:38You know, there's people, any day in the city, you'll walk in, you can see milk crates on
01:43telephone poles or alternate side parking signs are removed and a backboard and a rim
01:49are put up.
01:50All that continues, and there are, you know, still rims up and there are still parks that,
01:55you know, kids can get into, but you have to look long and far before you find them
02:00in most neighborhoods.
02:01Yeah, we want people to be safe, but we do hope that basketball and life as we knew it
02:06can resume at some point.
02:08Kevin, appreciate your time, as always.
02:10My pleasure.