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An Agonizing Timeout: NYC Playground Ball at a Standstill

Rims have been removed and courts locked up as the pandemic has brought basketball to a halt in the city.
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New York City, in some form, always has been the center of the basketball universe.

Its college teams such as NYU, Seton Hall, St. John's, CCNY and Long Island once dominated the landscape until the point-shaving scandals of the 1950s reduced these schools to something far less imposing, watered down the NIT and prevented the NCAA tournament from ever coming back.

What remained untouchable were New York's legendary playgrounds. 

Rucker Park. Dyckman Park. West Fourth Courts.

They've been ultimate destinations for anyone who has fancied him or herself as a serious "baller" from anywhere in the country and wanted confirmation of their skills.

The burgeoning pandemic has now done the unthinkable -- effectively closing  down a hoop mecca that never closes.

As Sports Illustrated's Kevin Armstrong reveals in the video report, playground basketball has come to a complete standstill while the New York area remains a hotspot for the contagious virus.

Rims have been removed.

Courts are chained up.

People have died. 

A decade and a half ago, Nate Robinson, Brandon Roy, Spencer Hawes, Jamal Crawford and Will Conroy together traveled all the way from Seattle to New York simply to get a taste of a hoop scene that drew turn-away crowds, including the occasional music entertainer or TV or film star.

Others from the Northwest city had been there before and yet others have gone there since.

This particular contingent of Seattleites, most of them University of Washington players and eventual NBA players at some point, had to experience the NYC playground for themselves, willing to risk injury simply to join in the fun.

"I played at Rucker Park because it is the proving ground for every hooper," Robinson wrote on Facebook.

Sadly, a couple of former New Yorkers who used the city courts to hone their games and earn college scholarships have fallen victim to the novel coronavirus sweeping the city and ravaging the globe..

Former St. John's player Lee Green and ex-Texas A&M player David Edwards, both collegians during the 1990s, recently died from the disease. They were middle-aged men who playground fixtures much younger.

The world, indeed, feels empty without NYC pick-up basketball playing out around the clock and now guys like these two who were a big part of it.