The unmistakable sound of Tom Thibodeau laughing at my expense echoed across the South Bronx pavement, where the groundbreaking for the Earl Monroe New Basketball Renaissance School took place a few blocks away from the 3rd Avenue-149th Street 2 Train station on Wednesday.
The school’s founder and board president, Dan Klores, was midway through a compelling opening speech with more than a half-dozen NBA fixtures seated on the stage behind him when he began to use props for a demonstration.
The prop of choice was a variety of balls he vaulted one at a time into the crowd until, as luck would have it, he picked up a baseball, scanned the crowd, then made eye contact with me.
Klores lobbed a perfect pass in my direction, and with one hand holding an umbrella on an overcast day, and my dominant, right hand free, I stuck my arm out, only for the ball to bounce off my palm into the dust.
Thibodeau’s bellow ensued, as did short-lived embarrassment: In front of Knicks royalty — John Starks, Allan Houston, Walt Clyde Frazier, Tim Thomas, and, of course, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe — as well as NBA commissioner Adam Silver, three-time All-Star Julius Randle, and former NBPA executive director Michele Roberts, I proved exactly why I am a writer, and not an athlete.
This, of course, is why we all gathered in Mott Haven on Wednesday, and why Earl Monroe’s second namesake school serves not just a purpose, but could help save the youth in The Bronx, where Frazier cited the rising number of kids dropping out of high school before graduation.
Everyone has hoop dreams, or football dreams, or baseball, hockey or soccer aspirations. But in the NBA, there are only 450 guaranteed contracts to go around in any given season. The numbers never lie.
The numbers, however, skew far greater in careers associated with basketball.
According to Silver, for every one NBA player, there are 500 NBA or basketball-related jobs — jobs that could go to kids in the South Bronx, where the New Renaissance School is building a curriculum to funnel students directly into NBA opportunities, even if the job title isn’t starting shooting guard or backup center.
After all, not everyone can catch a baseball, or run a 40-yard dash in four seconds, or kick a soccer ball, or shoot a basketball — but in this instance, some might know how to write or tell a story.
Or how to examine an injured shoulder, how to crunch numbers to avoid the salary cap, or even how to organize basketball media members to gather for a non-basketball event.
Just because you can’t catch a ball doesn’t mean ball can’t be life.
Earl Monroe’s New Renaissance School aims to instill that thinking into the next generation of South Bronx kids who hope to one day pave their way into a career in sports, without actually going pro in the sport itself.