Why Victor Wembanyama should play at Rucker Park

SAN ANTONIO — A day before the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs met in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, I spoke over lunch with “Inside the NBA” analyst Kenny Smith about the series. We talked about the Knicks’ victory in Game 1 and the impact their postseason run has had on New York. But most of our conversation was about Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs’ third-year superstar.

Smith repeated the platitudes about the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama and predictions of him becoming the best the NBA has ever seen.

Wembanyama is an exquisitely prepared dish — a mixture of size, skill, intelligence and drive. But I wondered if there was a missing ingredient that would complete the Wemby dish and bring it to perfection.

In the 2025 offseason, he traveled to the Shaolin Temple in the Hunan province of China for conditioning, meditation, physical endurance and mental strength training. This offseason, Victor should make a less ambitious but equally significant trip: a second pilgrimage to Rucker Park in Harlem, New York.

This time, he should play there.

The day before he was drafted first overall by the Spurs in 2023, Wembanyama visited the Rucker and put up some shots alongside other draft prospects. But the park was almost entirely empty, and Wembanyama had not yet become the Knicks’ main foe in the NBA Finals, so the visit didn’t carry the significance a return this summer would.

From Walt Frazier and Wilt Chamberlain to Julius Erving, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant and Shaquille O’Neal, many luminaries of the game have made the pilgrimage to the legendary park. They came to show they had not lost connection to urban roots of the culture. One year, Durant played and scored 66 points.

The young superstar has visited multiple arenas and played on multiple continents, but he may not fully grasp why New York is called the Mecca of basketball. The urban roots of the City Game extend to Africa, the African diaspora to Europe, Asia, and South America. New York, in all of its diversity, is the Mecca of basketball, and the Rucker is its spiritual center.

“I think it’s New York City, not just the Rucker. There’s an unconditional love for the sport that nowhere else can teach you,” Smith said. “Chicago has great players, but the entire city does not live and die on basketball. It’s the difference between the way your aunt loves you and the way your mom loves you. That’s the difference he would see, and it definitely would make him a different basketball player.”

Smith said whether the Spurs win or lose the series against the Knicks, Wembanyama would be welcomed if he came to Rucker Park. “They would respect him if he came, but he’s public enemy No. 1 right now.”

Ultimately, Smith feels Wembanyama would become legendary with a stop at Rucker Park. “He would become such a different showman playing in the park,” Smith said. “He’d put on a show. Could you imagine if he said, ‘On this play, not only am I going to make it happen but I’m just going to embarrass you?’ Instead of just blocking a shot, he would ball up his fist and punch the ball into the stands. ‘I’m not doing this to win. I’m doing this to embarrass you.’”

I reached out to Smith because he is, as I jokingly call him, a New York City basketball chauvinist. A Queens native who grew up in the LeFrak City apartment complex, Smith was a high school legend at Archbishop Molloy, played college basketball at the University of North Carolina and won two NBA championships during a 10-year NBA career with the Houston Rockets.

Smith began playing at the Rucker when he was 13 years old. In his view, the Rucker is a metaphor for the totality and intensity of basketball culture that engulfs New York. That intensity is reflected in how the city embraces the Knicks.

“Every five blocks in New York City, there’s a basketball court. There’s not a basketball court every five blocks here [in San Antonio],” he said. “In New York, you walk 20 steps, there’s a court, there’s 94 feet carved out, so somebody can go play. Everyone thinks that they know the game, or they do know the game, because they have an appreciation.

“If Wemby goes into the Garden and scores 60 points, gets 30 rebounds and 20 assists, the Garden will give him a standing ovation — even in the NBA Finals — because they love basketball first.”

Rucker Park and the history of the players who played there encapsulate that love. For a player of Wembanyama’s stature to make the pilgrimage would add to the Rucker legend; the emerging superstar would follow in the footsteps of giants.

He would witness and be part of the chaos. That and diversity are what make New York New York. Knicks legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier remembers witnessing that chaos more than 50 years ago, when he made his first appearance at the Rucker as a member of Willis Reed’s team. Reed was the captain of the Knicks, and Frazier was a high-priced rookie.

“I knew nothing about the Rucker; I was naive,” Frazier once told me about his introduction to the Rucker. “I never saw anything like it. It was like a circus, a video game. I saw all these people and all the hoopla and stuff, and I couldn’t believe it.”

Wembanyama certainly came through a robust basketball regiment in France, and I’m sure there’s a streetball scene in Paris.

“But it’s nothing like New York,” Smith said. “There’s no place that’s comparable.”

Holcombe Rucker, who died in 1965, established his summer tournaments in the 1950s. Eventually, the Rucker tournament began attracting the best amateur players and a number of premier professional ones. The tournament became a proving ground for aspiring young athletes and a place where established players showed that they had not lost their connection to the soul of the game.

In 1974, this playground at 155th Street was renamed Holcombe Rucker Park.

The Rucker court has been the subject of at least three films: “Above the Rim,” “On Hallowed Ground,” and “The Real: Rucker Pro Legends and Fathers of the Sport,” the latter two being documentaries. Smith recalled filming a basketball movie with Adam Sandler called “Hustle.” The 2022 film was shot overseas, and during one scene, Smith told the director he had it all wrong.

“It’s New York, you got to have the people on the fence,” he remembered telling the director. “It’s a nighttime scene, you have to have the cars with the lights on, because we didn’t have lights.”

As we continued to talk about the series and particularly about Wembanyama, Smith reiterated what made him special: his ballhandling skills, versatility and dexterity.

“He’s one of the most unique talents that we’ve ever seen,” Smith said. “There’s nothing with a basketball dribbling-wise that he couldn’t learn or couldn’t do.”

Wemby is a guard in a center’s body, and that’s when it clicked: That’s why he needs the pilgrimage to New York City and the Rucker.

“Where is the land of the guards?” Smith asked. “New York City. That’s why you’re thinking he needs to be here. He needs to come to the land of the guards. He’s a 7-foot-4-inch guard.”

New York City is legendary for the guards it has produced (we’ll include current Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, who was born in New Jersey). The style of play they represent is singular — innovative, relentless, hard-driving, with the ability to create space where none exists.

Wembanyama is doing that at 7-4. There’s a guard in his soul, and that soul can be nourished and fortified with a pilgrimage to Rucker Park.

He doesn’t need validation or exposure. Wembanyama simply needs to complete the circle and connect with the deep basketball tradition and continuum Rucker Park and Harlem represent.

He would benefit by breathing that rarefied air.