64/60 Sports

Sixty-six.

Rucker Park. Famed the world over for its basketball games. Legends of the game, both urban and national have all put their skills on display here. You have to be good just to get time on the court. The games and performances that have taken place there are the very thing that gave rise to the ‘street ball’ craze that we have become witness too in recent years.

Fancy ball handling, dunk contest-esque jams, and of course trash talk all are commonplace at The Ruck. You could even argue that the current pro game owes its identity to the style that was born on the New York City court.

The atmosphere is an animal in and of it’s self. It’s as much a part of the games at the park as the crossover and a windmill 360 dunk. It’s now commonplace for games such as these to have a hype-man, promoting the action and barking out taunts and accolades worthy of a Def Jam recording. It’s really a spectacle. Plenty of ooohs and awes. Plenty of gyrations and bumping in the crowd. Some plays result in absolute pandemonium on behalf of the crowd and their subsequent loss of motor skills. They go nuts. They live vicariously through the ballers on the court. If a player performs great, it’s almost as if in their minds they did. They talk more garbage post play than the players. They take full credit.

The names are far too varying and noteworthy to go into here. But, the latest of these was Kevin Durant. And what he did was simply drop 66 points on the hallowed ground.

Now, don’t think this is the equivalent to dropping double deuce threes at your local park in a pick up game. Rucker Park is not your average street ball pick-up game played in cities across America. This is not punks who wear baggy shorts and think they got ‘handles’. This is not dudes who just got off work from the local mill and come down to the park on Sunday afternoon and shoot uncontested 3’s and had some high school glory. These are not the guys you would pass in the halls during school and knew they were better than your varsity team but never played. This is not old guys hanging on to past glory. While I have an immense love for my beloved ‘S-Curve’ and playing ‘Wall Ball’, 31^st and Oakland attracts better games than Central Park and the ‘Y’, but it’s no Rucker.

Everybody from Rap Moguls to NBA Greats ply their trade there. Urban legends that have never played in the league but are still better than half the world become gods here. It’s guys who played D1 and some pro ball, but for whatever reasons, no longer do. Point is, games at Rucker are not just fancy dribblers and dunk artists. These guys are the truest since of the phrase ballers. And these guys are whom Kevin Durant embarrassed during the recent, and world renown, Entertainers Classic.

Durant, while playing for the DC Power, had 23 points at the half. After that slow start, if you can even call it that, in the second half he was just scoring at will and shooting over everyone’s head with a smoothness about him. No different than 90% of his NBA games. Kevin Durant is just that kind of player. He’s silk. The Hype guy Hannibal certainly knew it was special. The crowd knew too. In the second half every touch Durant got, you could hear the anticipation and the buzz of the crowd wondering what they would witness next.

Durant, in route to dropping his 66, went 9-11 from three-point land. He rattled off 4 in a row that brought the Rucker crowd to a frenzy, which including stopping play as they mobbed Durant on the court. Durant soaked it in. He knew what he had done. He knew what he was doing, and more importantly, he knew what he was about to become.

Kevin Durant may never, although that is a HUGE stretch at this juncture, win an NBA ring. But, for one night, there was no doubt he was the best in the world.

The All-Time single game points record is held by Joe Hammond, a street-ball legend known as ‘The Destroyer’ with 74. In the EBC tournament in which Durant took part, the mark is 68, set by Mark Burtt, Jr. in 2007.