The Dyckman Basketball Summer Tournament launched in 1990 with a few guys, two hoops, a court, a basketball and some paint.
Today, it’s known as “The Red Carpet of Streetball” and hosts games every night through the summer, packed with hundreds of attendees, including the occasional celebrity.
On opening night of Dyckman Basketball on June 10, the crowd was abuzz as attendees enjoyed shifty crossovers, acrobatic layups, authoritative dunks, emphatic blocks and all of the razzle dazzle that makes up streetball.
At Dyckman Park, located on 4768 Nagle Ave. in Inwood, banners reading “The Red Carpet of Streetball” and “Dyckman” hang over bleachers on each side of the court. There are vendors both inside and outside the park selling Caribbean and soul food, pastelitos, pastries and drinks.
An announcer broadcasts the game live, running up and down the court with the athletes while a DJ spins crowd favorites like El Alfa’s “4K” and Yung Joc’s “It’s Goin’ Down.” The number one train speeds by the park on above-the-street tracks every few minutes.
When asked what makes Dyckman special, Stevens pointed at the subway.
“That, for one. The one train is watching. That’s not in any other park,” said Stevens. Plus, the stakes — and rewards —are high.
“You can elevate your name and your game by really having one good game, you know, going against Division I ballplayers or going against an NBA ballplayer. You can be a regular guy and it could be your night,” he said.
Players get physical and talk trash with each other. Fans use “Ooohs” and “Ahhhs” to respond to missed shots and great plays, shout instructions to players and cheer on their favorites. There are stands and seating areas looped around the court with dozens of people standing unable to park themselves. Security guards encircle the barricades protecting the courts, and conduct bag checks and pat downs upon entry while NYPD patrol cars post up on the street.
“It grew a lot. The crowd has always been the crowd,” Daquan “Lefty” Foggie told THE CITY last Wednesday, who’s been living in the Dyckman neighborhood since 2005 and has watched its rise up close, checking out games every year.
Lefty, a left-handed hooper, will sometimes watch the first game of the day before it gets too crowded. Then he’ll go back home and watch the rest on Clash TV, an app that streams streetball games.
“It brings the community together,” he said, adding that he met a lot of his friends at the Dyckman courts. “We play ball together like 11:30 every morning — almost every day.”
Playing Some B-Ball
Dyckman Basketball has three leagues comprising approximately 97 teams. It includes the diaper league, a youth division of kids ages 4 to 14, high school boys and girls and an adult division that welcomes professionals and NCAA players, which has an open roster of 12 players.
That allows for new additions to join the team, even if it’s just for one game, and that’s how fans get treated to NBA players from time to time. Lance Stephenson, Kyrie Irving, Isaiah Whiteside have stopped by for a game. In the crowd, rappers like Juelz Santana and Jim Jones have attended.
Last Thursday, NBA players Hamidou Diallo, Dennis Schröder, Kyle Anderson, who hit a game-winning shot at Dyckman in 2016, and this year’s NBA sixth man Naz Reid showed up to watch some streetball.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, they just pull up. People always said ‘What’s the best day to come to Dyckman?’ Every day is the best day. You never know who’s gonna show up,” Dyckman chief operating officer Sharon Bond told THE CITY, who rocks a necklace replica of the Sports Emmy Award that Dyckman Basketball won last year with MSG Networks for Best Sports Documentary.
The tournament has grown way beyond its first and only court. The diaper league consists of eight-person teams that play on Courts B and C, a smaller full court and a half court next to a playground. Stevens said he adds portable baskets to create a full court for Court C, where the players aged 4 through 6 primarily play. Court A, the main court, is reserved for competition among high schoolers and adults.
While the model has led to a lot of success for the tournament, there are still kinks to iron out, including making sure everyone has bathroom access.
Last summer the parks department announced the completion of a $9.5 million project to renovate Monsignor Kett Playground and the basketball courts in Dyckman Park. They added cushioned surfacing to the basketball courts, permanent steel bleachers and a scoreboard.
However, they still have not finished construction of the comfort station, or bathrooms. That leaves attendees having to find a restaurant nearby or peeing in the street.
The comfort station is anticipated to be completed in March 2025, according to a statement from a Parks Department spokesperson.
Before the renovation, Dyckman Basketball paid to add bleacher seating, a scoreboard and rims for the tournaments. Those changes brought another big shift: The scoreboard and lights, now controlled by the Parks Department, shut off at about 9:35 p.m. “Before, we played ‘til midnight,” said Stevens.
On opening night, “with 26 seconds to go in the game, 36-35, the scoreboard went out, cut off. Then at 9:40, the lights cut off,” he added.
“So when the lights went out. It kind of startled everybody because they’re not used to that. They’re used to the park being open till 10, 11 o’clock,” he added.
Going Pro
Ken Stevens, an assistant coach for Hostos Community College’s men’s basketball team, is a co-founder of the Dyckman tournament, along with Michael Jenkins and Omar Booth. Growing up at the Dyckman Houses in Inwood, they had been playing basketball in the neighborhood for years but often searched for competition in other parts of the city.
In 1990, they grew tired of traveling to tournaments in Harlem or Brooklyn and decided to host their own.
Inspired by playing in six-feet-and-under tournaments, Stevens, Jenkins and Booth organized their first group tournament with a $50 dollar entry fee per team to pay the referees. It featured six teams with a roster of 12 players who brought their own shirts and shorts.
“We built this. I started this tournament with — and I’m not even patting myself on the back, I’m just giving you an idea — with me spray painting the lines. Me and two other older gentlemen [Booth and Jenkins] put up the rims and coached the kids,” said Stevens. “We founded this together. Six teams, bring your own shirts, fifty dollars to get in.”
The brand has grown by leaps and bounds from there. In 1999, Converse, the American shoe company, became the tournament’s first sponsor. Then Marcus Camby, the New York Knicks starting center at the time, became the first NBA player to check out the games.
Dyckman teams like Dominican Power included future NBA players Francisco Garcia and Charlie Villanueva.
Spin-offs began, including when Dyckman regulars went on to organize their own tournament fondly known as “The Deegan,” for being near an exit off the Major Deegan Expressway, at Fordham Landing Playground.
In 2005, Stevens received a call from another sponsor wanting to get involved. It was Nike, the powerhouse athletic apparel company that has become synonymous with basketball.
Stevens, concerned that the autonomy of the organization would be stifled, originally dismissed the idea of a partnership. However, Nike representatives assured Stevens and his colleagues that they would retain that creative freedom in regards to tournament organizing, as well as designing gear and jerseys. They signed a sponsorship deal that year.
In 2011, Nike asked if Stevens was interested in having it host a team. They wanted the best streetballers and featured local legends like Adris De Leon, aka “2 Hard 2 Guard” and Mike “Ant” Glover, who played professionally overseas.
The team dominated — so much so that Nike placed a bounty on them. Any group of five who could dethrone them would win $5,000. Hoopers flocked to play them until Team Oohway and Team 914, which featured former NBA player Michael Beasley, finally took them down.
More high-profile NBA players began to take notice and soon were competing at Dyckman under the Nike brand, including one of the league’s best players, Kevin Durant, who played in 2011.
That’s when the red carpet of streetball emerged, when Nike literally laid out a red carpet for Durant.
“You’re playing on the red carpet of streetball. And that kind of name stuck with us,” said Stevens.
