‘Bobbito’s Book of B-Ball Bong Bong’ illuminates why we love the game

Ay yo! Attention all basketball players and fans, cultural aficionados and casuals, lovers of the slick handle and the written word, appreciators of the concrete jungle and the underdog’s journey. Bobbito Garcia has something special for y’all.

This column is not about a normal book, and this is not a normal column, because Garcia is not normal, and neither is my relationship with him. So if you’re looking for an impartial critique of Bobbito’s Book of B-Ball Bong Bong!: A Memoir of Sports, Style, and Soul – this ain’t that. This is a conversation between basketball brothers, and if you don’t like it, meet me at the park and check rock. OK? Bet.

Now that you understand the situation, I will say, by the authority vested in my jump shot, that Bong Bong is essential to understanding the genesis of global basketball culture. I will declare, as a battle-tested bucket-getter, that Bong Bong illuminates why we bleed for the game. And as an accredited English major, I’ll insist that Bong Bong belongs in the canon of basketball literature, next to The City Game by Pete Axthelm, Heaven is a Playground by Rick Telander, Hoop Roots by John Edgar Wideman, and very few others. 

“I hope that my book is able to put a seed in people’s minds about ways that a ballplayer who’s not NBA, who’s not D-1, not nothing, can create a movement,” Garcia explained during a recent phone conversation.

“It’s a b-ball memoir, but it’s about family, it’s about upbringing, it’s about lifestyle, it’s about culture,” he said. “It’s about New York.”

Garcia, a proud Puerto Rican, was born in New York City in 1966. His memoir, published on July 1 by Akashic Books, describes a burning-hot passion for the game instilled in him by his father and older brother. That flame grew at the nearby playground on 99th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, which came to be known both as Goat Park, because it was the home of Earl “The Goat” Manigault, and Rock Steady Park, for the legendary b-boy crew.

Garcia’s game developed through the 1970s and early ‘80s, back when the NBA Finals were broadcast on tape delay and some pros needed summer jobs to pay their bills. But as the professional league struggled for relevancy, NYC basketball was mixing with the birth of hip-hop and sneaker culture to create the formula for a bongdrillion-dollar future.

Writing in an entertaining style loaded with the trademark slang that made him the voice of the NBA Street video game, Garcia provides vivid descriptions of watching and balling with countless players, from elementary school nobodies to mythical figures like The Goat himself. The primary narrative is Garcia’s inspirational evolution as an athlete, which is made more unusual by his being a Puerto Rican of ambiguous racial identity.

Literally playing 365 days a year, the 5-foot-10 Garcia overcame physical limitations to play professionally in Puerto Rico; tour Japan, Africa, Europe, and Latin America; carve his name into NYC playground basketball history; and create his own tournament, Full Court 21, that has been played in 40 more international locations.

Along the way, Garcia offers an eyewitness – and to my knowledge, unprecedented – written account of New York City places and players that created the modern game. It’s a one-man weave of history that explains why NYC, even though it no longer produces much NBA talent, will always be the Mecca of basketball. 

“New York had a lock on style, which was very coded, very clandestine,” Garcia said. “And then by the ‘90s, the curtain is open, and by the 2000s, there’s no more curtain. The rest of the world can see what we’re doing, hear how we talk, dress like we do. All those influences and really special nuances that only were happening out in the playground now become pop culture, whether it’s seen in the NBA or whether it’s seen in apparel and sneaker brand marketing … we’re basically seeing a globalization of New York City style.”

After graduating from Wesleyan University, where the coach was prejudiced against his style of play and inflicted heartbreaking humiliations on the sensitive young ballplayer, Garcia returned to the NYC blacktop and got truly vicious with it. The handle and jumper became lethal, layered with tricks for days that made defenders look inebriated. (I stumbled a few times guarding him, but on my mama, my hands never touched the ground.) That roar you hear from the crowd when Anthony Edwards makes a defender propose? New Yorkers like Bobbito made that a thing, way before the internet.

All the while, Garcia was becoming a legend in more games than Pee Wee Kirkland. He co-hosted the seminal radio show “The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show,” which introduced unsigned or unknown artists like Nas, Biggie, Wu-Tang Clan, Eminem, the Fugees, and Jay-Z. He wrote the first sneaker column, hosted the first sneaker TV show, and wrote his first book, Where’d You Get Those? NYC’s Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987. His accomplishments as a documentary director, DJ, and independent creative force are many, but let it be said that the only time I considered ditching my iPhone was after Garcia’s Google commercial dropped.

I met Bobbito in 1997 at Vibe magazine, where I was the new managing editor and he wrote the “Sound Check” column. He came to my office looking for nine months of back pay. When I stood up to give him a pound, he peeped my height and retro basketball sneakers – I think they were Adidas Top Tens – then asked, “Yo, you play ball?”

Bobbito adopted me into his basketball family, and we bonded while competing several nights per week in multiple tournaments. In 2003, Sean Couch and I sat in Bob’s kitchen on 14th Street and asked him to partner with us on Bounce, the first playground basketball magazine. And when Bob launched Full Court 21, I traveled city to city, even crossed international borders, just to get a rep.

After rocking with Garcia for almost three decades, reading Bong Bong made me appreciate how he continues to push the envelope: maintaining a fiercely indie methodology while attracting huge corporations, never compromising his voice or perspective, and staying in basketball shape as he approaches age 60. Bong Bong is also a reminder that Nuyoricans were side by side with Black folks in the fusion of music, sports and style now known as hip-hop. And the book makes me marvel at how enormous our game has become, how much it has changed – and how it’s finally returning to its outdoor roots.

“Now you have kids who are literally going park to park, bringing a camera, posting it to YouTube and Instagram. They’re getting the ads, they’re making money playing ball. I love that,” Garcia said. “Before, you could become a famous ballplayer if you caught 50 at Rucker or 35 at Dyckman or whatever. You would get seen, but you weren’t necessarily going to make money. Now we have a pivot.”

There has been much talk recently about how the soul of the game is suffering – NBA athletes playing so fast and so much that their Achilles snap; college players chasing the bag from team to team; kids learning to play like robots under the influence of trainers and the internet. Within the last week, a half-dozen people sent me Jay Caspian Kang’s gloomy essay in the New Yorker discussing these developments. At this moment, Bobbito’s B-Ball Book of Bong Bong is also a ray of sunshine – a reminder that even the omnipresent algorithm can’t constrain the simple, joyous freedom of bouncing a ball.

“Basketball at its very core is about community, about bringing people together,” Garcia said. “Prior to social media, if I was going to the court and just doing the spider drill, nobody’s seeing that outside of people walking by. But now I could do a spider drill and I got like 86,000 followers. So that has a lot of potential to inspire people on a regular basis. Someone’s going to be like, ‘Yo, you almost 60 years old. I’m going to go outside and start doing that drill, too.’

“For decades now, I’ve been just thinking creatively out the box – how do I represent myself, my community, my culture, authentically and naturally, while giving back to others? This book is just another cog in that.

“What happens next? I don’t know what the next move is. I’m just going to keep on playing ball and allow the rock to guide me to where I’m supposed to go.”