Life Lessons Learned At Rucker Park

When she first became aware of Rucker Park, Nancy Lieberman had no ambitions of joining its Hall of Fame, as she did in August of 2022. She just wanted to measure herself against top-flight competition.

“I was in junior high and going into Far Rock (Far Rockaway High School) and people said, ‘The best players play at Rucker Park in Harlem’ and I'm, like, ‘What's Rucker Park?’ So somebody told me and I took the A-Train from Far Rockaway into Manhattan.”

A few train changes later, she found herself in a basketball world much different from any she had previously experienced.

“I walked in the park one day and these guys are like, ‘Little girl.’ I'm like, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Do you know where you are?’ I said, ‘Yeah, do you?’ And they just started laughing and he says, ‘Are you sure you know where you are?’ and I said, ‘Is your name Rucker?’ And he goes, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Good, it ain't your park and I want to play. And I need you to help me because I want to be really good.’”

The teenager quickly figured out how she could help herself get on the Harlem court.

“I learned that the first way to get into the game is you have to make a foul shot. It didn't matter how big, strong, how many dunks you can do, if you couldn't make a foul shot you'd have to sit. It could be 30-40 minutes. If you won the first game, you automatically played the second game and then you sat. So it was a strategy and I'd go home to Far Rockaway and I’d just stand by myself and shoot foul shots because I knew that's how I would get into the game.”

Once she got her chances, she showed the guys she had game. They began to call the Jewish girl from Long Island “Fire” because of her flaming red hair and, no doubt, her competitive spirit – she would hit an opponent in the face with the ball if she needed to create space and experienced her share of altercations. But she earned the ballers’ respect, and eventually they did exactly what she had asked of them: they helped her.

“We just made a pact that Thursday night I'd be on the 5:42 train. They would meet me at the station and they'd walk me into the park.”

She rewarded them in her own way once the games started.

“I'd come down and just throw it up behind my back and somebody would catch it and dunk it and the guys loved it.”

Lieberman’s playing style fit well with a Rucker Park ethos that rewarded flair. Every summer, the Rucker Pro League would feature NBA players and coulda-been-NBAers in legendary streetball matchups. The future Basketball Hall of Famer developed her game on that court the same way other greats of the game like Wilt Chamberlain and Julius Erving had. She did so well enough to earn induction into the Rucker Pro Legends Hall Of Fame. The most important lessons she learned there went far beyond basketball, however. They came at a time when broad-based recognition of the value of a culture like Rucker’s and of women excelling at sport had not yet developed.

“I'm just so grateful to the guys who championed me. Oh, did I mention they were Black guys who cared about a little White girl? And they protected me and every step of the way they told me what I could be instead of people yelling ‘You're stupid, you're dumb, you're not gonna make anything of yourself.’”

With the help of her time on Harlem’s legendary playing surface, Lieberman overcame the doubters back home. She now devotes much of her life to building facilities like Dream Courts? to help young people of all backgrounds use basketball to find common ground the way she did at Rucker Park.

Written by Rush Olson