Earl Monroe, former Knicks celebrate basketball high school built for careers beyond the court

NEW YORK (AP) — Earl Monroe’s squad that won it all in 1973 is no longer the last New York Knicks team to win the NBA championship.

The legacy of those early 1970s Knicks lives on though — and Monroe sees it now in a school that has his name.

The Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School, the nation’s first high school with a curriculum designed around a career in basketball, formally opened its permanent building in the South Bronx on Thursday, with Monroe and fellow Hall of Fame teammate Bill Bradley taking part in the ceremony.

Students at the school, which opened in 2021, can major in basketball topics such as analytics, broadcast journalism, print and digital media, coaching, law and marketing.

“Everybody can’t play basketball, even though everybody wants to,” Monroe said. “But there’s so many other aspects of sports and the game that you can be involved in without being a sports person. So I think this is an excellent way for people to be involved with this sport and still get the same satisfaction as scoring the basketball.”

The school was created by filmmaker Dan Klores and had former NBA Commissioner David Stern, who died in 2020, as its first trustee. Opened at another site while the 69,000-square foot building was being constructed, the school that has a broadcast studio and a podcast studio will have its third graduating class this year.

The Knicks also won the 1970 NBA championship behind players such as Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere and Dick Barnett. Monroe joined them for the second title after being traded from Baltimore.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who was a Knicks fan, noted the popularity of the players and the success they had off the court — Frazier became a Hall of Fame broadcaster, Bradley was elected to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey — and said they made people want to be involved in aspects of sports.

“We were inspired by those players, by Bill, by Earl and by their teammates,” Silver said.

Monroe’s Bullets team ended the Knicks’ first title reign in the 1971 Eastern Conference finals. He’s hoping they can go back-to-back this time.

“Certainly the fact that you’ve won, obviously it makes it so that you understand that you can win again,” Monroe said. “So I’m quite sure that they’re coming into this thinking that we’re No. 1, and I’ll tell other people to prove that we’re not.”

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