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The New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs are in the 2026 NBA Finals; in 1970, the year the Knicks were first coronated champions of the NBA, with a team coached by the New Yorker Red Holzman and captained by the Southerner Willis Reed, the journalist Pete Axthelm wrote in Harper’s Magazine, “basketball belongs to the cities—and New York, from its asphalt playgrounds to the huge modern arena that houses the professional basketball champions of the world, is the most active, dedicated basketball city of all.” This edition of the From the Archive Newsletter includes: Axthelm’s report on basketball as a city game; Darcy Frey’s National Magazine Award–winning essay on the sport as a pathway for social mobility at a Brooklyn high school; Charles Bock’s review of two books that interrogate total investment in basketball, from avid fans and young hopefuls; and a story from Jenn Alandy Trahan about a girls’ high school basketball team. To read these articles and gain access to our fully digitized archive, subscribe to Harper’s Magazine today.
A photograph of children playing basketball at Carnegie Playground on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, 1911. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons Read More