Opening Day is upon us for the Yankees in The Bronx, while the regular season is coming to a close — with the excitement of the playoffs looming — in Manhattan for the Knicks.
You may have noticed a recent connection made between pinstriped history and the current Knicks squad, with trade-deadline acquisition Josh Hart donning a No. 32 pinstriped jersey before a game last week.
Hart was honoring his great-uncle, Yankees legend Elston Howard, the first Black player to play for the organization, in 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“We just had the jersey made, kind of a sentimental piece for my family and myself. Now I gotta work on getting my dad one,” Hart told Sports+ earlier this week. “It’s something that’s very neat to me, and it’s a good story behind it. Being in New York now, where he played, it’s really special.”
Hart’s father, Moses, is the son of a sister of Arlene Howard, the 12-time All-Star catcher’s widow, and Moses Hart Sr.
Elston Howard, the 1963 AL MVP, played in 12 All-Star Games in his 13 years with the Yankees.Getty Images“It really is wonderful,” Cheryl Howard, Elston’s daughter, told Sports+ in a phone interview on Wednesday. “We all are very proud of Josh. He’s just a lovely young man, and it’s really great that he’s now in New York, where my father played and coached for many, many years. If my dad were alive now, he’d be very proud, too.
“It’s such a neat thing that he’s a New York Knick. It really is great. Someone sent me the picture of Josh wearing Dad’s jersey, and I’ve noticed that the New York fans have really embraced him already, too. It’s like he’s just fit right in and they’ve accepted him wholeheartedly.
“I hope he sticks with them and it lasts. It would be wonderful if he gets a chance to stay.”
The Knicks’ PR staff coordinated with the Yankees’ marketing, promotions and special events department, headed by Debbie Tymon, to get a No. 32 jersey — which is retired in Monument Park — to Hart.
Hart, who can become a free agent this summer, when he is expected to decline his $12.9 million player option for 2023-24, said he’s been to Yankee Stadium once before while in town ahead of the 2017 NBA Draft.
It certainly would seem to be a natural fit to have him throw out a first pitch at some point this summer, especially if his hope to be re-signed by the Knicks to a multi-year extension comes to fruition.
Josh Hart paid homage to his great-uncle heading into a game last week by wearing a custom-made jersey adorned with Elston Howard’s number.Twitter/@nyknicks“Right now I’m focusing on the season and the playoffs, and when I go home, I’m just focusing on my wife and making sure everything is going well with her and her pregnancy,” Hart said. “At some point I hopefully will get there. It would mean a lot to me.”
Hart never got the chance to meet Howard, who died in 1980, 15 years before he was born. But he’s said that he’s often heard tales from his father about attending his uncle’s games.
Howard’s former Yankees teammate Roy White also told Sports+ that he hopes the Yankees can “make that happen” to host Hart and his family at a game this season.
“I was not aware that they are related, but I think Ellie would be really pleased,” White said Wednesday in a phone interview, using a nickname for Howard. “It’s a great accomplishment to be successful in pro basketball, so I think he’d be very happy about it and proud — no doubt about it — that [Hart] is with the Knicks.
“Ellie was such a role model for me, coming up with the Yankees. He taught me about being a professional and being a Yankee, how you conduct yourself. He was a great influence on me, and there’s no doubt he was an incredible athlete.
“So I think it would be great if the Yankees somehow could arrange for this young man to throw out a first ball or give him some recognition, especially because it would get people talking about Ellie at the Stadium and put a spotlight on his legacy again. Ellie was such a great player for the Yankees and a great asset and a great person, so recognition for the both of them and the linking of the generations between the two New York teams would be terrific.”
Howard, who was the first Black player in Yankees history, helped Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle win the World Series in 1961 and ’62.Getty ImagesAnother longtime Yankees player and coach, Willie Randolph, grew up in Brooklyn as a fan of the Knicks’ championship squads of the 1970s, and said he understands why the hard-working Hart already has endeared himself to the Garden faithful.
“Man, Ellie would love this story, he’d be super-proud,” the former Mets manager told Sports+. “Ellie was some kind of athlete, played all kinds of sports growing up, and was such a tremendous competitor. He’d be super-proud to know that someone in his family has made it, and doing it in New York? Are you kidding me?
“I’m a big Knicks fan, and Hart is the kind of player New York loves. Hard-hat, lunch-pail, blue collar, whatever you want to call it. That’s what the ’70s teams were about, and I was so sad to see Cap [Willis Reed], passed away last week, but Willis, Clyde [Frazier], [Bill] Bradley, Earl the Pearl [Monroe], those were my guys. And then Patrick [Ewing], [John] Starks, Oak and Mase [Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason] in the ’90s, same thing.
“Hart brings that same type of energy, that intensity, that unselfishness, too, so it’s not surprising at all that the fans have embraced him like they have.”
Howard biographer Ralph Wimbish — a longtime former sports copy editor at The Post — noted in a phone conversation this week that the 1963 AL MVP also was recruited to play basketball, football and track by multiple Big Ten schools before deciding to embark on a baseball career with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1948. The gymnasium at Vashon High School in St. Louis, his hometown, has since been named after Howard, as well.
“I never knew that about Ellie, he never talked about himself like that,” White added of Howard’s earlier basketball exploits. “Guys would always joke around with each other, and we did have some guys who played basketball. Ellie would chime in that ‘I would block your shot every time if you tried to make a move on me.’ That was the only indication that he’d played, but I don’t remember ever seeing him play basketball or shoot around.
Josh Hart hopes he can return to Yankee Stadium, and visit his great-uncle’s monument, after the Knicks season comes to a close.Jason Szenes for the NY Post“I know Gene Michael was a great basketball player, he played it, along with baseball at Kent State. And I played way back then in the late ’60s and ’70s in the offseason in charity games and things like that. But it doesn’t surprise me to learn that about Ellie. He was a tremendous athlete, even when they moved him from catcher to left field without any issues. You don’t see too many catchers who can take a stab at the outfield and perform well.”
Despite his Yankees connections, Hart, who grew up in Maryland, is a Cardinals fan thanks to his family’s origins. He even recently asked, and was happy to learn, that I and another Knicks beat reporter voted for one of his favorite players, Scott Rolen, who will be inducted later this year into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
“I never saw Ellie on the court, but I follow the Knicks as much as I can and I’m glad to see they’re doing well, and that his nephew is there,” said White, who has a memoir coming out on April 11 entitled “Roy White: from Compton to the Bronx,” with co-author Paul Semendinger. “I have another reason to be watching now.”
Triple threat
In what now appears a footnote to a much bigger Knicks concern, Julius Randle’s injury likely will cost him a shot at a surprising place in Knicks history.
Before suffering a sprained left ankle in Wednesday night’s 101-92 win over the Heat, Randle had drained 218 3-pointers this season.
Incredibly, that vaulted Randle past John Starks (217, 1994-95) for second place in made 3-pointers in Knicks history for a single season.
Julius Randle is averaging a career-high 8.3 3-point attempts per game and ranks fifth in the NBA in 3-point attempts.Robert Sabo for the NY PostAnd the club record that teammate Evan Fournier set one year ago of 241 is within his reach, though if Randle misses even one of the Knicks’ final five games, it likely costs him any chance of getting it.
Randle, whose 636 3-point attempts this season rank fifth in the league, needs to bury 24 more treys to establish the new organizational standard.
It’s part of a remarkable transformation: Randle made 168 combined 3-point shots over his first five full NBA seasons, not counting the one game he was limited to as a rookie with the Lakers in 2014-15 (due to a broken leg suffered in his NBA debut).
Randle’s increased 3-point volume also helped raise a substantial monetary donation of $880,000 — from himself and outside matches — made this week to the Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School’s literacy enhancement program in Pelham Bay.
Dallas buyers club
Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic have some work to do if they hope to reach the playoffs and send their first-round pick this year to the Knicks.Getty ImagesThe Mavericks’ slide in the West since acquiring Kyrie Irving from the Nets last month has been fascinating in an impossible-to-look-away sort of way, but the Knicks have a vested interest in Dallas’ free fall not lasting all the way through the end of the regular season.
The Mavs’ 2023 first-round pick the Knicks control from the 2019 Kristaps Porzingis trade is top-10 protected. Dallas currently sits close to the demarcation line at No. 11 in the West after falling to 8-14 since the Irving trade Wednesday night in Philadelphia, and sit at No. 11 in the NBA’s draft lottery odds.
Ideally for the Knicks, the Mavs would land the No. 11 pick in this year’s lottery, but if Mark Cuban’s club finishes in the top 10 of the draft, the selection would convey to next year. The pick also has top-10 protection in 2024 and 2025, and if it does not convey within those three years, the Knicks would receive a second-round pick.
According to Tankathon, the Mavericks have a 2 percent chance of landing the first pick in this year’s lottery and an 9.4 percent chance of moving up into the top four spots.
As long as Dallas stays clear of the top 10, the Knicks will have an important asset to either draft another young player or use the pick as a valuable trade chip this summer.
