Basketball does a good thing in the Bronx

At the opening of the Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball Academy

BY HENRY ABBOTT

With help from 80 or 90 of his closest friends and advisors, Dan Klores opened a high school designed to prepare students for the jobs in basketball that are not playing.

At the ribbon-cutting in the gym of the Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School today in the Bronx, NBA commissioner Adam Silver noted that for every player in basketball, there are 100 more jobs off the court. Are there really 45,000 jobs in and around the NBA? 

Maybe. Many of those who showed up in support walked that walk: Silver, NBA Players Association executive director Michele Roberts, and most of the Knicks’ front office: Scott Perry, Leon Rose, Allan Houston, and William Wesley. They stood like sentries to the right of the stage, facing more than a hundred ninth graders who would like their jobs.