ALBERT KING COMES TO RED HOOK’S MICCIO CENTER

The Brooklyn Nets held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Red Hook’s Miccio Community Center on May 4th to celebrate renovations, including new gym equipment they donated, after the center’s fitness room was damaged by Hurricane Ida in 2021. The Nets worked together with Good Shepherd Services, which runs the Miccio Center.

The work was done as part of the NBA’s 75th anniversary celebration and included providing treadmills, a bike machine, weights and racks, benches, and installing three murals.

“We have been working with the Miccio Center for ten years now,” said Mandy Gutmann, the executive vice president of community relations for BSE Global, which is the parent company for the Nets. “Ever since the Nets came to Brooklyn in 2012, we’ve done all types of events together. We’ve done free basketball clinics and hosted youth games and when we learned that the Miccio Center was damaged during Hurricane Ida, we knew that we needed to help.”

Roland Knight Sr, the Program Director of the Miccio Community Center, spoke about the importance of the work and the new equipment in the fitness room.

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“We’ve had to go through a lot of devastating things, whether it was flooding, having to close our program, not having enough heat, or not having enough air conditioning to keep the program going,” Knight said. “Then the pandemic happened and we had to figure out how to keep our door open in some kind of capacity for the community, so we gave out food and PPE (personal protective equipment.)

“Then we had a visit from the Brooklyn Nets with players here and it was announced that our room was being renovated. I was very emotional about it because I knew this is what we needed. Our weight room was completely lost and our equipment was old and dilapidated. These renovations are a great honor and they present a great opportunity for our youth.”

Some of the kids who come to the Miccio Center were at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and were the first ones to get to try out the new equipment. They also got to meet Albert King, who spent the first six seasons of his NBA career with the Nets.

King grew up in Fort Greene (along with his brother Bernard) and played for Fort Hamilton High School. He then spent four dominant seasons with the Terrapins at the University of Maryland and his number 55 jersey was retired by the school.

“The Brooklyn Nets are a big part of the community and being from Fort Greene, I’m always proud to represent what the Brooklyn Nets are doing,” King said. “I grew up playing in the playground, and you’d play in the morning, you’d play in the afternoon, you’d play when it was raining. You played because you loved it and it was just the thing to do. And it kept you out of trouble! And if I had to pick one memory that stands out, it was being drafted to the NBA back in 1981, but it was always great to just play basketball at any level.

“Exercise is so important, not just physically, but mentally too. Having an organization like the Nets that gives back with a facility like this is something that I think the younger people here will remember forever. Now they have a great place to come and exercise. The Nets do a lot of great things and whenever they call me, I’m available. It’s always nice to see organizations give back because they want to, not because they have to.”

Brian Abate