EBC Entertainers Basketball Classic
By the early 1980’s, the Rucker league was declining as N.B.A salaries escalated and pro teams wary of injuries on asphalt forbid their players from participating. In 1982, Mr. Greg Marius, a former rapper, founded the E.B.C. as a league where rap groups could play each other. He began inviting good pro and amateur players. The EBC is what has kept Rucker Park alive for years after the original Rucker tournament and various leagues shut down. All the famous stuff you’ve heard happen at Rucker Park from the 1980’s up through the present, that’s the EBC. The EBC hosts 2,000 fans a night. The tournament runs from mid-July to mid-August and lines for admission, which is free, begin forming as early as noon for games that start in the early evening. Fans sit in concrete bleachers, stand six or seven deep around the court or climb fences and trees for views. Others lean out of windows from the Polo Grounds Houses across Eighth Avenue. Everyone who plays at Rucker Park is given a nickname by the game announcers. Mr. Rucker’s league became a model of sorts for others around the country, including Philadelphia’s famous Baker League. Rucker has long had the highest profile and deepest legend of all of New York’s famous street-ball playgrounds, including the West Fourth Street Cage in Greenwich Village and the Garden in Coney Island.
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