Dave's JOINT

Photo courtesy of Nazareth High School.

By David Cordova

In this installment of “The City Game,” we will be talking about the Nazareth High School boys varsity basketball team out of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, as the Kingsmen have been one of the city’s best up-and-coming teams throughout the last two seasons, making the CHSAA “A” division championship game. This season, they will be joining the “AA” division and will be looking to make their presence felt on the Catholic League’s biggest stage.

The borough of Brooklyn has many historic high school basketball programs, as they are known for their dominance on the court. In the PSAL, you have historic powerhouses such as Lincoln, Boys & Girls, Grady, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Robeson, Transit Tech and more. The private, independent schools have Poly Prep. In the CHSAA, there are schools such as Bishop Loughlin, Xaverian, St. Edmund Prep, and lastly, a school known as Nazareth.

Based out of East Flatbush, Brooklyn on East 57th Street, Nazareth Regional High School has been educating students since 1962 and is a co-ed school with an enrollment of 400 students and charges $8,575 in tuition, as of the 2022-23 school year. For many years, the Kingsmen have had plenty of talented players come through the school, such as:

• Mike Dunleavy, Sr. – (Class of 1972) Played collegiate basketball at the University of South Carolina and was a sixth-round pick in the 1976 NBA Draft by the Philadelphia 76ers and played for four teams from 1976-1990. Coached in the NBA from 1988 through 2010 and was the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, Milwaukee Bucks, Portland Trail Blazers & the Los Angeles Clippers. From 2016 through 2019, he was the head coach at Tulane University. In his first season as the head coach of the Lakers in 1990-91, he helped lead them to the NBA Finals, where they played the Chicago Bulls. In 1999, he was named NBA Coach of the Year in the lockout-shortened season by leading the Trail Blazers to a 35-15 record & an appearance in the Western Conference Finals.
• Stewart Granger – (Class of 1979) Led the Kingsmen to the 1979 New York State Federation championship as a senior. Played four years of collegiate basketball at Villanova University from 1979 through 1983. Was selected as the No. 24 overall pick of the 1983 NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Played for the Sixers, the Atlanta Hawks & the New York Knicks and also played in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) and internationally in Sweden.
• Robert Phelps – (Class of 1990) Phelps led the Kingsmen to two CHSAA “B” Division championships as a sophomore & junior in 1988 and 1989, respectively. In his senior class, he was one of the most highly-touted standouts in the city & scored 2,477 points and ended up playing collegiate basketball at Providence College for three seasons and was a part of the Friars’ 1994 Big East championship. He is currently the head coach at Bedford Academy, a New York City public high school, whom he led to a PSAL “A” division championship in 2010, his first season at the helm.
• Darnell Williams – (Class of 1995) A player that made plenty of noise in a high school class that also included players such as future NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury, Todd Myles and Tyrone Grant – all players from the borough of Brooklyn. He went on to play collegiate basketball at Xavier University, where he scored 1,572 career points and led the Musketeers to two NCAA Tournament appearances and one appearance in the NIT.

For more than a dozen seasons, Todd Jamison had the Kingsmen making their presence felt in the CHSAA “A” division, winning city titles in 2012, 2013 & 2018, respectively. After that, future New York City Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Dwayne “Tiny” Morton took over the Kingsmen for one season, in 2018-19, and led the program to the semifinals, before losing to Fordham Prep, which had Duke sophomore forward Kyle Filipowski and his twin brother, Matthew Filipowski, who now plays at Harvard. On that Kingsmen team is LaSalle University junior guard Khalil Brantley and University of Louisville freshman guard Ty-Laur Johnson.

On the coaching staff that season was Gary Ervin, who is known to many in the borough of Brooklyn for his exploits on the court. For those who are not familiar with him, let us introduce you to him. In the early 2000’s, he was a standout at Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, whom he led to back-to-back appearances in the PSAL championship game in 2001 & 2002, and was named the 2002 Player of the Year by Newsday. He would go on to play collegiate basketball at Mississippi State University & the University of Arkansas, before going on to play internationally in various countries and also playing in the NBA D-League (now known as the NBA G-League). For many years, he has also been a standout on the city’s streetball circuit and has won plenty of championships in various tournaments, including Gersh Park in East New York, where he continues to play with S.O.G (Straight Outta Gowanus) to this day.

These days, Ervin has created a second career for himself now that he is retired from playing professional basketball. That career, is coaching. And now, he coaches the Kingsmen. The last two seasons, he has built a record of 43-8 in the CHSAA “A” division. In the 2021-22 season, the Kingsmen went 17-7 and lost in the city championship game.

Last season, the Kingsmen were a force to be reckoned with, as they continued to win and at times, win big throughout the season, that they eventually made it back to the championship game in March, only this time undefeated at 26-0, having beaten every team in their division multiple times and having knocked off a “AA” power in Bishop Loughlin earlier in the season. Throughout the title game against Staten Island’s Monsignor Farrell, the Kingsmen looked like they would pull off what many would have thought would be the inevitable. However, it would not be the case, as the Lions seized control of the opportunity that was presented before them and would emerge victorious and taking the city title, shutting the door on what was a spectacular season for the Kingsmen.

After the game, the players were distraught after seeing the opportunity that they had slip away. However, they graduated six seniors, including guard Juelz Dickerson, who is now playing collegiate basketball at Dominican University, a Division II school in Rockland County, New York, and Andre Prescott, who is playing his postgraduate season at Our Saviour Lutheran High School in The Bronx.

Now, this year’s team has a good group of upperclassmen coming back to help the Kingsmen make a statement. Everything starts with junior forward Halon Rawlins, senior guards Jacob Roman, Tristan Rogers and Elijah Witter, junior guard Joseph Jenning and senior forward Tyler Francis as returning players that played plenty of minutes last season. There are some talented newcomers in sophomores Amar Moody, Jr. and Kaiden Francis, a transfer from South Shore.

The Kingsmen have one of the deepest teams in the city and look to make plenty of noise throughout the season. They will begin their first game of the season at home on Sunday, Dec. 3rd against Cardinal Hayes, last year’s “AA” finalists. This year, they will be competing in the ultra-competitive CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens Diocesan league, which will be a step up from the competition of last year in the “A” division. Instead of playing against teams like Monsignor Farrell, St. Joseph’s by the Sea, Xavier, St. Edmund’s Prep and La Salle Academy, they will now be playing against powerhouses such as Bishop Loughlin, Christ the King, Xaverian, Holy Cross, Archbishop Molloy and St. Francis Prep, which will ensure that there will be no easy games on a nightly basis.

But throughout the summer, they played in various leagues, such as the Conrad McRae Youth League in Fort Greene, Brooklyn & the Smartball Classic up in Harlem, and played against teams in the PSAL and the CHSAA.

Also on the menu for the Kingsmen, will be other matchups from the Archdiocesan division, which houses teams from The Bronx & Westchester County, as they will be playing Monsignor Scanlan on Saturday, Jan. 27th and St. Raymond on Friday, Feb. 9th, with both games being in The Bronx.

Outside of the CHSAA, they’ll be playing against Albany’s own Green Tech Academy on Friday, Dec. 15th, Rhode Island’s own Bishop Hendricken on Saturday, Dec. 30th and will be playing in a tournament in Anchorage, Alaska during the weekend of Jan. 18th-20th.

Another change for the Kingsmen is in apparel: as they have traded in their old Adidas uniforms and are now rocking the Jumpman uniforms, as they are one of five schools in the New York City area that are a part of the Jordan Flight School initiative, alongside Eagle Academy I, Monsignor Scanlan and two other Brooklyn schools in the defending PSAL champions, Eagle Academy II and Canarsie.

This year, the Kingsmen will be coming out with a renewed sense of purpose, as they are on to a new challenge: making their presence felt on the Catholic League’s biggest stage. Their biggest goals will happen in due time, but no matter what obstacles may arise, through determination and teamwork, they will rise.