Tag: Tiny Archibald

Archibald’s storied basketball career started in New York City on the city’s famous playgrounds. Coming out of the Bronx in the 1960s, Archibald displayed skills molded by taking on other streetballers in many of New York’s famous parks, including Rucker Park, where he developed a knack to score and facilitate. “What I remember him always talking about was the New York playground legends,” said Cedric Maxwell, Archibald’s teammate with the Boston Celtics from 1978 to ’83. “Guys that he played with and he always talked about — Joe Hammond ‘The Destroyer’, Pee Wee Kirkland — all those guys out of the city that played down in the Rucker. I kind of lived vicariously through him when it came to New York, because he’d always tell me stories about different places that he’d go to in the summer. In my mind, he took me down 42nd Street so many times, and I had never really been there.”