Original Old School: A New York Tradition

[MattRodriguez]

You’ve heard plenty about point guards coming up from the Brooklyn streets. But no one’s story is quite like Booger Smith’s.

Originally Published in SLAM 130

First, from NOYZ: “It was the night of May 6, and hell was breaking out all over the courts of the NBA. Ron Artest ran after Kobe and got thrown out of the Lakers-Rockets game. Lamar Odom was yapping up a storm in the same game and caught a tech. Over in the East, Rafer Alston slapped Eddie House in the head, earning a one game suspension for his odd outburst. What do the evening’s miscreants have in common? Queens, baby! What no one in the “MSM” was hip to was that these players were obviously honoring the real King of Queens, our friend Matt Caputo, who was wrapping up his full-time stint here at SLAM. But we knew what was up. Good luck at the Daily News, bro/dude/son/yo…”

Words Matt Caputo

Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn is home to what they call “The World’s Most Fabulous Cheesecake.” But it’s not for everyone. Today, Ed “Booger” Smith, who was the subject of the film Soul in the Hole and was later immortalized on a ’97 Sports Illustrated cover, skips the cheesecake and goes straight for a glass of Hennessey.

In the summer of ’93, Danielle Gardner set out to document the streetball culture of New York City. She originally wanted to profile three of the City’s most promising guards at the time—God Shammgod, Rafer Alston and Booger, who could make even the most difficult sequences on the court look effortless. Instead, Gardner was so captivated by Booger’s life as a prodigy who practically raised himself, she decided to make Booger and his team, Kenny’s Kings, the subject of the film.

“I think that when I said that if I didn’t make the NBA I’d be a drug dealer, people got scared of that,” says the now 33-year-old Booger. “But it was a real story. I mean, that’s what I was going to do. Did they want me to lie and say I was going to be an architect or something? I don’t regret saying it. She just told me to be myself, but I never really liked getting too much attention.

“The movie was cool though,” adds Booger, pulling the mahogany liquor to his thin face. “They didn’t know that I was hustling from the time that I was 9. I never disrespected basketball. But on the other side, I had to do what I had to.”

Growing up in a single-parent home in the Tompkins Projects in Brooklyn, Booger never met his father and had a sometimes-turbulent relationship with his mother. He rarely attended class and spent some nights sleeping on the park benches that lined the project walkways. He struggled in school, but his teachers and deans changed his grades so he’d be eligible to play basketball. Despite being named All-City as a junior, Booger dropped out of Westinghouse HS after three years. With little direction in life, for basketball or anything else, Booger’s heart and smile always seemed to make people want to help him.

“Booger is one of the nicest kids in the world, but he really always had to take care of himself. When he came to live with me, he was, like, 16 years old,” says Kenny Jones, who was Booger’s unofficial guardian for a large chunk of his early life. “When we did the movie, I thought it was something that would help get him exposure. I think in a lot of ways, he was afraid of success.”

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