Is Boogie Fland the Next Legendary New York City Point Guard?
The New York Times
In some ways, the prodigy now starring for Arkansas in the N.C.A.A. tournament is an urban basketball archetype. But this is not the same old story.
The 5-year-old boy was a fixture on that New York City playground basketball court. Almost every day, he and his father would go to the Booker T. Washington schoolyard on West 108th Street. They played for hours, but his father, an accomplished New York City high school player himself, insisted they stay until the boy hit 100 shots — 25 from four different spots on the court.
“Hitting those shots wasn’t hard for him,” his father recalled. “It was harder to get him to leave.”
It is an origin story befitting a fabled basketball legacy, a string of point guard prodigies emerging from the playgrounds of New York City: Stephon Marbury, Nate “Tiny” Archibald, Dwayne “Pearl” Washington. That boy on West 108th Street had a cool nickname of his own: He is Johnuel “Boogie” Fland, and he might be New York City’s next great point guard.
Now a freshman at the University of Arkansas, the lowest-seeded team left in the N.C.A.A. tournament, Fland has a chance to prove that one of the most enduring basketball myths lives on.
“The New York City point guard is not dead,” said Kenny Anderson, the former Archbishop Molloy point guard from Queens, who played 14 years in the N.B.A. and is considered by some to be the best New York City high school player ever. “Boogie is keeping the line alive. He’s one of the best we’ve had in a long time.”
