Nets Cut Ribbon On Gowanus Basketball Court Named For Slain Teen

GOWANUS, BROOKLYN — A group of Brooklyn Nets players joined city officials and community members on Friday to cut the ribbon on major upgrades to basketball courts at a Gowanus playground named after a slain teenager.

The renovated courts at Nicholas Heyward, Jr. Park, on Wyckoff Street between Bond and Hoyt Streets, were funded with $324,000 from Barclays Center Cares and the Brooklyn Nets Foundation.

"Nicholas Heyward, Jr. loved playing in this park," Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Marty Maher said, "and his spirit continues to live on here through the community programs and activities organized by his namesake foundation."

Heyward, Jr. lived in the Gowanus Houses and played on the courts growing up. He was 13 in September of 1994 when he and his friends were playing cops and robbers with orange-tipped toy guns. A housing police officer shot him in the stomach and he died.

"Nicholas was only 13 years old when he was murdered by the police," his father, Nicholas Sr., said Friday. "It was a very painful moment for me and it’s been a very painful 23 years."

The park was renamed for Heyward, Jr. and every year on his birthday, August 26, the park hosts a basketball tournament and toy exchange, where toy guns can be swapped for books and other toys.

"This park right here, we have been doing basketball tournaments in memory of Nicholas" Heyward, Sr. said. "And we have a lot of other things we wanted to achieve. I’m so honored it has finally been done."

Two courts were completely repaved, painted and color-sealed and are now ADA-accessible. Fencing, benches, nets, hoops and backboards were all replaced, and drinking fountains with water bottle-fillers were also installed.

It's the first major renovation to the park in more than 25 years.

Several Nets players, including D'Angelo Russell and DeMarre Carroll, along with Nets coach Kenny Atkinson and General Manager Sean Marks attended Friday's ribbon-cutting.

You can read more about the Nicholas Naquan Heyward, Jr. foundation here.

All photos by Marc Torrence, Patch Staff