[09-May/2019, New York]: The league of Staten Island Basketball began initially as the athletic league of Brooklyn. Later with passage of time, this changed to basketball league of Staten Island. It happened because the game migrated across Bridge of Verrazano. The game is held for three times each week and is usually held in a gym that is more than eighty years old. It has always been more like a magnet for the aged players that got exhausted and mentally tired with the gun and run of younger selfish players. Thus, they wanted a comfortable game and the league turned out to be one.

The Basketball Pickup Games, therefore, turned out to be a haven especially for the seasoned but old players that could not bear the concrete pounding in the schoolyards. Managed, nurtured and founded by Craig since all these years, this is not just any league but a lot more than that. Really, it has become a joint group of men that muster together on Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights like the religious zealots that seek the high of basketball wins. The pickup games are controlled and since the past thirty-nine years, more than four hundred players have broken norms so that they could regularly play.

At a recent press meet, Craig Raucher was met up with on being asked about the popularity of the league, he immediately quipped that “More than the league it is the sport and it is each our passions that we have for the sport. There have been few medical emergencies but nothing dampened our spirits. I have loved the game and it is mostly our mental aspect that has made us such a compact group”.

About Craig Raucher
Staten Island League of Basketball was founded by Craig Raucher in the Great Kills at 8 Public School. It is the longest and oldest running group in New York’s system of City School. Players age range between sixty-eight to twenty-six years. Craig himself is a passionate lover of the sport despite all his medical blockades in the form of surgeries.