Published on September 1, 2021 at slamonline.com
Chris Rucker is sitting comfortably in his kitchen, wearing a black tee with the Rucker name scrawled in salmon pink cursive across his chest. He’s explaining over Zoom how he’s been fighting to keep his grandfather’s legacy alive since the Rucker brand’s initial launch in the late 90’s.
Holcombe is the grandfather of streetball. The legendary Rucker Park on 155th and Frederick Douglass Blvd in New York City is named after his incalculable contributions to the basketball community. Even though the hallowed grounds came after Holcombe passed, the Rucker Brand has practically outlived the entire basketball market; their summer tournament predates the NBA’s first game in November of 1946 by just a few months.
Although his grandfather passed away a few years before he was born, Chris fills in the gaps with stories from his grandfather’s contemporaries, from Ernie Morris to Bob McCullough. He knows just how monumental of an impact his grandfather had on the community.
“You always find out how people feel about you after you’re gone right,” Rucker says in August. “I’ve never heard anybody say a negative word about him that knew him back then. That’s probably one of my biggest takeaways whenever I talk to people in general. Just the fact that he was well respected, he sacrificed a lot of himself. He sacrificed a lot in his personal life just to help the community out in any way he could.” (READ THE FULL STORY HERE.)