Legendary Columnist Peter Vecsey to be Honored for Life’s Work by New York City Hoop Hall
- Jake C
- 4 hours ago
- 10 min read
Peter Vecsey has been saluted for his successes before. The iconic hoops writer who put together an exceptional career spanning over 50 years is in multiple Hall of Fames for his contributions to round ball.
In 2009, he received the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Award for Print Media. Vecsey too is a member of the Archbishop Molloy High School Hall of Fame - he shares that alma mater with St. John’s men’s basketball coaching legend Lou Carnesecca, NBA veterans Kenny Anderson, Kenny Smith, and Brian Winters, and ABA and NBA veteran Kevin Joyce. Vecsey is also a member of the Rucker Park Hall of Fame. In 1971, he began coaching in the Rucker Park Tournament with the late Butch Purcell, who was his assistant coach and lifelong friend. Purcell was a staple of New York City hoops, recruiting pro players like Dean Meminger and Dick Barnett to play in pick-up games at the 14th St. Y.
Two Rucker titles were won in four years with Vecsey at the helm with rosters that had Julius Erving, Charlie Scott, Billy Paultz, and ABA great Ollie Taylor. Erving, then a star at the University of Massachusetts, was the star of Vecsey’s early teams. In 1980 and 1981, Vecsey, with his team sponsorsed by Pony, also went two-for-two with squads that included Sam Worthen, Louie Orr, Larry Kenon, Mike Riordan, Joe Dupree, Manny Leeks, and Bob Love. A legacy embedded in the New York basketball culture.
Vecsey turns 83 in July. After leaving the New York Post in 2012, he briefly had a column on Patreon from 2017-19, where he broke the Paul George-Los Angeles Lakers’ tampering story. The last column that Vecsey wrote was in April of 2019, on the passing of Celtics legend John Havlicek.
Previously living in Shelter Island in Suffolk County, Vecsey now enjoys the beauty that lies within upstate in Saratoga Springs. He doesn’t want to travel much now - he did plenty of that in his career. His recent NBA-related excursions included the NBA All-Star Weekends in 2022 (Cleveland) and 2023 (Salt Lake City), where he conducted interviews for episodes of his Hoop Du Jour podcast that he did in tandem with the National Basketball Retired Players Association. Among his guests on different episodes were Bob McAdoo, George Gervin, Spencer Haywood, Michael Ray Richardson, the aforementioned Scott, and Nancy Lieberman. Other episodes of the podcast, beginning in 2021, included interviews with Oscar Robertson, Rick Barry, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, and Isiah Thomas. Haywood, Scott, and Lieberman, in Salt Lake City, were the final three that he conducted.
Contentment is now Vecsey’s comfort, enjoying the well-earned fruits of his pen, paper, and typewriter labor in serene Saratoga. The walls of his apartment are adorned with legends from
all walks. Framed portraits of The Notorious B.I.G. and the late actor Michael K. Williams hang in his living room. Then there are items that cover both of his sport passions, basketball and baseball. One wall is a Brooklyn Dodger shrine with a cherished item being a signed Jackie Robinson replica jersey, penned by Robinson’s widow Rachel and former Dodger pitchers Carl Erskine and Ralph Branca. There are photos too of Hall of Fame hurlers Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. There is a Robinson autograph and Robinson cartoon, the latter done by famed cartoonist Bill Gallo. There is another cartoon done by Gallo of Pete Maravich, and photos of Vecsey with Erving (the best man at Vecsey’s wedding), Jordan, Bird, Barry, Tiny Archibald, and others. There is a dedicated family wall, too, that includes a photo of Vecsey and his father George. One wall also has photos of Vecsey with his late son Michael. A champion owner of many rescued dogs over the years, the 82-year-old has a wall dedicated to his many canine friends. Creative names, like Oliver Twisted and Bro D James, are representative of his creative writing style. Saratoga Springs is calm and cool, which the veteran columnist loves.
“I live right in town,” says Vecsey. “Everything is accessible, everything stays open.”
The upstate oasis offers beauty in all months, with its famous horse racing in the summer. The streets are walkable, and folks are friendly. With a population of just under 29,000 people, Saratoga Springs is located 183 miles north of Manhattan, roughly three hours from the hustle of the big city where Vecsey made his name.
But towards the end of February, the venerable sportswriter will make a trip back down to the City, for a Feb. 24 event at the Midtown Hilton where he will receive yet another honor.
On that date, Vecsey will receive the first ever Howie Evans Memorial Award for Lifetime Contribution to Basketball at the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame’s 2026 Enshrinement Gala that will honor a class that includes playground legend Pee Wee Kirkland, former NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury, and WNBA legend Sue Bird.
Vecsey, one of eight founders of the NYC Basketball Hall in 1990, was inducted into it in 2001. The award that he is receiving is named after the late Evans, who was the Sr. Sports Editor at the New York Amsterdam News. Evans, like Vecsey, was a coach in the Rucker League. He also worked for over 20 years in the New York City Board of Education Public School System.
Getting his bearings at the New York Daily News in 1960, Vecsey first earned his keep as a statistician, a position that his father helped him get. George worked nights on the Daily News’ sports desk, and also worked for a time as the sports editor for the Long Island Press. Peter, a high school student at the time, was working full-time, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., five days a week. “That’s how it started,” Vecsey recalls of the genesis of his career that began in his junior and senior years of high school. “And here I am.”
Vecsey attended Hofstra University, and later was drafted into the military in 1965, going to South Carolina, followed by Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif., to the Army Airborne School, and then Fort Benning and Fort Bragg before months of training to be a Green Beret. He served from 1965-67.
In his scribing beginnings, Vecsey worked on sort of a freelance basis - “if I went and saw something and wrote a feature, they would print it,” he says. He started covering the ABA in 1967 after he got out of the Army. An integral part of the ABA’s history, Vecsey was at its 50th anniversary reunion in Indiana in 2018. There, he gave a speech paying tribute to his late friend and ABA great Mel Daniels and other ABA legends that had passed. His social media is filled with remembrances of the league that he covered first - Daniels, Roger Brown, Slick Leonard, Dan Issel, and others. His first two big NBA assignments were the 1974 Finals between the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics and the 1975 Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Washington Bullets. He maneuvered to the New York Post in 1977 and was “gifted”, in his words, an NBA column. He and baseball’s Peter Gammons were the first columnists to have exclusivity to one sport. “All of the newspapers had to adjust”, says Vecsey of the time.
Along the way in his career, Vecsey helped legendary play-by-play announcer Mike Breen and longtime New York Yankees play-by-play announcer Michael Kay, both alums of Fordham University, make their bones in broadcasting. Breen and Kay worked worked together on a Fordham radio show while attending the school, co-hosting midnight on Sundays. Vecsey appeared on multiple occasions, and to this day Kay credits Vecsey for getting him his first job out of college, at the New York Post. Breen was aided by Vecsey in getting to NBC when company boss Dick Ebersol asked Vecsey about him. Current NBA insider Marc Stein also falls under the Vecsey learning tree.
In 1986, Vecsey traveled with the Boston Celtics, widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, teams of all-time. He scrimmaged with them and recalls guard Jerry Sichting berating him for not passing half court in time. Sichting, Rick Carlisle, and Bill Walton was the dinner crew that Vecsey dined with. Vecsey is also tight with Erving going back decades, and the journalist spent much time with the Sixers of the early 1980s. During that time, he became cool with R&B great Teddy Pendergrass. An inside track not permissible to writers today.
From 1990-92, Vecsey was at USA Today, and during the 1990s was a fixture on the NBA on NBC, TNT, and later into the new millennium NBA TV. For decades, he operated as basketball's preeminent columnist and insider. His Hoop Du Jour column was a must read. He broke the sale of Julius Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers in 1976 and the Charles Barkley trade from the 76ers to Phoenix Suns in 1992. He was the first to report the tragic death that was New Jersey Nets star Drazen Petrovic's fatal crash on the Autobahn in 1993. The story was on the front page of USA Today.
In 1994, Vecsey went down to Orlando for a column on Michael Jordan when His Airness was trying his hand at baseball. The columnist used his shrewdness and knowledge on the inside to break stories in the latter half of the decade such as the news of the Vlade Divac-Kobe Bryant trade (live on TNT air during the 1996 Draft), Golden State Warriors forward Latrell Sprewell choking head coach P.J. Carlesimo in 1997, and live on NBC air in 1997 also broke the story that the Orlando Magic players had voted for head coach Brian Hill to be fired. In 2009, he broke the story of Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton having guns in the Washington Wizards’ locker room. Breaking the Lakers tampering story in 2017 and a 2017 guarantee that LeBron James would be a Laker at the dawn of summer 2018 were proof that he still had the tools in his arsenal.
The entire Vecsey family bloodline is accomplished. Peter’s mother, May, was also at the Long Island Press, where she was the society editor. Older brother George, born in 1939, is a widely respected and renowned writer who has authored many books on baseball, including a biography Stan Musial: An American Life, published in 2012. George also co-wrote country singer Loretta Lynn’s memoir Coal Miner’s Daughter and the autobiography of Chinese activist Harry Wu. Niece Laura (George’s daughter) had bylines at one time or another in the Albany Times-Union, Seattle Post-Intelligence, and the Baltimore Sun. Nephew David (George’s son) is a columnist for the New York Times. Chris Vecsey, five years younger than Peter, celebrated 50 years of college-level teaching in 2025. Chris, who is described by Peter as “the foremost authority on Native American history”, began teaching at Colgate University in 1982 and helped establish the school’s Native American Studies program.
Daughter Taylor was at one time a freelance reporter for the New York Post, managing editor of the East Hampton Star, and is currently the editor-in-chief for a Schneps Media publication on Long Island. Peter’s son Joseph is a comedian and actor who has opened for and acted alongside Adam Sandler. First-born son Michael, who passed away at age 54 in 2023, was an adjunct college professor.
In 1990, Vecsey along with Evans, renowned amateur scout Tom Konchalski, Five Star Basketball Camp founder Howard Garfinkle, former New York University great Bob Williams (who was former Knick Dean Meminger’s mentor), former New York Daily News sports editor Bill Travers, former Brooklyn College basketball player Larry Pearstein, and Cecil Watkins, who worked for 18 years at the NBA as director of community and special programs and assistant supervisor of officials, founded the NYC Hoops Hall. The inaugural class included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Red Auerbach, Connie Hawkins, and Holcombe Rucker. In the latter years of the Rucker Tournament, Evans became very involved in it. He and Vecsey had a good relationship.
"We were cool," recalls Vecsey.
Alongside Kirkland, Bird, and Marbury, other inductees into the 2025 class include Ron Naclerio, Maurice Hicks, Shelly Schneider, Chuck Stogel, John Paquette, the 2024 New York Liberty and the 2023-24 and 2024-25 NYU women’s basketball teams.
Kirkland, a graduate of the former Charles Evans Hughes High School, played collegiately at the historically-black Kittrell Junior College and Norfolk State University. At Norfolk, he played alongside future Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Dandridge, and led the team to the 1968 CIAA Title. Kirkland is one of the best point guards to hail from New York City and one of the greatest playground players of all-time.
One of the best women’s players in history is Bird, a native of Syosset, Long Island who was a 13-time WNBA All-Star and four-time champion. She garnered five WNBA 1st team nods and three assist titles throughout her career. At the University of Connecticut, she was in 2002 both the Associated Press and Naismith Player of the Year and was a 2-time NCAA champion (2000, 2002).
Marbury was a star at Brooklyn’s Abraham Lincoln High School and Georgia Tech University before a 13-year NBA career in which he was an all-star twice and twice a 3rd team All-NBA performer. He averaged 19.3 points and 7.6 assists per game in 846 career games, and after his NBA career was over ventured to the Chinese Basketball Association where he was a 7-time CBA All-Star and 3-time CBA champion.
Naclerio is the boys basketball coach at Bayside, Queens’ Benjamin Cardozo High School. He is the all-time winningest coach in New York State public school history, breaking the previously-held record of 754 wins, in 2016. Duane Causwell, Rafer Alston, and Royal Ivey are among the NBAers that have played for Naclerio.
Hicks was a 2016 inductee into the Loyola University of Maryland’s Athletics Hall of Fame. He was the program’s first ever All-Conference selection and is the 10th leading scorer in program history with 1,494 career points. Hicks coached Harlem’s Rice High School (his alma mater) boys basketball team for 16 seasons, leading the program to five New York State titles and compiling a record of 352-86. At Rice, he coached future St. John’s star Felipe Lopez and 4-time NBA All-Star Kemba Walker.
Schneider ingrained himself in the local basketball community, creating an organization called Consumers in 1957, an AAU-sanctioned organization that helped teenagers develop their basketball skills. He also served for 15 years as a coach, athletic director, and physical education teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School.
Stogel served as President of the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association, while Paquette has recently retired as the Senior Associate Commissioner for Sports Media Relations for the Big East Conference, a position that he held for 35 years. He is also a member of the College Sports Communicators Hall of Fame.
The 2024 Liberty finished that WNBA season with a 32-8 record and defeated the Minnesota Lynx three games to two in the 2024 WNBA Finals. The 2023-24 NYU women’s basketball team went 31-0 and were top ranked by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and D3hoops.com. The Violets defeated Smith College (Northampton, Mass.) 51-41 in the 2024 D3 National Final. The 2024-25 squad also finished 31-0, and defeated Smith once again in the National Final, this time by a score of 77-49.
The New York City Basketball Hall of Fame is an all volunteer organization that preserves the history of New York City basketball. Per their website, the Hall plans to have a physical location and put on annual NYC high school all-star games throughout the city. Naclerio serves as an ambassador, as do former WNBA MVP Tina Charles and former NBA players Kenny Anderson and Mario Elie. Part of the Hall’s mission says:
“Through social media, an actual physical location, relevant memorabilia, membership participation, community outreach and development, The New York City Basketball Hall of Fame has the powerful potential and the dedicated individuals to revitalize a sense of pride across the entire city and beyond.”