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Source: Jim McIsaac / Getty

It’s always bigger than just basketball.

One of the NBA’s greatest players, Earl Monroe, is proving that feat once again by making sure today’s youth know there’s more to basketball than simply tossing a ball into a hoop.

The Knicks legend — who played on the championship team in 1973– has finally opened up the Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School on Parkview Avenue in the Bronx, NY. Monroe drove home the point that so many more people behind the curtains make whatever happens on the court possible.

“You know ,when you take the sports people, and you take the lights down, there’s a hundred people behind the scenes that are making it happen. And that’s for these kids,” Monroe said.

The opening of the school is so important to the culture of basketball that even NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was at the event and told the group of high schoolers that for every player in the league, there are 100 jobs connected to pro ball.

The idea of building the school came to thought eight years ago, and Brooklyn-born, award-winning filmmaker and playwright Dan Klores is happy it’s finally here.

“We’re a specialty high school not for the playing of basketball but for all the professions surrounding it: Broadcast journalism, print media, analytics, being an agent, law. Business that’s pretty special. That’s what sets us apart,” Klores said.

The doors opened on August 30 for an inaugural 110 ninth-graders that live around the city with complete enrollment capped at a total of 440 students.

For now, the school is located in a former Catholic school but will move to its permanent 69,000-square-foot Mott Haven home in just two years.

At The Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School Students Learn About the Business Behind Hoops  was originally published on cassiuslife.com