NY Times · Dec 28, 2024
Breaking Was Supposed to Break Out in 2024. It Didn’t.
B-Boy Phil Wizard (Philip Kim of Canada) took home the gold at the Paris Olympics. But he was far from the biggest story.Ken Swift has never dribbled a basketball to a beat. Growing up in the Bronx, he never darted for touchdowns while music thumped. Back then, in the late 1970s, sports plugged an important desire for sweat and competition.
Breaking filled a larger, more meaningful one.
“Sports have a structure,” Swift said during a recent phone interview. “Breaking, because it was new and just born, there was so much freedom to it. You could give things your own name on it. You could exist in a community and build your reputation and get props.”