NEW YORK – Madison Square Garden, a famed basketball building where Mo Bamba has been several times as a patron but never as a player, helped to crystalize his dreams of someday playing the NBA.
But as for the 7-footer’s start in basketball and his deep love for the sport, that was cultivated and refined some 4 ½ miles away at another basketball mecca not nearly as bright and shiny as Madison Square Garden.
``The Kingdome,’’ as it’s known to Bamba and others who have spent hours there in Harlem playing pick-up basketball on the asphalt courts, will always hold a special place in the big man’s heart for so many reasons.