former Knicks first-round pick Mike Sweetney died at 43<\/a>. Much has been said about his short-lived NBA career and mental health advocacy, but his time at Yeshiva is more than just a footnote to those within the program.<\/p>\n\u201cHe literally just was one of the guys,\u201d Yeshiva head coach Elliot Steinmetz told The Post. \u201cFrom the outside, I get it. It\u2019s a different look when it\u2019s a bunch of Jewish kids, and you have the [6-foot-8] former NBA African American guy in there. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut he just he was just one of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinmetz first met Sweetney in 2019 through Tamir Goodman, an Orthodox Jewish hoops star whom Sweetney knew from the high school circuit in the Washington, D.C. area. When Sweetney moved to New Jersey and wanted to get into coaching, Goodman introduced him to Steinmetz.<\/p>\n
Sweetney stayed with the program until 2022, when he had a full-time job and couldn\u2019t commit to the coaching staff anymore, Steinmetz said. But that didn\u2019t mean it was the end of his care for the program.<\/p>\n
Former Knicks player and Yeshiva assistant coach Mike Sweetney is shown on Monday, Jan. 20, 2020. Courtesy of Elliot Steinmetz<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year beginning of the season, [he\u2019d text], \u2018First game\u2019s coming up, how\u2019s it going?’\u201d Steinmetz said. \u201c\u2018How\u2019s the team looking? Wishing you guys a great season. Hope to get there for a couple of games.\u2019 Just larger than life in terms of the way he cared about people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sweetney and Steinmetz\u2019s friendship wasn\u2019t over, either.<\/p>\n
Former Knicks player and Yeshiva assistant coach Mike Sweetney is shown Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021. Courtesy of Elliot Steinmetz<\/p>\n
Steinmetz was in Israel when Hamas attacked Kibbutz Re\u2019im on Oct. 7, 2023. The first text he received that night was from Sweetney, who knew he was in the country and wanted to check if he was safe. Sweetney reached out multiple times over the coming days until he knew Steinmetz had gotten back home safely.<\/p>\n
Sweetney reached out again several years later under similar circumstances, when Steinmetz\u2019s son, Noah, was in Israel during an Iranian attack.<\/p>\n
Michael Sweetney after being selected by the Knicks in the 2003 NBA draft. Nury Hernandez for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like he was checking boxes when he reached out to you,\u201d Steinmetz said. \u201cHe genuinely cared \u2026 just larger than life in terms of the way he cared about people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so easy to talk about people when they pass away and how great they were. He\u2019s one of the guys that we talked about him like this when he was alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the kind of care that made him so welcome in the local Jewish community.<\/p>\n
ormer New York Knick Mike Sweetney assistant coaches at Yeshiva University men\u2019s basketball, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. Corey Sipkin for NY Post<\/p>\n
Sweetney got his coaching start running Goodman\u2019s basketball camp, the first moment in a career entwined with Jewish basketball. He continued to run camps during the summer and held training sessions at synagogues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gotten thousands of texts today from people in the Jewish community who are just absolutely heartbroken,\u201d Steinmetz said. \u201cHe just was a part of our community, like to a point where I literally have had hundreds of people reach out today asking where they can give money for his family, send something.\u201d<\/p>\n
In three seasons with Sweetney on the staff, the Maccabees went 61-5. They cruised into the Division III Sweet 16 in 2020 before the rest of the tournament was canceled due to COVID-19, went a perfect 7-0 in a shortened 2020-21 season and finished his tenure with a tournament berth the following year.<\/p>\n
Yeshiva University head basketball coach Elliot Steinmetz, right, speaks with assistant coach Michael Sweetney before an NCAA basketball game against Farmingdale State College. Corey Sipkin for NY Post<\/p>\n
But Steinmetz cares far more to remember who Sweetney was as a person and as a coach than the impact he had on the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe spent the later part of his life really trying to help other people,\u201d Steinmetz said. \u201cIt was something that was so key for our guys with everything going on in the world and everything around them. He was just somebody who had been through it that they could always talk to on a level of openness and comfort and trust, and he just was kind of that guy for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe basketball part was irrelevant,\u201d Steinmetz said. \u201cHe was obviously great to have around on the basketball side, but he was just so much bigger than that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you took a look at the sideline during a Yeshiva University men\u2019s basketball game at the beginning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3361,68,21,9,11,1104,10,322,319,52385],"class_list":["post-350004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-college-basketball","tag-exclusive","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-new-york-news","tag-obituaries","tag-sports","tag-yeshiva-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}