Former New York Knicks first-round draft pick Michael Sweetney, who died on Sept. 16 at 43, was remembered by the Yeshiva University basketball community, where he previously served as an assistant coach.
“He literally just was one of the guys,” YU head coach Elliot Steinmetz told the New York Post. “From the outside, I get it. It’s a different look when it’s a bunch of Jewish kids, and you have the former NBA African American guy in there.”
The Knicks selected Sweetney, a 6-foot-8 power forward from Georgetown University, ninth overall in the 2003 NBA Draft. He spent two seasons in New York before being traded to the Chicago Bulls in 2005. After two seasons in Chicago, he continued his professional career overseas before retiring in 2017.
Sweetney joined Yeshiva’s men’s basketball staff as an assistant coach in 2019. During his time with the Maccabees, the team won two Skyline Conference championships, advanced twice in the NCAA tournament and posted a 50-game winning streak from 2019 to 2021.
“Every year, beginning of the season, [he’d text], ‘First game’s coming up, how’s it going?’” Steinmetz told the Post.
Sweetney eventually stepped away from coaching at Yeshiva because of his full-time job in mental health services but remained close with the team and Steinmetz. He was among the first people to text Steinmetz when he was in Israel during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It wasn’t like he was checking boxes when he reached out to you; he genuinely cared,” Steinmetz told the Post. “Just larger than life in terms of the way he cared about people.”
Sweetney’s cause of death has not been disclosed. He died at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey, according to the NBA.
