Growing up in New York, first in Brooklyn and then North Babylon, Ed Foster-Simeon played basketball whenever he wanted. There were courts in his Bushwick neighborhood and courts at the Long Island schoolyards.
Friends got together and played pick-up games for hours, learning and loving the game through boyhood experiences. There was nothing formal about it: Kids developed their own style, chemistry and nuance without adult supervision.
“I didn’t see a coach until I was in eighth grade,” he recalled in an interview this week.
Decades later, as president and chief executive of the U.