From NYCHA to the Garden, the Knicks' Jose Alvarado is living a New Yorker's dream

On a small basketball court in bustling South Williamsburg, Malik Kaiser Covington Jr. is running point guard as he and friends from a local high school play half-court on a recent sunny afternoon.

The New York Knicks are in the NBA Finals for the first time in more than two decades, and 17-year-old Kaiser Covington and his friends are playing in the shadow of the Berry Street Houses, the public housing development where Jose Alvarado, one of the team’s newest recruits, spent his childhood.

Alvarado is the only native New Yorker on the team and wears the number five on his jersey, a number he said he chose in part as a nod to the five boroughs.

“ People keep thinking that he's just a random,” Kaiser Covington said of Alvarado. “He's the most underrated player on the Knicks, in my opinion.”