Rysheed Jordan is a Philadelphia native who had a brief stint with the Delaware 87ers after playing college hoops for St. John’s. He was a top Pennsylvania recruit with a possible NBA future, then a 2016 attempted murder charge derailed the “Prince of North Philly’s” professional career.

He got out of prison in December and came back to the region, playing with the semi-pro Camden Monarchs before the ABA season was canceled due to Coronavirus. I hadn’t heard his name in a while, then someone sent me this picture that popped up on his Instagram account and was later deleted, a photo showing more than 75 people at a North Philly basketball court, playing 1v1 and not exactly practicing proper social distancing:

The thing with Philly right now is that most rec centers, parks, and athletic courts are chained off and closed, but if there’s no fence or gate around the property, then it’s wide open and available for use. These courts are up at 26th and Master, which is part of a rec center that has partial fencing but can’t entirely be shut down. I’m not sure how they would enforce this outside of setting up a temporary barricades, like how you would block off a construction site or something like that. The only other option is to remove the rims or cover them with wood blocks, which is what Bethlehem is doing:

Photo credit: @easeltyne

A source tells me there were “some very good, Division 1 players” at the North Philly game, which is hard to confirm since the photo was taken from far away. There is, however, a video clip that also showed up on Jordan’s Instagram, which made it to Twitter:

 

NBC Philly just ran a story citing early data that shows COVID-19 is hitting Philadelphia’s African-American community especially hard, though if you’ve been outside in recent weeks you’ve seen a lot of city-wide behavior that goes against government orders. I’ve seen people of all stripes running on narrow trails, blocking aisles at the grocery store, failing to wear masks, and doing a lot of other things that don’t help the situation. It seems like more people are starting to get it, but not everybody, and all it takes is one gathering at a basketball court or one house party or one Fishtown corner bar to remain open (while pretending they’re closed), then a bunch of other people get screwed in the process.

Maestro checking in with these tweets: