One Place to Dunk on NBA Star: A New York City Chess Board

7-Foot-3 Victor Wembanyama stopped in at Manhattan park for different kind of on-1

- JOSHUA ROBINSON

Max Haskell was on his regular grocery run in New York's East Village on Saturday when he pulled out his phone and saw a tweet that stopped him in his tracks.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama had posted out of the blue that he was just a few blocks away. Not only that, but the 7-foot-3 reigning Rookie of the Year was offering to take on allcomers, one-on-one, in Washington Square Park.

The twist was that they wouldn't be playing basketball.

"Who wants to meet me at the SW corner of Washington Square Park to play chess?" Wembanyama posted shortly after 9:30 a.m. "I'm there." Haskell, a 25-year-old local who has lived in Russia and the U.K., knew exactly what he had to do.

He abandoned his basket of groceries, on a Citi Bike, and tore across the Village and through the rain to play the most unexpected chess match of his life checkmate When he got there, Wembanyama wasn't hard to spot-he was the extraterrestrial ballplayer wearing a gray hoodie and size-20.5 sneakers.

Soon, Haskell found himself sitting on a damp bench and closing in on against this beanpole Frenchman. The chess boards of Washington Square Park, it turns out, are the only place in the world where a 6-foot-1 regular Joe can dunk on Victor Wembanyama.