Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll find out why an auction house built a basketball court in its landmark Madison Avenue building. We’ll also get details on the $117 million that the city paid out last year to settle lawsuits alleging misconduct by the police and prosecutors.
Paintings by Gustav Klimt and Pablo Picasso were hanging on the walls of a room in a famous Madison Avenue building several months ago. The Klimt went on to become the second most expensive piece of art ever auctioned. Over the weekend, that room, in the former Whitney Museum of American Art, got a makeover. It is now a basketball court where, until Friday, you can shoot hoops. On the walls now, in museum-style display cases, are game-worn jerseys, sneakers and basketballs that belong to the former N.B.A. player Scottie Pippen, who was once described as the Robin to Michael Jordan’s Batman during the Chicago Bulls’ championship years in the 1990s. Sotheby’s, which now occupies the building, is selling 50 items from Pippen’s career that he saved and kept in a storage unit. Sotheby’s says the display is “blue-chip art giving way to blue-chip sport” and “a temporary reimagining of a landmark New York cultural space, reflecting how sports memorabilia is increasingly presented.” The basketball court will disappear almost as quickly as it appeared. It will be open during the day through March 10, then disassembled. Pippen will be there for a private event — Sotheby’s won’t say when — and will play one-on-one with V.I.P. clients. Until March 10, you can go there and shoot baskets. I did, on Monday. Omar Touray, the security guard, kind of egged me on, and by his count, I sank six of the 11 baskets I tried for. Don’t ask me how I did that — I haven’t been on a basketball court since gym class in high school, and I was terrible then. When I texted an editor that I had just made six baskets, she thought I meant I had woven them. Antoine Plaskett, an art handler at Sotheby’s, got on the court after me. He said he was happy about the installation. “We didn’t grow up with Andy Warhol,” he said. “I learned that. I grew up watching this guy” — Pippen — “and Michael Jordan and LeBron James.” Sotheby’s wants to reach sports fans who might not follow the art market and sales of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Sower in a Wheat Field at Sunset” (a pen-and-ink drawing that went for $11.2 million on the same night that Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” sold for $236.4 million). “We’ve been really pushing this agenda of developing things beyond auctions to create these moments of community” for fans of other types of collectibles, like sports memorabilia and watches, said Josh Pullan, the head of Sotheby’s luxury division. From Sotheby’s estimates, the most expensive item in the Pippen sale is a pair of sneakers from the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. They were worn not by Pippen but by his teammate Michael Jordan — whom Pippen praised for years, only to savage him in a 2021 memoir as “selfish.” He was less willing to engage with the material in his book during an interview with my colleague Sopan Deb, and all he said when he picked up the sneakers in a promotional video for the sale was: “I still got Jordan’s orthotics in there. It’s a secret to Michael Jordan being able to fly.” Sotheby’s starting bid for the sneakers is $500,000. The auction house expects Pippen’s Team USA jacket from the 1992 Olympic medal ceremony to sell for $100,000 to 200,000. The estimate for a jersey that Pippen wore in the 1996 N.B.A. playoffs, when the Bulls were 10-0 on their home court, is $200,000 to $250,000. The starting bid for Pippen’s set of six N.B.A. championship trophies is $150,000. Pippen said in the video that it was “time to part ways” with the memorabilia he is selling “because I’ve just really kept it stored. I’ve never really displayed it much.” Basketball and BreuerSotheby’s says this is the first time there has ever been a basketball court in the building, which was designed by the architect Marcel Breuer in the 1960s and more recently was the temporary home of the Frick Collection. There were basketballs in the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney in 2014, but the New York Times critic Roberta Smith reported that they were floating in fish tanks. Pullan, who said the idea for building the court had come up during a brainstorming session, is from Perth, Australia. He was heading into his teenage years when the Chicago Bulls won their six N.B.A. championships in the 1990s. “Maybe this just shows my age,” he said, “but for me, it’s sort of like, that is basketball.” WEATHER A rainy day is ahead, possibly mixed with snow, with a high temperature around 39. Rainy conditions are expected to continue tonight, with a low around 38. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING Suspended (Purim). QUOTE OF THE DAY “I’ll go down as one of the rottenest businessmen ever. My art was solving problems and making this block come to life.” — Charles FitzGerald, who played a central role in transforming St. Marks Place in the East Village into an emblem of New York counterculture. The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. A $117 million tab for misconduct settlements
To settle lawsuits alleging misconduct by the police and prosecutors, New York City paid out $117 million last year, according to an analysis by the Legal Aid Society, which provides legal services for poor clients. Legal Aid counted 1,044 settlements last year, the most since 2019, but the dollar total was only slightly more than half of the $206 million that the city paid out in 2024. Legal Aid lawyers said that the jump in the number of settlements last year pointed to a need for more accountability in matters that involve accusations of police and prosecutorial misconduct, especially as the city faces a budget gap that threatens Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s goals. The Police Department noted in a statement that more than a third of the payouts were for wrongful convictions, a large majority of them from cases that happened at least 20 years ago. The department also said that under Commissioner Jessica Tisch, it has “has taken significant steps to increase accountability, compliance and change outdated policies that might create greater risk.” The two largest payouts last year of 2025 went to settle the wrongful convictions of two men in the death of a French tourist on New Year’s Day in 1987. Eric Smokes, who was 19 at the time, and his childhood friend David Warren, then 16, were charged with the killing. In 2024, long after they had been released from prison on parole, a judge threw out their original indictments and the convictions should be overturned. The men then sued the city, which agreed to pay Smokes $13 million and Warren $11.13 million, according to court records and the Legal Aid analysis. METROPOLITAN DIARY Skittles
Dear Diary: I was on a No. 6 train headed uptown to a class at Hunter College. A young woman sat down next to me. I buried my head in whatever book I was reading at the time and activated the invisible wall that separated me from the other riders. But the force field could not block a sugary, vaguely citrusy smell that I couldn’t identify immediately but then did a few seconds after catching that first whiff. “Are you eating Skittles?” I said, without turning, to the woman sitting next to me. “I sure am,” she said. “Want one?” “Why not,” I said. “I haven’t had Skittles in forever.” I held out my hand, we smiled at each other and a few of the colorful candies landed in my palm. “Thanks,” I said. We rode together in a comfortable silence until we got to 59th Street. As the doors opened, the woman rose from her seat and gave me the bag of Skittles, which was half full. “Enjoy,” she said with a wink. — David Licata Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
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