Kevin Garnett‘s birthday is Wednesday and it’s sure to be a bittersweet day, as it’s been for the past decade.
The usually energetic NBA star was at a loss for words during a nationally televised interview last Sunday, recounting how Malik Sealy, his friend and Minnesota Timberwolves teammate, was tragically killed at age 30 by a drunk driver while heading home from Garnett’s 24th birthday party in St. Louis Park, Minn.
Thursday will mark 10 years since the death of the Bronx product, St. John’s star and eight-year NBA player. Sealy already had a first step on his career after basketball when his Range Rover was hit head-on by Souksangouane Phengsene, whose pickup truck was going the wrong way on a Minnesota highway.
Phengsene was found to be intoxicated and sentenced to four years in prison. He’s had two subsequent DWI convictions and is serving another eight years.
“It’s been 10 years … God almighty,” former St. John’s coach Lou Carnesseca said slowly.
Although Sealy’s family has had enough time to make peace, memories of the shocking news that reached them that morning – just past 4 a.m. – still pierce as if re-opening the wounds.
“Sam Mitchell, who was Malik’s teammate at the time, had come to my house to tell me the news,” said Lisa Sealy, Malik’s widow. “It was just a terrible time for me because I buried my father the day before and Malik died the next day.”
Lisa then had the task of breaking the news to Malik’s mother, Ann Sealy.
“She said, ‘Malik is dead,'” Ann said. “I just didn’t think it was so. It was one of the most difficult things I ever had to encounter. Telling my family was particularly difficult.”
Lisa and their son Malik Remington, who recently turned 13, now live in the Holliswood section of Queens.
As a seventh grade student at United Nations International in Jamaica Estates, Malik Remington has already taken the SAT test and performed better than 51% of high school students.
He honored his dad with a moving and memorable speech during a dinner at St. John’s University four years ago.
“He’s just like his dad,” Lisa said of her son. “It’s even down to a movement.”
He also plays basketball for the Malik Sealy All-Stars AAU program, which Lisa says she began four years ago “to keep Malik’s name alive.”
Malik’s parents, Sidney and Ann, have recently returned to the Bronx from New Jersey. His three brothers live in Brooklyn, and his sister lives in Harlem.
“Yeah, we never left New York,” said Dessalines Sealy, Malik’s older brother.
While Garnett’s interview may have served as a reminder of the kind of person Sealy was, he didn’t say anything that family, friends or members of the city’s basketball community didn’t know about him.
“Anyone who met him has a story,” Ann said. “From the people on Fordham Road when he passed by, to teammates, to the guys who wash the socks. Everyone. He knew how to create a bond and bring people together.”
Added Lisa: “I get (stories) all the time. It’s great to know that other people know the same thing that I know and his family knows about him.”
Lisa met Malik at St. John’s. When she wouldn’t cave in to his efforts to date her, he followed her to the supermarket and helped win her over by hauling her groceries.
Perhaps Brooklyn rapper AZ said it best in one rhyme: “Feel me, I’m loved like the great late Malik Sealy.”
Kenny Anderson, the longtime NBA point guard who teamed with Sealy in AAU ball at Riverside Church, agreed.
“I don’t know one person in this world that can say something negative about him,” Anderson said.
Those who knew Sealy still remember his searing wit.
As a rookie for the Indiana Pacers in 1992-93, Sealy lost his playbook before the playoff series against the Knicks, and a Bronx fireman gave the scouting report to then-WFAN morning host Don Imus.
Sealy called Imus and offered a rather restrained tongue lashing:
“I didn’t realize it would wind up in the hands of such tasteless gentlemen,” Sealy said on the air. “I don’t know how to describe you.”
Sealy later used the playbook pattern as a design for what would become a best-seller in the tie company that bore his name.
“That’s Malik,” his mom said, “he made lemons into lemonade.”
He did that at Tolentine, where he played on the top-ranked high school team in the nation during his senior year, 1988. Christ the King girls coach Bob Mackey, who coached Sealy on that team, said that Sealy was a take-charge person who refused to accept less from teammates.
“That was Malik,” Mackey said. “He came up with solutions.”
Outside of basketball, Malik had his tie business and founded Baseline Studios in 2000, where Jay-Z would go on to record numerous hits (it recently closed). Sealy also dabbled in acting, appearing in the movie “Eddie.”
“He was very mature for his age,” Carnesecca said. “He had something beyond basketball. Just a beautiful person.”
