Mamdani Is Using Nypd Gym To Host Pickup Basketball Games With Friends

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a group of fellow basketball enthusiasts have been secretly using the NYPD Police Academy’s gymnasium in Queens to play pickup ball, according to four people familiar with the games.

The people, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the games started not long after the Knicks won the NBA championship and around the time Mamdani attended the July 16 renaming of the $1-billion facility for fallen NYPD Det. Steven McDonald.

So far, the mayor and his pick-up partners have shown up half-a-dozen times to run full court at the 45,000-square-foot academy gym in College Point, two of the people told POLITICO.

The mayor’s group usually appears around 10 or 11 p.m., entering discreetly through the loading dock which leads to the gym stairs, the two people said. But even so, they added, the nighttime games have scrambled academy operations on several occasions.

"It's not a rec center,” one said. “The brass should be urging him not to do it.”

Mamdani’s pickup games put him in the company of past Empire State politicians like former Gov. Mario Cuomo, an avid basketball player who was known for weekly Albany games, and add another layer to the mayor’s persona as a passionate New York sports fan — a status that has upped his relatability with many constituents.

The choice of venue, however, is raising eyebrows.

The NYPD’s College Point facility is well over 10 miles away from Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s Manhattan home, which is within walking distance of several indoor gyms. And while it’s perhaps the most secure set of hoops in the five boroughs, Mamdani’s decision to use a facility meant to educate police officers is sticking in the craw of some in the department and a Republican lawmaker, who are already fuming over the mayor’s February decision to cancel his predecessor’s long-shot push for the academy to admit 5,000 new recruits.

The democratic socialist mayor has also been struggling to show portions of his base that he’s serious about reforming the NYPD after forsaking several campaign promises and retaining Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. Shooting hoops at the department’s multimillion dollar training facility at night is unlikely to help him win over those increasingly vocal fellow leftists.

On at least three occasions since July, two of the people who spoke to POLITICO said, the mayor's games disrupted training sessions for recruit groups that typically number in the low hundreds.

In one instance, academy recruits had to move outside the gym instead of using it. In a second, the recruits worked out in the hallway instead of using the gym. In a third, they rescheduled gym activities for recruits to the period before its normal time.

On Thursday, according to those two people, academy staff was preparing the gym for a health and wellness event the next morning that meant setting up 1,000 chairs when the mayor’s security team called to say Mamdani and his friends were coming.

According to one of them, the chairs had to be moved to accommodate the mayor’s game. The other person said setting up the chairs had to be postponed to the morning hours.

David Carr, the Republican minority leader in the City Council, told POLITICO the mayor should reset his priorities.

”It’s ridiculous that, of all of the gyms and basketball courts available across this city, the mayor has to commandeer the one facility that is needed to train our police officers,” he said. “He and his lackeys should just get memberships to the local YMCA and leave the police academy to the professionals.”

An NYPD spokesperson confirmed Mamdani has “utilized the Police Academy gym at off-hours” but said the mayor’s use of the gym “has not disrupted any recruit training.” The spokesperson declined to comment on the three individual instances the people who spoke to POLITICO described as necessitating that recruits alter their activities.

Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said the mayor started playing basketball at the NYPD gym with friends because his staff “was told using a part of this facility for late-night basketball would not disrupt academy training.” Pekec declined to say who told Mamdani’s staff that and would not identify the friends he's playing with. She also would not divulge whether Tisch signed off on the mayor’s use of the space, but added: “The mayor would never want to interfere with recruit activities, and if his use of the facility were to cause any disruption, he would find a different place to shoot hoops.”

Mamdani burnished his progressive credentials as a state Assembly member by supporting the defunding of police agencies and the disbanding of the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, a unit found to have used excessive force against protesters repeatedly.

But he softened his tone during the campaign and then opted to retain Tisch, who was first appointed as police commissioner by former Democratic Mayor Eric Adams — a move many in Mamdani’s base criticized. His base has also grown increasingly frustrated with the slow pace at which he’s moving to break up the SRG.

He has sought to assuage concerns from his criminal justice-minded supporters by recently ordering a review of NYPD use-of-force policies and vowing to create a Department of Community Safety that would assume a role in mental health crises, quality-of-life responses and homelessness — and shift those flashpoint issues away from the police department. In February, he cancelled Adams’ end-of-term push to hire 5,000 new police officers. And earlier this month, he appointed four new members to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates and prosecutes police misconduct.

Those moves from Mamdani have angered the police department’s labor leaders — one of whom blasted the mayor’s late-night basketball habits.

“The mayor obviously shouldn’t be using NYPD facilities as his private playground,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry, whose union represents more than 20,000 rank-and-file NYPD officers, told POLITICO. “But if he insists on hanging out in the Police Academy gym, he should talk to some of the recruits who are preparing to graduate without a contract. They’ll tell him that they’ve already applied to other policing jobs that offer better pay and a better quality of life.”

Rank-and-file officers have been working without a contract since Aug. 1, 2025, and as POLITICO first reported, the PBA filed a declaration of impasse with the state Public Employment Relations Board, which endorsed the request in July and assigned mediators.

At the time, Hendry noted Mamdani had “walked picket lines for Starbucks workers and praised striking nurses” but wouldn’t negotiate with the city’s beleaguered cops.

Hendry’s criticisms aside, Mamdani’s enthusiasm for basketball has ample precedent in the Big Apple.

Every modern-era New York City mayor has sought some kind of relationship with sports. The hopelessly unathletic Rudy Giuliani covered for his lack of coordination by constant appearances at Yankee Stadium during the Bronx Bomber’s runs to three World Series championships in the 1990s.

Bill de Blasio’s insistence on rooting for the Boston Red Sox earned him scorn and derision from the Big Apple’s diehard fans. During a Knicks-Atlanta Hawks playoff series in 2021, de Blasio directed Hawks star Trae Young to stop “hunting for fouls.” And de Blasio insisted on using the YMCA in Park Slope during the middle of the workday — a 12-mile trek from Gracie Mansion — a habit he blamed for his tardiness to public events.

Adams, meanwhile, installed fitness equipment in Gracie Mansion and often promoted a plant-based diet as a healthy habit. He biked and played pickleball as mayor.

Mamdani, an avid soccer fan, is also fixated on basketball. He seemed, for example, not to want to remove his Josh Hart No. 3 jersey after the Knicks won the NBA Championship in June, the team’s first since 1973. And he dedicated 18 street signs to the Knicks players on the history-making team.

But he’s also demonstrated an ability to use his Knicks fandom to make a political point, as he did last week when he skipped the team’s home opener saying even the “nosebleed” seats were too expensive.

Of his actual playing style, he told The Wall Street Journal in June: “All I do is foul and talk trash on the court so I wouldn't say I compare myself to anyone on the team,” meaning the Knicks.