The following content is from a documentary I made during my sophomore year about the tradition of basketball in my family.
All her life, Kathy Spado has loved basketball. Growing up in small-town Minoa, New York, her family had deep ties to basketball in the area stemming back to the 1920s.
This started with her grandparents, who were both high school stars at a time when high school basketball was big in the area. Her grandfather, Hubert Costello, was the top high school prospect in Minoa, and he was recruited by several high schools to play.
Spado’s father and brothers also played basketball, and she played from a young age and continued through college. She said that basketball was a way for her and her brothers to bond.
Though her time playing basketball came to an end, she found it important to collect and save the basketball memorabilia that related to her family in order to keep a record of family history. In her collection, she has pictures of her grandparents from the 20s, trophies that they won, and even awards that she received in high school.
But perhaps Spado’s most prized possessions are memorabilia relating to her uncle Larry Costello, who played and coached in the NBA from the 50s to the 70s. She keeps newspaper articles from the playoff games Costello coached when he was with the Milwaukee Bucks, team pictures from championship years, and trading cards Costello was featured on when he played for the Syracuse Nationals before they became the Philadelphia 76ers.
Costello had a successful NBA career, as he is one of thirteen people in NBA history to win a championship as a player and a coach. Even more impressive, he coached the Bucks to their first and only championship just three years after the team was founded. This makes the 1971 Bucks team the quickest expansion team to win a championship in the NBA, a record that has been held to this day. Part of this success was due to Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, whom Costello coached.
Costello also grew up in small-town Minoa, which made him a local legend in the town and the rest of upstate New York. Spado said that as a kid having Costello as an uncle always gave her bragging rights when playing basketball with other kids in the town.
Spado believes it is her duty to preserve the legacy of basketball in her family so that it continues to be passed down from generation to generation. She and her children bond over basketball, as she coached her daughter’s middle school team, and watches nearly every Syracuse Men’s Basketball game with them. She also tells them stories of her relatives and their basketball careers, and she hopes the stories inspire them to keep up the tradition of taking care of the memorabilia.
2022 Update: My great-uncle Larry Costello was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. My entire family attended the induction ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts. When I made this documentary in 2019, it was a school project, but also a passion project. Uncle Larry was a legend to us, but in the basketball community, he was largely unrecognized. Now, his contributions to basketball will live on in the Hall of Fame forever. And yes, my family got to donate some of our own memorabilia to be put on display. Talk about coming full circle.
