Courtney Lee met some up-and-coming New York artists in their personal studios

I don’t know about y’all, but I like my Knicks to have diverse off-court interests. It’s fun to follow players around from time to time as they meet cool people and gain access to cool places. Shooting guard Courtney Lee, for example, used his status as a Knick to take a tour of a few New York art studios with advisor Gardy St. Fleur.

The tour took Lee to Brooklyn, to the Bed-Stuy studio of figurative abstract painter Nathaniel Mary Quinn and the Bushwick pad of surrealist painter Tim Okamura.

Lee, a graphic design major at Western Kentucky, asked one of the up-and-coming artists whether or not museums pay to display his pieces. When he learned no money was changing hands, Lee naturally compared it to college basketball:

“It’s like in college if one team may be discussing, ‘This player’s got potential.’ And then the next guy sitting next to him won’t mark him down,” Lee said. “That’s how you blow up or not and you get on these NBA draft boards. It’s the same thing.”

See? Everything comes back to basketball. Ball is life.

Anyway, I recommend checking out the full article, and I wish Lee all the best in his burgeoning career as an art investor.