{"id":516398,"date":"2026-09-18T07:13:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=516398"},"modified":"2026-09-18T07:13:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:13:05","slug":"michael-sweetney-dies-at-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/michael-sweetney-dies-at-43\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Sweetney dies at 43"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Michael Sweetney, who spent four seasons in the NBA with the <strong>New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls<\/strong> following a standout college career at Georgetown, has died at the age of 43.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Knicks, Bulls and Georgetown acknowledged Sweetney&#8217;s death in social media posts. He died Wednesday at <strong>Newark Beth Israel Medical Center<\/strong>. No cause of death was given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Four seasons in the NBA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Knicks selected Sweetney with the <strong>ninth overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft<\/strong> after his successful college career at Georgetown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He played for New York from 2003 to 2005 before joining the Chicago Bulls, where he played from 2005 to 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sweetney appeared in <strong>233 NBA games<\/strong>, including 73 starts, averaging <strong>6.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 15.5 minutes per game<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-x wp-block-embed-x\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Knicks are saddened to hear about the passing of Michael Sweetney. <br><br>Michael was an incredible person who will be missed by many. Our thoughts are with his family. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/T071Ie4SnL\">pic.twitter.com\/T071Ie4SnL<\/a><\/p>&mdash; NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/nyknicks\/status\/2100658418172280841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 17, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A standout career at Georgetown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sweetney was a standout player at Georgetown before entering the NBA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He averaged a <strong>double-double in each of his final two college seasons<\/strong>. In 2001-02, he averaged 19 points and 10 rebounds per game, before posting 22.8 points and 10.4 rebounds in 2002-03.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sweetney ranks <strong>fifth in Georgetown history in career rebounds<\/strong> with 887, seventh in blocks with 180 and ninth in career points with 1,750.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Coaching after his playing career<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Following his playing career, Sweetney worked as an <strong>assistant coach at Yeshiva University<\/strong>, a Division III school in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeshiva head coach Elliot Steinmetz paid tribute to Sweetney on social media:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe world lost a giant today. I lost a close friend. The basketball world lost a beloved star. Our Jewish community lost an ally and someone who knew exactly how to show up. Mike Sweetney wasn&#8217;t just a friend. He was family. When you needed him, he was there. Always. You didn&#8217;t even have to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The former Knicks and Bulls big man, the ninth overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, died Wednesday in a Newark hospital<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":516396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-516398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-18-alle-07.11.47.png","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516399,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516398\/revisions\/516399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516398"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=516398"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=516398"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=516398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}