Ivan Leshinsky is starting over — at 79

He still thinks of himself as a basketball player.

And, at 79 years of age, well, he plays a few times a week with the youngsters — guys in their 60s and 70s.

He continues to play in national senior tournaments all over the country — and next month he’ll be participating in the Maryland State Olympics.

And now, introducing Ivan Leshinsky — Part II and his new career — author.

“Lately,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle, “I started thinking of myself as an author.”

What took so long?

Ivan Leshinsky, the Midwood High grad, only waited some 78 years for a gold medal. So, what’s another year or two for a second career?

The former Long Island University basketball star won his gold with the Baltimore Bykova. “That’s Be Ye Kind One to Another,” he said. “That was the name of our senior center we play out of in Baltimore.”

Leshinsky, and teammates, won the gold playing in the two-day National Senior Games staged last year in Des Moines, Iowa. It was Leshinsky’s sixth appearance in the Games — and although he won, it was his toughest one yet.

“I was playing with injections in my spine,” he said, “I was suffering with sciatica.”

Maybe that was a cue to enter the literary world.

In 2022, he published his highly acclaimed memoir — “Teaming Up: A Memoir about Sports, Work, Travel, Family, and Neighbors.”

His latest, “Getting There,” is his first foray into fiction.

“With immigration still a pivotal issue worldwide, ‘Getting There’ confronts a significant topic,” he said.

About 75% of the story takes place in Baltimore, Leshinsky noted — a place where he’s lived since 2006.

“Getting There” is a tour de force. It arrives at a time when masked men come to arrest immigrants without due process. Set in an earlier period when due process and the rule of law still prevailed, the narrative of this family saga follows the Cano family’s trek from Castro’s Cuba to the United States.

It is about survival, adjustment, reconciliation, and redemption.

But there’s more to the Leshinsky portfolio.

In “retirement,” if you can call it that, he has leveraged his experience and energy to establish a new nonprofit organization — the Southwest Sports and Fitness Alliance, with a mission to create pathways for disadvantaged children and youth through sports-based youth development, ultimately leading to meaningful and productive adulthood.

But you can’t talk about Ivan Leshinsky without even thinking about the game of basketball. The 6-foot-6-inch kid who grew up on Avenue J and Ocean Avenue, and attended Public School 193, was what you’d call a late bloomer.

As a Midwood High senior, he said he weighed about 170 pounds, dripping wet. Yet the 1963 grad was the most improved on the ballclub, leading the squad in scoring and rebounding. “I was recruited by about five schools, and LIU was one of them.

“My brother was a senior at LIU when I was in high school,” Leshinsky recalled, “so I thought it was a good option.”

He played in the 1968 National Invitation Tournament quarterfinals at Madison Square Garden on an LIU team that beat Bradley and lost to Notre Dame by a point.

In the 1968 NBA draft, Leshinsky was selected by the Boston Celtics in the 10th round (130th pick overall). He chose, instead, to go to Israel to play basketball.

Off to Israel for three years in the Israeli Basketball Premier League, all for Hapoel Tel Aviv, from 1968 to 1971. He also played for the Israeli National Team. He competed in the 1969 International Basketball Federation European Championships for men, averaging 14.7 points-per-game, and in the 1970 Asian Games — where he won a silver medal with Team Israel.

And, at the same time, he may have been doing his research for “Getting There.”

Andy Furman is a Fox Sports Radio national talk show host. Previously, he was a scholastic sports columnist for the Brooklyn Eagle. He may be reached at: [email protected]; X: @AndyFurmanFSR