Love and basketball (part one)
When I was a kid, I went through a phase during which I was convinced I could become the first Asian player in the NBA. I didn't know there had already been an Asian dude -- Wataru Misaka, who played three games for the Knicks in the late 40s. It didn't matter. There were no Asians on the basketball cards I collected, no Asians in the games on TV. I was going to be the first. Imagine me, all short little bow-legs and string bean arms, spikey hair, prescription goggles (the kind held on with an elastic band) pressing tightly against my flat little Asian face. I'm wearing some atrociously non-matching set of clothes, possibly even a set of those plastic ninja turtle shoelace-clips, which serve no real purpose other than to remind the world that I love the ninja turtles. I'm at least a head shorter than most of the other kids, and I look like you could probably knock me halfway across the court with a good whiffle bat. Here I am, and I'm looking up at the basket thinking, One day, I'm gonna dunk it. I can do it. I'm gonna be in the NBA.
My favorite team was the Celtics, because my old man's favorite team was the Celtics. He used to tell me, "Don't like 'em because I like 'em -- pick the team you like best," but I always picked his teams anyway. I had two Celtics Starter jackets (one heavy, one light, both oversized), three Celtics shirts (way oversized), Celtics shorts and a black Celtics Starter cap that developed a salt stain because I wore it so much. In the sixth grade, I wrote a letter to Larry Bird for English class, enclosing a cartoon drawing I'd made of him posing with my family, all of us with proportionally huge heads. He didn't write me back.
Other than Dungeons and Dragons, Ninja Turtles (and to some extent, GI Joe), playing pretend war and drawing pictures of superheroes, I collected basketball cards and followed the NBA. With the game, I could imagine myself being bigger, taller, stronger, faster. And loving the game was something I had in common with my dad.
...
I played basketball until the 8th grade, when I stopped suddenly. This is how it happened:
The PE Department had organized a spring basketball tournament, drawing teams from all the PE classes. Anyone who wanted to play could be on a team, and that team would play until it lost. The games would happen during 3rd period, and if you weren't in 3rd period PE, you got to skip out of your regular class to play. All of the students not in the game could watch from the bleachers.
I wanted to play, so I raised my hand.
As it turned out, all the worst players were somehow drafted onto the same team: the scrub team. I was on that team. And somehow, our first game would be against a team that had -- somehow -- drafted all the best players, the kids who played for the school team. You know in WWF, when they pit the superstar wrestler against some no-name underdog getting paid a one-time check to get kneed in the face a couple of times? You see what I'm getting at.
Although the class was called Physical Education, no one had really taught us how to play. Not as a team anyway. We were miserable, disoriented, we reeked of confusion and fear. We were small rodents let loose in the boa constrictor cage in science class. We didn't pass, couldn't see the court beyond our direct field of vision. We took bad shots. Their guys were athletes, they knew what they were doing. They stole the ball from us, beat us to rebounds, drove it to the basket all day.
Whenever the ball came to me (which was rare), I panicked. I'd forget all the things my dad had taught me about basketball, the basics. Think before you dribble. Don't try to pass through heavy traffic. Stay in between your man and the basket. Protect the ball when you have it. Always try to know where everyone on the court is. When I got the ball, I shut down. I was in a haze of fear. I dribbled into trouble, I lost the ball, I threw it away, or I passed it to someone else, who lost the ball or threw it away.
I took one shot the entire game, a three pointer. Jeremy Jones was guarding me. Someone passed it to me at the top of the key, and for whatever reason, I decided that this would be the moment I would take a stand. Here, I would face my fear and finally take a shot. I squared my feet and went up.
He blocked me so hard that it made my ears ring. The gym erupted in "OOOOhhhhhh"s, some coming from my own teammates. Guys on the opposing team were laughing at me.
The final score? 48-3. In my yearbook, Jeremy wrote, "48-3!!!! I will always remember when I packed you like a bag of COLLARD GREENS!!!"
...
The Celtics are up 3-2 in the NBA Finals right now. After a long stretch of misery and shame (excluding the year they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals), they have returned to the championship form of the Celtics from the mid-to-late-eighties. And who better to meet in the Finals than the LA Lakers, their old rival from those days of legend?
I have to say it feels kind of engineered. In the off-season, Boston acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen for almost nothing. Two premier players just...dropped into their lap. And during the regular season, LA picked up Pau Gasol (for nothing) and reacquired Derek Fisher (for nothing, although Fish had a good reason -- his daughter was having cancer treatment in LA).
Nonetheless, both teams are fun to watch. If they're playing the Blazers, I'm fully capable of deep and passionate hatred of either, but right now I can't help but like them both. It's a strange feeling. The Celtics, because they are my childhood team, because they are my dad's team, because they play excellent defense and have great team culture in general. I like the Lakers because they won a tough Western Conference, because Kobe is finally growing up, because they are goofy-looking and international and, when they're clicking, they are capable of making the game look like an art form. Whichever team wins, I am entertained. I am in amazement of what these players can do. I know I sound like a big dork, going on about what is essentially still only a game, one set against a backdrop of McDonald's and Bud Light and phony commercial machinery, but sometimes sports are the only thing that will get my mind off of whatever it's on (money, women, chronic failure, ice cream).
It's reaffirming to watch tenacity and resilience arise in human beings. It's something I love about professional sports. With respect to this, the situation doesn't matter. The score doesn't matter, if you're up 48-3, if you're down 48-3, it doesn't matter if they're laughing at you, it doesn't matter what they're going to say. You play on, you play hard, and you do not fear to take that shot.
My dad used to quote something to me. I can't remember if it was Vince Lombardi, or Winston Churchill, or Jim Valvano dying of cancer, but he said: "Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never, never give up."
My favorite team was the Celtics, because my old man's favorite team was the Celtics. He used to tell me, "Don't like 'em because I like 'em -- pick the team you like best," but I always picked his teams anyway. I had two Celtics Starter jackets (one heavy, one light, both oversized), three Celtics shirts (way oversized), Celtics shorts and a black Celtics Starter cap that developed a salt stain because I wore it so much. In the sixth grade, I wrote a letter to Larry Bird for English class, enclosing a cartoon drawing I'd made of him posing with my family, all of us with proportionally huge heads. He didn't write me back.
Other than Dungeons and Dragons, Ninja Turtles (and to some extent, GI Joe), playing pretend war and drawing pictures of superheroes, I collected basketball cards and followed the NBA. With the game, I could imagine myself being bigger, taller, stronger, faster. And loving the game was something I had in common with my dad.
...
I played basketball until the 8th grade, when I stopped suddenly. This is how it happened:
The PE Department had organized a spring basketball tournament, drawing teams from all the PE classes. Anyone who wanted to play could be on a team, and that team would play until it lost. The games would happen during 3rd period, and if you weren't in 3rd period PE, you got to skip out of your regular class to play. All of the students not in the game could watch from the bleachers.
I wanted to play, so I raised my hand.
As it turned out, all the worst players were somehow drafted onto the same team: the scrub team. I was on that team. And somehow, our first game would be against a team that had -- somehow -- drafted all the best players, the kids who played for the school team. You know in WWF, when they pit the superstar wrestler against some no-name underdog getting paid a one-time check to get kneed in the face a couple of times? You see what I'm getting at.
Although the class was called Physical Education, no one had really taught us how to play. Not as a team anyway. We were miserable, disoriented, we reeked of confusion and fear. We were small rodents let loose in the boa constrictor cage in science class. We didn't pass, couldn't see the court beyond our direct field of vision. We took bad shots. Their guys were athletes, they knew what they were doing. They stole the ball from us, beat us to rebounds, drove it to the basket all day.
Whenever the ball came to me (which was rare), I panicked. I'd forget all the things my dad had taught me about basketball, the basics. Think before you dribble. Don't try to pass through heavy traffic. Stay in between your man and the basket. Protect the ball when you have it. Always try to know where everyone on the court is. When I got the ball, I shut down. I was in a haze of fear. I dribbled into trouble, I lost the ball, I threw it away, or I passed it to someone else, who lost the ball or threw it away.
I took one shot the entire game, a three pointer. Jeremy Jones was guarding me. Someone passed it to me at the top of the key, and for whatever reason, I decided that this would be the moment I would take a stand. Here, I would face my fear and finally take a shot. I squared my feet and went up.
He blocked me so hard that it made my ears ring. The gym erupted in "OOOOhhhhhh"s, some coming from my own teammates. Guys on the opposing team were laughing at me.
The final score? 48-3. In my yearbook, Jeremy wrote, "48-3!!!! I will always remember when I packed you like a bag of COLLARD GREENS!!!"
...
The Celtics are up 3-2 in the NBA Finals right now. After a long stretch of misery and shame (excluding the year they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals), they have returned to the championship form of the Celtics from the mid-to-late-eighties. And who better to meet in the Finals than the LA Lakers, their old rival from those days of legend?
I have to say it feels kind of engineered. In the off-season, Boston acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen for almost nothing. Two premier players just...dropped into their lap. And during the regular season, LA picked up Pau Gasol (for nothing) and reacquired Derek Fisher (for nothing, although Fish had a good reason -- his daughter was having cancer treatment in LA).
Nonetheless, both teams are fun to watch. If they're playing the Blazers, I'm fully capable of deep and passionate hatred of either, but right now I can't help but like them both. It's a strange feeling. The Celtics, because they are my childhood team, because they are my dad's team, because they play excellent defense and have great team culture in general. I like the Lakers because they won a tough Western Conference, because Kobe is finally growing up, because they are goofy-looking and international and, when they're clicking, they are capable of making the game look like an art form. Whichever team wins, I am entertained. I am in amazement of what these players can do. I know I sound like a big dork, going on about what is essentially still only a game, one set against a backdrop of McDonald's and Bud Light and phony commercial machinery, but sometimes sports are the only thing that will get my mind off of whatever it's on (money, women, chronic failure, ice cream).
It's reaffirming to watch tenacity and resilience arise in human beings. It's something I love about professional sports. With respect to this, the situation doesn't matter. The score doesn't matter, if you're up 48-3, if you're down 48-3, it doesn't matter if they're laughing at you, it doesn't matter what they're going to say. You play on, you play hard, and you do not fear to take that shot.
My dad used to quote something to me. I can't remember if it was Vince Lombardi, or Winston Churchill, or Jim Valvano dying of cancer, but he said: "Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never, never give up."