Anyways, I'm an opportunist and a decent basketball player so ever since I was in 8th grade, I've participated in these all-asian hoop leagues (I'm half chinese, half white). Most of the leagues allow for one or two non-asian players, that way they don't seem so racist.
The problem with playing in these leagues is that I have to play center, which is the worst. In high school I was strictly a point guard. I was the smallest player on my (95% black) varsity team and my role was to bring the ball up and pass it. Avoid turnovers and stay out of the way.
Now in these Asian leagues, I'm the tallest guy so I take the jump balls and anchor the post defense playing the middle in our horrendous 2-3 zones.
Not only that, but this automatically defers me from the point guard role and I have to witness someone else bring the ball up and make bad decisions at the point (not always, but definitely regularly). So half the time, I just grab the rebound, throw the outlet and watch the madness occur. By the time I get to half court we've already made a lay-up, bricked a three, or thrown a turnover.
So in the past two years of playing this style, I've gone from a quick point guard who out-hustles everyone on the court, to a slow, lazy center who watches most of the action from half court.
I even run like a big man now, which is the worst part about it. Instead of running on my toes and sprinting up and down the court, I lumber. Yeah, I f---ing lumber up and down the court.
It's pretty ugly and it has happened slowly and really crept up on me. In high school, they let me run the point on my asian team and I was more of a Lebron James of the asian league, easily capturing the MVP of the Seattle Chinese Athletic Association.
However, my current Asian teams don't want me to bring the ball up, they want me to play post defense and shoot three's, which has turned my game into some sort of hapa version of Mehmet Okur.
So now my mission is to get my game back to Seattle Asian league status as a big point guard and not L.A. Asian league status as a slow, three-point shooting center. If they force me to play down low on defense, I will do so but outlet passes will be far and few between.
Summer league starts in two weeks, I'll keep you posted.
2 comments:
I like the reverse racism part of this. Like, if I say all Asian people are short, I'm reinforcing a stereotype, but if Asians create their own league because they admit they're all short, they're just confronting reality.
It's why us Jews don't create a Jew-only banking network. Our hypocrisy only goes so far.
Kev, your big man run is classic!!! You've got to get the ball out of V's brothers hands (I can't remember his name). But you should have let it be known to your readers that your post defense ranks up there with greatest of all time. Also, you've got to play aggressively on offense for BOTH halves. And if you need a sub, just holla at me-"I'll come in for you at the 10 minute mark".
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