Hoop dreams
by RAF KATIGBAK
February 16, 2012
Those of you who know me know I’m by no means a very athletic person. As a teen, while my older and younger brothers were starters for our high school football team, the only activity I was into was being weird and watching my friends get drunk in a West Island basement while we blared heavy metal and awkwardly tried to grope our respective steadies. In gym class, my teacher suggested perhaps I’d like to try out for our gymnastics team. I’m not sure if this was a slight or because he thought I looked good in short shorts. On the playing field, I would always get picked last— not because I was not very athletic, but because I just didn’t care. My only shining athletic moment came as the only soccer goalie who accidentally stopped a goal because his head just happened to intersect the ball’s trajectory as he walked over to watch some people move some benches out of the gym.
But my distaste for team sports as a youth makes my obsession with watching sports now, later on in life, that much stranger. Somehow, I’ve gone from thinking professional sports like hockey or baseball are completely juvenile and pointless to being able to track my emotional stability by how well the Habs are doing (I still think baseball is completely ridiculous, however).
As a Filipino, I’m genetically determined to also enjoy basketball. Every week my father would drag me to the Y so that I could take in his casual friends league.
I’d like to think he was trying to enchant me with the athleticism and finesse of the sport, but the truth is, they were all sort of dumpy Asian dudes huffing and sweating off their pork rinds, and he was just too cheap for a babysitter. Even though basketball is the Philippines’ unofficial national sport, after bowling, karaoke and cockfighting, I left my hopes and dreams of ever being inspired by the sport behind.
That is until, now. Now, there’s a new reason to give a rat’s ass about basketball: Jeremy Lin. For those of you who don’t follow basketball, until several weeks ago Lin was a relatively unknown, undrafted player. But he is currently making huge waves in the NBA. In his last five games he’s led the ailing New York Knicks on a winning streak, seemingly out of nowhere. He’s quick, smart, strong and has a killer instinct for driving to the net. There’s another thing: Jeremy Lin is Asian. In fact, he’s the first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent in the NBA.
I’m curious to see how this all plays out in the media. I’m bracing myself for “Asian Invasion” banners and headlines with the words “Yellow Fever” in the news. Will there be a repeat of the cringe-worthy HEC blackface fiasco of last year, except now with woven conical hats and Fu Manchu beards instead of Rasta wigs? Will they be throwing rice instead of confetti at him during the game, like that ignorant schmuck who threw a banana on the ice for PK Subban? I’d like to think that we’re beyond some of these corny stereotypes, but time and again, some idiot tends to prove me wrong.
But perhaps Lin will be more accepted because he grew up in California, and wasn’t shipped in from some weird Chinese farm program. I mean, he’s a Harvard man, after all. How much more American can you get?
Now, as much as people (including my editors) think I might write too much about “being Asian,” and believe me, the last thing I want to hear from an “ethnic” comic is stuff about how “ethnic” he or she is, but for me not to write about Jeremy Lin would be like asking rappers to not drop a line about Obama in 2008. The idea of an insanely skilled Asian point guard who is literally changing the game for the Knicks is like that dream I had of Bruce Lee rising from the grave and just destroying everyone in the UFC.
But is it wrong for me to be stoked that he’s Asian? I mean, what’s the difference between me being happy he’s got slanty eyes and some redneck going on about white pride? And some people might say by my pointing out his Asian-ness I’m just distinguishing his otherness, which would be counterproductive to furthering true racial harmony, or something. But you know what? Eff that. Knowing that Jeremy Lin exists helps me think that anyone from anywhere is capable of doing anything. All that they need to do is be insanely talented, and probably go to Harvard. Oh, and being American also helps. All I gotta say is that I’ve got yellow fever. And the only remedy is more Jeremy Lin. ■
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