The Chase-Down Block

Maybe the single thing I like most about the Times is that despite it being everyone I know's first stop for news, it doesn't take itself too seriously. Even the hard news stories sometimes have a wink in them, and often they just have completely loony stories like the Chinglish piece over the weekend. Today they wrote a whole article about LeBron's chase-down block. If you have watched any basketball at all in the last couple years, you know that block. But I had no idea they had a name for it.

(The article links to one of ESPN's Sports Science segments, which I've always found pretty lame, but this one does actually illuminate just how ridiculous LeBron is.)

The chase-down block, as I now know it's called, has a special place in my heart. Almost a decade ago, I got to do that which gets inevitably rarer as you get older: I lived an actual dream of mine.

When I was in kindergarten, my family went to watch a game at the annual HKIS Christmas basketball tournament, when it was still played at what was then the high school gym, which I grew up knowing as the middle school gym, and which is now the elementary school gym. And we kept going to a couple games each year because we usually hosted players from other schools. My mom thought this was our way of contributing to the school, since she didn't usually have time to do the parent-faculty stuff.

By about third grade--right around when my mom bought me a Utah Jazz cap--I was starting to take a serious interest in basketball. Made my parents find copies of USA Today so I could cut out the box scores and especially to go over the final regular season stats (I was a one-man Elias Sports Bureau, which, by the way, I think I once read is really just a one-man gig). Taped Inside Stuff and actually rewound Rewind. And the cards. God damn, the cards. The thrill of opening a whole box, 24 or 36 packs inside. To this day I think you could blindfold me and I could tell you what brand a card is by the way it smells.

When, the summer before fourth grade, we moved to an apartment complex with its own basketball court, it was all over. No other sport would ever come close. In third grade, I won an award for being the star goalie on my soccer team; by fifth grade, I was the backup goalie who still couldn't get goal kicks off the ground.

We were still hosting visiting players, and at least I was still going to watch the Christmas tournament games, now held at the Tai Tam campus. Naturally, I relished the TAS-HKIS rivalry, and I remember names like Migz Carreon and David Mock, or Mike Lane and Mike Elliot, as if they had been in the NBA. I actually remember a specific play, where Mike Lane was on a fast break going from the far side of the gym to the side with the locker rooms, and he pulled a spin move on his defender while letting off a bounce pass at the same time. I remember the HKIS crowd snickering when the TAS players would get back on D and slap both hands on the floor and yell, "Defense!" That was where I thought that came from. I had no clue it was a Duke thing.

I remember picking up the programs each year, going through the rosters like they were NBA media guides, always looking for which teams had the tallest players. Anyone over six feet was someone to look out for. And yeah, I dreamed that I'd be on there one day myself. I used to wear my HKIS hoodie and dribble my ball down to the court, imagining I was being introduced to the crowd. Sure, I dreamed about getting introduced at the Delta Center, too, the game seven buzzer-beaters, but every kid did that (just not at the Delta Center).

Somehow, I don't think I ever thought it wouldn't happen. I've spent most my life thinking I'm better at basketball than I really am. I was the last freshman on not just any freshman team but a 16-freshman freshman team. There were only 15 uniforms, so I alternated with freshman 15 (ha). One game, coach sent me in even though it was my off-week, so I went on with a jersey or maybe even a t-shirt without a number. I got called for a technical, the only time I've ever been T-d up.

Junior year, I got cut altogether. Even when I finally made the team as a senior, coach kept giving me asterisks: I was an alternate at first, and even when a couple guys pulled out to play tennis, coach made clear I was on the team because I was the only leftie. Oh and I was smart. Because, you know, AP classes help you on the court and all.

One final thing had to go my way before I got to be on the Christmas tournament roster, because we had one more player on our team than was allowed. Dustin Hinton, a new kid who was in my homeroom, had made the team with a style of play I can only call Jerry Sloan basketball. This guy volunteered to sit it out, somehow just knowing how badly I wanted in. I don't remember ever expressing the feeling to him. I think he just sensed it. He was, I swear, from Utah.

Our first game was the one game each year that the school required all other students to watch, or at least strongly encouraged them to by canceling class for half the day. I remember being in our warmups and going through the layup line, trying not to look too excited. It was a great game; we beat Jakarta in the last minute. But the only time I got off the bench was to cheer.

It was only after we lost a couple, when it was clear we weren't going to finish in the top half of the draw, that coach played us seniors a lot more. And in the last few minutes of a tight rematch with Jakarta, I was still on the floor. I think I may have even scored a few points. Neither team couldn't have been up by more than a basket when a white kid on Jakarta stole out on a fast break. I ran my ass off. He had no idea, and as he went up for the layup, I swatted the ball out of bounds. It was, I wish I had known then, a chase-down block.

The kid, patronizing as hell, turned around and said, "Nice block." I pretended to ignore him. A few minutes later, we lost on a missed three at the buzzer. The next day, we played for next-to-last place and lost again, to a Beijing team whose two best players were a couple guys I had spent the better part of my adolescence playing with in Taipei, who had been way ahead of me on that 16-freshman freshman team. We finished last. At our own tournament.

Clearly, I have never gotten over my basketball failures. The final day of that season, collapsed over a bed in a hotel in a military base in Guam after another last place finish, is one of the more miserable moments of my youth. When people ask me if I played in high school, I am almost ashamed to tell the truth, and I always add, apologetically, "It was in Hong Kong."

But if it had been anywhere else, I'd still be dreaming. No way I'd have ever made any other basketball team. No way I'd have gotten to play competitive, organized ball and travelled to do it. And no way I'd have my very own chase-down block.