An AMAZN HQ feature story.
by Pranav Iyer
“Final seconds … Bryant for the win … (buzzer sounds) … BANG!”
Like millions of early 2000s kids, Ben Li fell in love with basketball after idolizing the late Kobe Bryant and his on-court heroics. In 5th grade, he would watch YouTube highlights of the Black Mamba. And then, just like everyone else, would run outside to try and recreate those exact shots in his Markham, Ontario house.
Close to 70 percent of Markham, Li’s hometown, is of Asian descent. And basketball culture there is thriving. Yet, he quickly realized he was on a path that was seldom traveled by someone who looked like himself. As he progressed to the higher levels of basketball, Li was more often than not the only Asian kid on the court. Heck, when his parents weren’t in the stands, he’d usually be the only Asian in the entire gym, he says. Being singled out in the most obvious way possible — by the way he looked — was inevitable.
“Everything you can say or trash about an Asian player. I’ve heard it,” Lehigh freshman Ben Li said.
Fast forward to today, Li is living down south in a small Pennsylvanian town called Bethlehem. He’s getting ready for his freshman season at Lehigh University — the alma mater of the Portland Trailblazers star guard CJ McCollum.
A Chinese-Canadian playing Division I basketball. Iconic. Historic. To say the least.
But what’s even more monumental is that Li is not alone at Lehigh. He enters the program with two standout Asian American freshmen: JT Tan, who is Filipino and Chinese, and Jayshen Saigal, who is Indian.
Of the thousands of Division 1 basketball players on its 350 teams in 2018, only 0.5 percent were of Asian or Pacific Islander descent.
Looking at the numbers, it isn’t surprising to hear that history will be made this season:
The 2020-21 Lehigh men’s basketball team is believed to be the first in D1 men’s basketball history to have three Asian players on their roster, let alone the same recruiting class.
The Asian experience in basketball is often filled with complications and roadblocks as athletes navigate through what has for decades been a predominantly black and white occupied space, socio-cultural anthropologist Stanley Thangaraj said. But Li, Tan and Saigal all have had unique, passion-driven experiences — growing up thousands of miles apart from each other — that have allowed them to become a part of this elite and minuscule fraternity of Asian Division I hoopers.
THE ‘CHINESE ZION WILLIAMSON’
MARKHAM, ON — Soon after Li’s ‘come to Kobe’ moment in fifth grade, the momental rise of Jeremy Lin in the NBA occurred. As a young kid who just found his passion for the game, his impact weighed heavily on Li — a blueprint for basketball success that he could relate to.
He quickly developed dreams of making it to the NBA. Always one of the bigger kids, he had the physical attributes to match up against some of the best in his age group. He competed for one of the top AAU programs in all of Canada from 6th grade onwards. But still, his doubters couldn’t get past the fact that he didn’t fit the mold.
“Growing up, everyone’s like ‘that fat kid, that Asian kid, that Chinese kid,’” Li said. “’He’s not doing anything.’ … No one was with me from the start but me, my friends and my family. I had the mindset of going all the way but everyone was like, ‘he’s trippin’, hes’ trippin.’”
By the time he got to 9th grade, he was a 6’3”, 260 pound big man starting for one of the country’s premiere basketball schools, Thornlea — and dropping 40 pieces on his opponents (he even knocked down 12 threes in a game).
In his first two years at Thornlea, he started to see some of his teammates get DI offers — teammates that he knew he was right in line with performance wise.
“My coach would always tell me,” Li recalled, “if there were two other people who played exactly like you, one was black and one was white, they always chose the Asian last. So I had to work harder than anyone else. … I walk in the gym and no one really expects anything out of me. I had to gain my respect.”
Li made what he calls the ‘best decision of his life’ to come down to the states and play for Middleburg Academy his junior season. There, he was able to gain the increased exposure to recruiters that he longed for. He had managed to garner multiple Division I offers and sign with Lehigh all in the span of the few months he was in Virginia.
The summer before his senior year, Li was selected to be a part of the camp roster for the U-19 Chinese National Team. While in China, he was also participated in the reality TV basketball show ‘Rebound and Youth.’ He even took part in a video shoot for Tencent, a Chinese tech company that’s larger than Facebook.
Who else was at the shoot? His long time role model, Jeremy Lin. The two chopped it up and Li received some much needed advice from Asian American basketball’s ‘great hope.’ The two still have a solid connection to this day, Li said.
By the end of that summer, Li’s name was making major buzz in the Chinese basketball community. He was coined the ‘Chinese Zion Williamson’ by some of his fans as he’s already received interest from management in the Chinese Basketball Association, the top basketball league in all of Asia.
Appreciative of all the love he was shown back in his motherland, the D1-bound Li still had some unfinished business. He decided to come back home for his senior season. By then, he was a household name in the area. When people thought of Toronto basketball, Ben Li was always one of the first to come to mind. He had fans, both locally and internationally, that would come to watch him show out during his stellar senior campaign in which he averaged 23.6 PPG and 10.9 RPG.
“It was like a big welcome back the whole year.” Li said. “… My name blew up even more in the Asian community back home… It was just all love. I’m deeply grateful for everyone who showed support.”
And to cap it off, Li was selected to play in the Bio-Steel All-Canadian Basketball Game — a game that boasts some of Canada’s finest like Jamal Murray and Thon Maker.
A figure of representation for his country and the Asian community, Li became the first fully Chinese player to have ever made the All-Canadian game.
PRIDE OF THE PHILIPPINES
REDONDO BEACH, CA — JT Tan always had basketball running through his blood. He just wasn’t aware of it until his junior year of high school, years after he had developed a love for the game on his own. Tan’s grandfather had played college and pro ball in the Philippines once upon a time.
Like Li, Tan outsized his peers from an early age. In the era of the stretch five, he was groomed to become an old-school back-to-the-basket big. He played his way through common rec leagues, AAU and even Asian ball.
His potential was pretty clear before he even got to high school, but his father, John Tan, had his hesitations of going all in with basketball.
“Even with the onset of Jeremy Lin back then, it was very rare,” John said about success for Asian Americans in basketball. “… We were more concerned with getting him the right education.”
So deciding to attend Rolling Hills Prep, a top academic private school with a well established basketball program under former National Coach of the Year Harvey Kitani, was a no brainer for the family. And his impact was felt immediately. As the starting center his freshman year, JT helped lead RHP to a California State Championship.
John originally saw JT as a ‘low hanging fruit,’ with the potential to play at the DIII or NAIA level. But the following year, college scouts would come flocking — not only to his games, but even his practices. And that’s when John came to understand the reality of JT’s potential.
Since 2013, John had been uploading basketball highlight videos of his sons solely as a way for his family to watch him play. Many of his relatives lived out of the state, so it was their only way to see the growth of the budding star. Through YouTube’s magical algorithms, those videos began to get noticed by members of the Filipino basketball community and were reposted in media publications overseas. Interest started rising from Filipino universities and professional teams began to take notice.
“Out of nowhere, this big university out of the Philippines comes to watch me, Ateneo” JT recounted. “I [realized] … that my name was being heard on the other side of the world.”
Even across the South China Sea, JT had also made a name for himself in the Chinese basketball scene after being invited to play in a camp with mainland Chinese teams.
Back at home, JT’s notoriety began to grow amongst Asian Americans after he committed to Lehigh. The Asian basketball community in Southern California has produced a large portion of the Asian American representation that has been seen at the D1 level and have been known to be major supporters of their own. JT has been no exception.
Within the Filipino American community specifically, JT has become a household name nationwide thanks to the help of the organization/media outlet Fil-Am Nation Select.
“I think it was one my last Asian ball games and next thing I hear is, ‘I’m going to be watching you on TV,’” Tan said. “It’s a great feeling to have that support back home.”
A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN
SCARSDALE, NY — Just 30 miles north of the Mecca of basketball, five year old Jayshen picked up a basketball for the first time. The sport was always something that he and his brother Aryaan shared. Jayshen quickly found a knack for basketball, as he was head and shoulders above his competition from the get-go, Aryaan recalled.
“That’s when I first recognized there was something special about him.” Aryaan said about watching Jayshen play as a kid. “… He was definitely something different.”
Yes, he was different in terms of his skill. But he was also different in the way he looked. It was never something that was an issue for Jayshen, as he says he rightfully earned his respect through his game. But being an Indian American basketball player in New York was not something that was the norm. There was an ‘unspoken understanding’ that Asian Americans from his community would either be solely focused on academics or venture into a more prototypical ‘Asian’ sport like tennis or golf, according to Aryan.
“When you’re on the court, you’re the only Indian kid,” Aryaan said. “Even if you’re the worst player on the team, people are going to notice you regardless. That was always in the back of his head.”
As the two grew in age and skill, Aryaan realized that he would never be a college-caliber player. Instead, he decided to channel his basketball ambitions through Jayshen. Knowing his brother’s potential, Aryaan would do all the research he could to find the best basketball drills and workouts, just to help Jayshen chase his dream of one day playing college hoops.
“He’s been my biggest supporter,” Jayshen said, “my biggest coach ever since I started playing basketball.”
Jayshen really began to take flight his junior season after replacing the hole created by the departure of Scarsdale’s All-Section point guard. And for Jayshen’s final season, Aryaan, decided to take a semester off from college and watch his little brother ball out for the final time on the high school stage. Every game, Aryaan would be cheering from the sidelines and coaching up Jayshen each chance he could get.
Jayshen ended his final season averaging 21 points and nine rebounds per game and was All-League, All-Conference, All-Section and an All-State honorable mention — accolades that you don’t often imagine when you think of Scarsdale, a school that has not produced a D1 basketball player since the mid ‘90s, according to Aryaan.
So it made sense that his coaches, teammates and community all saw him as someone with the potential to be a solid D3 or D2 hooper — but nothing more. Though, the one person who knew Jayshen and his on-court capabilities better than anyone else in the world thought differently.
“To be completely honest,” Aryaan said, “I was probably the only person who thought he could play D1.”
And on March 4th, Jayshen did the impossible by signing with Lehigh — becoming the only player from his graduating class to continue their basketball career at any level.
“When they offered me a spot,” Jayshen said, “that was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So I said, ‘I’m gonna take it and run with it.’”
STRONGER TOGETHER
This Lehigh trio have had their own special journeys to make it to where they are today. None of them decided to come to the school because they knew about each other prior or were influenced by seeing another Asian recruit. And no, there were no Asian coaches on the Lehigh staff fighting for Asian representation at the D1 level. It really is a huge coincidence that the three all became teammates. Regardless, they are now here and represent 50 percent of Lehigh’s six man freshman class.
“We never really talked about how we came up but just looking at each other, we knew,” Ben said about understanding each other’s journeys. “It’s not easy to get in D1, period. But to be Asian and get into a Division I program, we know that’s a tremendous amount of effort. We don’t got to experience each other, we could just look at each other and just know.”
Being Asian D1 hoopers, they know their experiences to and through that level can only be shared by a handful of others. Whether consciously or subconsciously, they all agree that it has allowed them to bond on a deeper level.
The six freshmen all live in two next-door apartment-style dorms and have become like ‘family’ in the little time they’ve been on campus thus far. Ben says he has become the chef of the squad, being able to sprinkle a bit of his Asian culture on his teammates through his culinary creations. For many of his teammates, this is their first time having an Asian player on their team — possibly for some even the first team seeing an Asian hooper.
JT and Ben are far from what people would think of the ‘average Asian guy’ or even the prototypical Asian basketball player. JT is 6’8”, 280 pounds. Ben is 6’6’’, 230 pounds and has a 40-inch vertical that never fails to shock the masses.
“The most surprising part about people seeing me play, even my teammates, is my bounce,” Li said. “They be like, ‘I’ve never seen an Asian dude windmill in front of me or Eastbay in front of me.’ Why not? Why can’t Asians do these types of things? … We’re all at this level, you should just know that we could play.”
POWER OF THE NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Lehigh is a mid-major school that hasn’t received much recognition since the CJ McCollum-led squad knocked off No. 2 seed Duke in the 2012 NCAA Tournament. But this September, the Patriot League, which Lehigh is a part of, announced a partnership with ESPN+ to have all of their home basketball league games broadcasted on their streaming platform (apart from those that will be on CBS Sports).
It is without a doubt that JT, Ben and Jayshen — already with their local and international followings — will begin to catch the eyes of more and more across the country.
“Them three as a collective, I think they need to recognize their platform, especially with everything that’s going on in the country right now,” Aryaan emphasized. “It just shows that you can be whatever gender, whatever skin color, it doesn’t matter. … At the end of the day, if you choose to not make a stereotype matter, then it doesn’t matter.”
If nothing else, seeing three Asian hoopers on a TV screen will make viewers stop and think. It will make them reconsider what they perceive a basketball player to look like. It will make coaches and recruiters realize their subconscious biases.
All three of them agree that if they were able to turn back the clock even just a few years, switch on their TVs and see three Asian basketball players at the D1 level, it would’ve proven to them that they weren’t alone in their journeys. It would’ve given them the belief that there was a space for them in the basketball world regardless of what society was telling them. And that’s what they hope to provide to that next generation.
“Seeing Asian Americans at a high level,” Fil-Am Nation Select founder Cris Gopez said, “especially now with three kids at Lehigh University, we’re creating a pipeline for many more to come. And I believe that it’s important that we have leaders and athletes that can inspire more young athletes to get to where they are.”
Ben continues to get messages from up-and-coming Asian hoopers asking for advice or just thanking him for trailblazing a path, something that he says has opened his eyes up to realizing the impact he is having on others. JT has been coaching at camps within the Asian basketball community back in SoCal, where he has been able to serve as a role model for younger kids as they begin to find their love for the sport. And seeing Jayshen’s success has instilled a belief in his middle-school aged cousin that someone who looks like him can not only chase, but accomplish their hoop dreams.
The Lehigh trio all have big hoop dreams of their own. Though they are just freshmen, they all aspire to play professionally if given the chance. But out of the three, Ben’s goals may be the highest reaching: to make the NBA, play for the Chinese National Team and serve as an inspiration to the next generation.
But Li makes it clear that he hopes that one day he can be seen as ‘just another Asian playing at this level.’ That being an Asian D1 player, or even an Asian NBA player will become normalized.
“It’s a special occasion to see three Asians on a [D1] basketball team,” Li said, “especially in the same class. But if we’re talking about in ten years from now, I think this wouldn’t even be a conversation.”
Until then, we can enjoy Ben, JT and Jayshen make college basketball history as they take the court together for their first time when the season kicks off in Jan. 2021.
