I always knew that Asian Americans loved hoops. I just didn’t realize to what depth our community’s passion for the sport went.
When I was on the journey of chasing my own dreams in sports, I always tried to find these examples of success within the community so that I could show to the world (and myself) that it was possible. And each time I stumbled upon someone like Jeremy Lin or Varun Ram or Sim Bhullar, I latched on to their stories immediately.
But my entire life I saw athletes like them as isolated cases. Plus, I didn’t think there were many people out there like me who had an overwhelming passion for knowing their stories.
But through this past year and change of devoutly covering the Asian American basketball community, I realized that is simply not the case.
The hundreds of heartwarming messages from people who shared my same passion for the cause. The efforts I have seen Asian American athletes, coaches and advocates take to help advance the narrative first hand. It all has been extremely eye opening.
There are so many who have been doing the important work. From the OGs at the Nikkei Basketball Heritage Association who have stories for years on the Japanese American experience in basketball to the guys at Fil-Am Nation Select who are uniting the community in an unprecedented way and helping to build the bridge between the Filipino American and the native Filipino populations. It’s players advocating for players, trainers helping uplift under recruited Asian athletes, all because of their passion for seeing their own succeed and understanding that it requires a collective effort.
One of the reasons I started this publication was to help shine a spotlight on these high caliber players so that they could inspire the community. But I’ll be honest and say that I had no idea there would be so many studs. It truly has been inspiring for myself to see and hear from these athletes about how much they have overcome and their desire to put on for the Asian community.
Thus far, most of my coverage has been in California and what I’ve been seeing (in SoCal especially) is insane. In the girls game, Asian Americans hoopers are literally at the top of the rankings in every class. There are dozens of Asian D1 female hoopers that will be coming out of the LA/OC area in the next few years. If you look at the All-CIF rankings, so many of the spots are occupied by Asian players. And what’s amazing is that for the basketball community around here, it’s almost no longer a shocking sight to see because of how common of an occurrence it’s becoming.
On the guys side, I got to be the first to report about a group of three Asian hoopers on the same D1 roster for the first time in history. We are currently witnessing the meteoric rise of Filipino hoopers at the collegiate and professional levels. And in California, while the progress for the guys can nowhere come close to comparing with what the girls are doing, it’s still amazing to see the amount of them that are making their ways into college hoops in ways I never thought would be normalized this early on.
Growing up, I wish I had the support these Asian athletes are getting from their community. They don’t have to feel isolated like the thousands that have come before them. And that alone can really make all the difference.
But I understand that what I’ve seen take place in Southern California is not the reality for Asian American athletes across the rest of the country. In many places, it is far from that. I mostly point out the example of SoCal to show that this what the future looks like.
The days of one-off examples like Jeremy Lin are soon to be a thing of the past. Based on what I’ve seen, I can almost say that as a fact. Jeremy was an anomaly, they said. I don’t think that reasoning will fly a few years from now.
The community’s roar is finally beginning to be heard. It’s been roaring for decades. But now, with the representation arising at the highest levels coupled with the interconnectivity of the country and the world, the wave is most definitely coming. And it’s coming fast.
