“That team could use some black kids!”
This was the comment of Number Two Son, pointing to the mostly white team that his mostly black team beat in an NJB game.
That incident came to mind when I saw this article about the rarity of Asian-American college basketball players that Efren forwarded. Stereotypical notions about who can play basketball and who can’t already had sunk into Number Two Son. These prejudices affect Jeremy Lin, a starting point guard and leading scorer at Harvard, shown in the picture to the right.
The article points out that although basketball is popular with Asian American youth, there are few making it to the college level. “It’s a sport for white and black people. You don’t get respect for being an Asian American basketball player in the U.S.” said Lin. As a Northern California’s Division II player of the year who lead Palo Alto High School to a Division II State Championship, he expected some Division I scholarship offers but gotten exactly none. On the road, he gets taunts like “Go back to China!” and “Open your eyes!”
Stereotypes and blatant racism aren’t the only obstacle that Asian-American athletes face – family attitudes are another. Being in sports aren’t always encouraged, much less having kids aspire to be professional athletes. I have coached mostly Asian-American volleyball teams for a number years, and I have seen all kinds of reasons that Asian-American parents stop their kids from doing sports. These have ranged from “you are too weak to play” and “you might get hurt” to my least favorite one: “you need to concentrate on academics.” I lost a player this year to that last one (a really good one too), and ironically he was already getting good grades! At my sons’ school, kids with grade problems can’t play.
I think some of the problem is with the system of kids’ sports. Adults living vicariously through their kids have professionalized kids sports to the point where if you really want to be competitive in a sport you have to do it all year. In basketball, what usually happens is that in the off-season, the kids are expected to join club teams or compete on AAU teams. In Volleyball, kids are expected to join club teams in the off-season. A high-level traveling volleyball team can be extremely expensive in the range of thousands of dollars. That’s a high cost that I don’t many Asian-American parents wouldn’t pay – they’d have trouble seeing the value in that. I have trouble seeing the value in that myself. In far too many youth sports, the competitive aspect is overemphasized vs the exercise and participation and fun aspects. Kids figure they might as well go play video games if sports is a painful, non-fun experience.
Intermarriage, the article says, will help to produce bigger Asian Americans to counteract the stereotype that Asian Americans are short. I find that the Asian-Americans are generally shorter. When Number One Son sees a taller team (usually mostly white), he usually moans, “Oh no, we’re going to lose.” While my teams have often over come height disadvantages, they have lost to a number of teams because of height.
The article mentions that Asian-American players don’t get respect, but I think that is changing as more and more Asian-Americans get involved in sports. I would say that some of this is from parents who are looking to the future and wanting some kind of sports experience on their kids high school or college applications. I do know a number of kids going the club team route and making it on highly competitive teams. On Number Two Son’s team which is mostly African American, Number Two Son has managed to land the difficult point guard position, earning him respect.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Lin remains a lonely pioneer.
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15 Comments to “Jeremy Lin and the Challenges Facing Asian American Athletes”
Jason wrote:
“I find that the Asian-Americans are generally shorter.”
Careful, Jeff… commenters were ripping into Obama for saying basically the same thing.
http://www.8asians.com/2008/06/16/obama-says-asians-are-short/
Posted on 17-Dec-08 at 2:05 pm | Permalink
Jen wrote:
What about Yao Ming? I feel he has done a LOT in the basketball world to bring attention to the fact that Yellow Men Can Jump!!
Posted on 17-Dec-08 at 6:55 pm | Permalink
Jeff wrote:
@Jen: Yao Ming really doesn’t need to jump that much, actually.
More seriously, the article stresses that more Asians are recruited than Asian-Americans. Also, when you
@Jason: There are a fair number of tall Asian-Americans. Some regions of China have a lot of tall people. Jeremy Lin is not short for a point guard at 6-2. Kids like that never seem to play for my teams though, and on average, it seems to be true. I don’t want to be so handcuffed by political correctness that I can’t say what I observe to be true.
Posted on 18-Dec-08 at 5:31 pm | Permalink
Jen wrote:
hey jeff, i observe that too–most asian guys that i know are shorter than the non-asian ones. and i fully support your right to say whatever you want to–without being blamed for stereotyping everyone who’s asian and male!
and yeah, now that you mention it; I don’t remember ever seeing Yao Ming jump (not that I watch that much basketball). I see him mostly on commercials!
Posted on 18-Dec-08 at 7:49 pm | Permalink
CaliStunna818 wrote:
Yao Ming doesn’t really have much vertical, but he’s probably one of the best players ever to play at that 7′3+. For someone his height to be playing basketball for this long and still putting up good stats, that’s still an achievement.
Jeremy Lin is actually now 6′3 and he can dunk as well.
Yi Jianlian is the new breed of Chinese players, he’s the one with the highlight dunking plays. Sun Yue also has decent hops. One of the more promising players whose actual game was dunking alot was Xu Yong. An athletic wing player who had hops, unfortunately he had cancer and his career is over. All from China.
Posted on 18-Dec-08 at 8:47 pm | Permalink
jun wrote:
First off, it important to understand that Asian-Americans live mostly in the urban, large city environments. If you look at the college recruiting they rarely recruit from urban cities and there are very few athletes that actually go pro who are from large urban areas. Its doesnt matter whether your black, white, yellow, or purple there just are very few bigtime athletes from large urban cities at the collegiate or pro levels. I dont know what the correlation is, but there one certainly exists and if someone actually does a research project on it it would be really interesting. If you take a look at the Biggest Sport stars from every major league the percentage of people from major US cities like NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, LA, and San Francisco (also cites with large Asian American populations) have very few pro players and as a result college recruiting in these cites are not that heavy, with maybe recruiting in LA being the exception.
Second, dunking is simply the most overrated aspect of basketball. The best dunkers in the NBA are usually the worst players. Just take a look at the Slam Dunk competitors from the last 5 years. Very few of them are actually all-star caliber players. Not only that look at the top 5 picks of the NBA draft from the last 5 years also. Very few high flying dunkers in that list also.
Posted on 19-Dec-08 at 12:40 pm | Permalink
CaliStunna818 wrote:
Well there are players suited for the dunk contest, and there are players who are suited for in game dunking.
Probably the most recent player who was known for his dunking rather than his game was James White.
However, some of these dunkers have great athleticism to begin with. It’s more than just dunking, which includes…speed…first step….vertical…all things that can help a player in basketball.
Lebron James, Wade, Vince Carter, Josh Smith, T-mac all have great athleticism and are high flyers.
Even other rising stars such as Brandon Roy and Chris Paul may not be great in game dunkers or be joining the dunk contest anytime soon, but both have great athleticism which includes the vertical.
Posted on 19-Dec-08 at 3:04 pm | Permalink
chzzba wrote:
I’m going to say something politically incorrect: Asians don’t have the genes to play basketball, they don’t have the height, the fast twitch muscles to make it to the big time basketball league like NBA. Jeremy Lin might be an exception so is Yao Ming.
Posted on 08-Jan-09 at 12:05 pm | Permalink
Ernie wrote:
Looks like Jeremy Lin had a record night last night against Boston College and was on a couple of papers today. Guest blogger Phil wrote a piece, which will be published in a couple of hours.
Posted on 08-Jan-09 at 1:23 pm | Permalink
Jeremy Lin Asian American Student Athlete Leads Harvard To A Major Upset Over (17) Boston College | Chinese or Japanese wrote:
[...] 8Asians.com » Jeremy Lin and the Challenges Facing Asian American … [...]
Posted on 08-Jan-09 at 5:00 pm | Permalink
kettch wrote:
chzzba wrote:
I’m going to say something politically incorrect: Asians don’t have the genes to play basketball, they don’t have the height, the fast twitch muscles to make it to the big time basketball league like NBA. Jeremy Lin might be an exception so is Yao Ming.
That’s because American born Asians have it easy. Try playing against native-born Filipinos, who honed their skills playing on concrete or dirt courts while playing barefoot or in flip-flops. They may not be as tall or jump as high, but they’ve got incredible ballhandling skills and can change directions like a deflating balloon.
Posted on 23-Feb-09 at 4:02 am | Permalink
8Asians.com » Tall Asians, Short Asians, Segregated Asians: Six Lessons from a Basketball Season wrote:
[...] said that (so did Barack Obama), but after this season, I’d have to qualify that statement to [...]
Posted on 22-Apr-09 at 6:00 am | Permalink
8Asians.com » Ninja Warrior wrote:
[...] stage. I was also surprised at the number of professional and high level Asian athletes; who says Asians aren’t athletic? A final surprise was how long the show has lasted — it’s gone on for 12 years, [...]
Posted on 23-Jun-09 at 7:02 pm | Permalink
8Asians.com » Kevin Wong: Professional Volleyball Player wrote:
[...] Wong is a 6-7 professional beach volleyball player (who says that Asians aren’t tall and aren’t athletic?), as is his brother Scott. Kevin went to Hawaii sports powerhouse Punahou [...]
Posted on 04-Aug-09 at 12:18 pm | Permalink
8Asians.com » Asian Kids in the Little League World Series wrote:
[...] unearned runs. The American team was characterized as being powerful, hitting many home runs. How stereotypical! Ironically, during the first part of the game, Taiwan was leading, scoring by hitting home runs. [...]
Posted on 10-Sep-09 at 8:41 am | Permalink
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