I started to teach my son Jack basketball when he was about eight. The drive was not parenting maniac, but his own interests. Basketball was the first sport Jack got on since the sense of athlete started to sprout in a boy’s body. Of course, as a Dad I played an important role in planting the seeds. I constantly played basketball until I was middle 30s. After the serious injury on both knees, I turned my energy to NBA. When Michael Jordan won his second three-peat Championship in 1998, I could instantly shout out every player’s name across the league.
After sitting with me watching enough NBA games and hearing all the stories, one day Jack told me he wanted to play basketball. I jumped up and volunteered for coaching in a heartbeat. In the first few weeks the basket rim was like the end of the sky for Jack. But as the saying goes, “Interest is the best teacher.” Jack grew really fast, both his height and skills. I never had professional training myself, all I learned was from the street games. So I just showed him some basic moves and fed him balls. After he developed a small team among his classmates, I helped drive the little players to the playground and watched them play. They were mostly at my belly height. Despite having endless energy on the court, they still stumbled quite a bit when the physical collision happened. I tried to hold up my moves on the court in order to not hurt them. But these boys grew so fast, the strength increased every single day.
After we moved to the U.S., Jack quickly found his basketball buddies at the middle school. They were now at my shoulder height and my skills to coach them came to short supply. So, I mostly joined the 3–3 games when they were short of players. Now I had to use the full range of my capacity, but I could still dominate the game if I wanted to. In the real-life, I spent almost nine months in vain to search for a job since landing in the U.S.. California’s sunlight was as shining and welcoming as ever, while my life was dark when I struggled to find my bearings in this new world. But the game nights at the playground of Orange Terrace Park in Riverside brought me a lot of joy and hope. I kept telling myself, “Hang in there, it will get better.”
I got a job in the fall of 2019. The 10 hours night shift warehouse work took away all my energy coming back home. Joining the games became increasingly difficult for me. But Jack managed to stay on the court on his own. He joined a couple of basketball camps in 2019. He was as tall as I was by then. What’s growing even faster was his skills, and more importantly, confidence in games. He was no more afraid of physical plays; the moves were more determined.
2020, Jack grew into a 5-feet 11-inch young man. Now I need to look up to his eyes. We planned on a lot more for his basketball camps this summer. But the Covid-19 stopped everything. All his basketball buddies were at home quarantine since March. The basketball boards at Orange Terrace Park were fixed with rim-brackets to stop people. They were taken off in May following the reopening phases in Riverside. But Jack’s playmates were still missing. So I volunteered to play 1–1 whenever my knees allowed me after work. Suddenly I was shocked to see that I couldn’t dominate the game anymore. Actually, he beats me just too easily. He is now faster, stronger, and a way better shooter. His layups were unstoppable for me. It was like the scene re-surfacing when Jack was at my belly height, only the players switched.
I tried to hold up his moves with handicapped rules, like what I did to myself many years ago. No jump shot, only layups. But he still beats me, easily.
For a moment, I realized that I would never beat him again. The boy that struggled to get the ball touch the rim has now grown up. The summer of 2020 has never been more special. It just added another memory to my life. Finally, you are beaten by someone you used to coach. I tell myself, “Hang in there. Life will get better, one way or another. ”
