develop up in the Washington , D.C. , sphere in the 1990s , Mike Mon knew what to expect when he step on thebasketballcourt .
" How many times did I hear ' Bruce Lee ' ? " enjoin Mon , who is Chinese - American . " Nonstop . I ’m sure a mountain of other players got that , too . "
Today , Mon is the tournament managing director of theAsian Basketball Championships of North America , which brings together competitive men ’s , char ’s and youth basketball teams composed exclusively of players of Asian descent . Asian - American basketball game leagues have existed fornearly a century . Both Mon ’s don and his grandfather play in Chinese - American league when they were kid .
But despite the wild popularity of youth hoops in the Asian - American residential area go back generation , very few Asiatic - American athletes have been enter to play Division I college hoops , and just a fistful have made it to the pro .
There ’s a rationality why Jeremy Lin ’s two - week run of " Linsanity " back in 2012 caught so many of the great unwashed , even veteran sportswriters and announcers , by surprise . They do n’t expect to see Asiatic - American basketball game adept . Or baseball star . Or football stars . But why ?
Like any effect need race and culture , it ’s a complicated question , and the answer require an true facial expression at the various military group at bid both within and exterior of the Asiatic - American community .
Education First
When we asked both Asian - American athletes and academics to explain the dearth of Asian - American professional athletes , the first affair they pointed to is the overwhelming accent within Asian - American house on teaching over athletics .
" ' Where ’s hoops going to get you ? ' ' Where ’s football game going to get you ? ' ' Your odds of becoming an NBA player are one in a million , ' " says Mon , repeating a uncouth refrain . " ' But your odds of becoming a doctor … If you study hard , you put the piece of work in , you check your own fate . ' That has a mountain to do with it . There are other manner to succeed in life besides athletic competition . "
Joel Franks is a sociology professor at San Jose State University and generator of several book on the chronicle of Asian - American athletics , including one called " The Barnstorming Hawaiian Travelers , " the chronicle of a semipro multiethnic Hawaiian baseball team that act across America from 1912 to 1916 .
Franks says that first - generation Asian - Americans receive the same social and fiscal pressures as other immigrant groups in the former 20th C .
" minor of immigrant detect it operose to arrive at cultural approval for sports outside of their locality , " allege Franks . " Joe DiMaggio ’s father said , ' Do n’t play baseball game . You go on this fishing boat with the rest of us . ' "
Kirk Kim , who played college basketball at the University of California Berkeley in the tardy 1990s , say that part of the reason he made it to the Division I take down was that his parents did n’t behave like " distinctive " Korean - American immigrant .
" They always supported me in athletics , " suppose Kim , who walked onto the Cal team through opened tryouts . " You would n’t feel that a lot in a first - generation household household , specially in the Korean community of interests and culture . academician is always go to take precedence over everything . "
Pressure from parents steering shaver away from nonacademic " distractions " is certainly part of the reason why there are fewer Asiatic - American jock in the pipeline for many college sports and the professional . But that does n’t tell the whole story . There ’s also a vast " obedience " problem .
No esteem
It go back to those " Bruce Lee " taunts that Mon and other Asian - American players used to get on the basketball court . Even Jeremy Lin , who in in high spirits school was named first - team All State in California and the Division II " Player of the Year,“didn’t get a single scholarship offerfrom Division I college .
" That ’s dead ridiculous , " says Mon . " In a state like California , the Player of the Year does n’t get scholarship offer ? In that representative , that ’s intelligibly a stereotype that Asiatic players ca n’t contend at that stage . "
When Kim was mature up in inner - city Richmond , California , he says that Asian - American players were n’t take badly .
" It made me tougher for sure , " says Kim . " Not that I feel like I was representing an entire backwash . More like , ' There ’s nothing unlike about you that I ca n’t do . ' That put an additional chip on my articulatio humeri . "
That same respect job does n’t be in all mutant , say Mon . That ’s why you see such high participation numbers for Asian - American athletes in sports like tennis , golf , swim , gymnastics and volleyball , at least when compared to basketball , baseball game and football .
The NCAA keeps stats on college athletes by race . According to issue from the 2015 - 16 school day year , there were only 14 Asian - American men ’s basketball game players out of the 5,472 full players in Division I. In football , it was 115 out of 28,380 player . In baseball , there were 89 Asiatic thespian out of 10,430 . These figures show Asian - American representation was less than 1 percentage for all three sportsman . By comparison , 10.5 percentage of women ’s Division I golfers were Asiatic and a whopping 14.6 pct of men ’s fencer were Asiatic . ( Asian - Americans make up 5.6 per centum of the U.S. population ) .
" Respect has a lot to do with it , " sound out Mon . " Where are the coaches pop off to honour you ? Where are the other players going to respect you ? Am I going to be accept on my high-pitched - schooling basketball team ? I do n’t sleep with . But I know that if I do swimming , I will be , because that ’s just based on your time . "
The good news , say both Mon and Kim , is that things seem to be changing . And Jeremy Lin has played no modest role . " Linsanity " finally gave Asian - American kids the role model they need . Largely snub by colleges ( Lin played for Harvard , which does n’t award athletic scholarships ) and undrafted by the NBA , Lin stick it out , prehend a last - chance opportunity for the New York Knicks to show the human race what a Taiwanese - American baller could really do .
" Since that happened , there has decidedly been a heavy number of Asiatic kids playing AAU [ basket ] ball , " says Mon , referring to the Amateur Athletic Union , a proving ground for top youth endowment . " When we run our youth tournaments [ for the Asian - American league ] , now I have to schedule around the magnanimous AAU weekends . Five years ago , it did n’t even figure into our planning process . That ’s a positive sign . "
