The desire to perform and be the best version of myself came at a very young age, honestly can’t pinpoint exactly when, but I know it had to do with basketball. It’s a big reason my love for basketball is still so great to this day.
It started with the dream to be an NBA basketball player. I remember watching the early 2000s Trail Blazers battle it out against Kobe and Shaq’s Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, and something about that series in particular (because I still remember it to this day) inspired a desire deep within to want to be great, at that point it was basketball. Michael Jordan had just retired with the Wizards, I don’t remember much watching him play for the Bulls although I knew the TV was on winning his 90s championships, and a biography film done on Michael Jordan shortly after his retirement gave me all the fuel and desire to want to be like Mike (not the movie, although a good movie, lol).
I credit my mom for the youth size indoor basketball hoop when I barely started walking and I’d be shooting hoops at that thing when I was 3 or 4. My mom would take time to help me learn how to shoot and I kept practicing, doing whatever I could to get that small brown ball in that little plastic Fisher’s Kids hoop.
Then I started playing on the outside hoop, I didn’t care if it was cold, rainy (rained in Oregon about 9 months of the year back then), sunny, I was out there shooting a basketball. We didn’t have a big house growing up, and not the biggest driveway, but that didn’t matter, I remember aiming to shoot long range 3s from the other side of the street, long before anyone knew who Steph Curry was and how it started becoming acceptable to take those long shots. I knew the more accurate I could be on the really long shots, the easier it would make my normal three pointers. Definitely caught my mailman’s attention when he’d drive up after I came home from school to be in his way launching 3s from the street…and then MAKING them. My mailman encouraged me a ton to keep shooting, and to this day, is still one of my great friends.
I practiced those 3’s so much to the point that in a middle school championship game in like 6th or 7th grade, down 4 with 2 seconds left (game basically over), I threw up a half court shot at the buzzer at Central Catholic High School in Oregon…and to my surprise but also not surprised based on how I felt releasing the ball…swish, right through, to lose by 1. The crowd erupted almost more amazed at my shot than celebrating the team who just won the championship. It wasn’t just half-court, it was sideline half-court off the inbounds, and I was maybe 12 years old at the time.
I knew I was good, and relative to the competition around me, I thought I was the best. I won state free throw contests in middle school back to back years, I was the “star” on my middle school basketball team, but at the same time I always felt the least skilled. I had to work 2x harder than others around me, I recognized that early on. Another one of my influences at the time, my assistant middle school basketball coach, gave me a quote very early on that stuck with me to this day: “Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard.” The thing was, I wasn’t the most talented, I wasn’t the most naturally gifted, shifty, sharp-shooting basketball player, and I knew that. I wasn’t the absolute smartest person, I was always the last one to finish tests in grade school and even into high school. Although I got A’s, the Herculean effort I felt I had to put in to get those grades was double to triple what everyone else was doing.
I was little average Joe trying to be GI Joe.
At this time, I already also had a regimen of simple bodyweight training of push ups, sit ups, and planks. Again, dreaming of being in the NBA, those big dudes had these oddly shaped shoulders (obviously muscle lol) from the average person that seemed to make them stronger, and I was figuring out how I could get those. Ah ha, push ups, thank you 4th grade PE class.
Basketball wasn’t all I was aiming to be the best in. If I could have the success in basketball (what I deemed at the time successful in basketball relative to my limited perspective at the time, aka, it was rec CYO league, not competitive AAU basketball or club basketball that all these kids are in today), why would I slack in the classroom? I didn’t. I never got less than an A until high school, and even in high school (later to come), I was 5th in my graduating high school class in grades with one “A-” at the top academic college prep high school in Oregon. Not to mention they were non-weighted, meaning an A in my AP and Honors classes was treated as an A in non-honors/non-AP classes. No “extra points” for AP.
Yes, I come from an Asian household but I can’t say there was an overwhelming pressure to get good grades or I failed at life. There was always this question in the back of my head: if there’s an option to be my best, why would I ever aim for less?
Aiming big and doing everything in my power to hit the goal almost seemed innate, but it wasn’t. Many times as I kid, I just wanted to have fun, play video games at my cousins and friends houses for hours on end, not do my homework on time, procrastinate, do what I needed to do just to get by.
Something in me though always bothered me knowing I wasn’t giving my best. And once I gave my best, separated myself from the pack and everyone around me, it became lonely. So many times my elementary and middle school classmates would say things like “Joseph (I didn’t go by Joe until 5th grade), you suck, I hate you, why do you have to be so good at everything.” “Oh here comes Joseph again getting the best grade in the class, what else is new.” The subtle comments of criticism came early, and came often. Even on the basketball court. I’d score the most points on our team, we’d win, my dad was the coach: “Man Mike, why is your son such a ball hog, does he know how to pass?”
Did that bother me? Of course. Did it stop me? F*** no. Screw the haters, screw those people, I told myself.
Not falling to the pressure to be average, to not stand out in the crowd, came very early on and often. Every time I did well at something, there really wasn’t much of a congratulations from any peers, any friends. A lot of the time, I felt on an island for always striving for and wanting to do my best.
However, as great as I thought I was at that time and what I had accomplished, sometimes you’re a big fish swimming in a very, very small pond. Which I was.
It wasn’t until high school when I was truly humbled in how hard I actually needed to work to be great and pursue excellence.
To be continued…
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