The Golden Age of Basketball

"Writing stories is like shooting hoops; you keep scoring and missing, then continue, relentlessly, until you leave the court." — The Author

Sometimes Dang Lei wished his life was just a dream.

Once awakened, he would realize that he was actually a normal person.

From Dang Lei's surname, one could tell that he was an orphan, raised in an orphanage.

Dang Lei had never seen his parents. According to Aunt Jiang who took care of him at the orphanage, she found him one winter morning in 1989, at the doorstep of the facility.

He was quietly sleeping in a bamboo basket padded with cotton, his small face red from the cold. It was not until Aunt Jiang picked him up that he burst into tears.

Tucked in the cotton padding was a note from the child's mother, pleading for a kind-hearted person to raise him. It was signed "Rui."

Aunt Jiang lamented the mother's heart of stone, willing to abandon her own child, and thus named him "Lei."

Initially, the staff at the orphanage couldn't understand why such an adorable boy would be abandoned by his parents. Later, they discovered that Dang Lei had a serious congenital heart condition.

Given the medical technology of the time, and the financial constraints of the orphanage, there was no way to cure him with surgery. The doctors predicted he would unlikely live past the age of twenty.

The orphanage was full of kids with congenital defects, and Dang Lei became one of them.

Young Dang Lei was blissfully unaware of this, growing up carefree with his peers in the orphanage.

That is until the day he realized some of his friends were vanishing one by one, he became so frightened, thinking that the children were being eaten by the staff, that for a while, he hid whenever he saw any of them.

He later learned that these healthy kids had been adopted, they now had parents and a home.

But children like Dang Lei, with severe congenital diseases, were never adopted.

Apart from the heart condition, Dang Lei was no different from the other kids; he attended school normally, excelled in all his subjects, except he couldn't participate in physical education or any strenuous physical activity.

While other children ran and played on the sports field, Dang Lei could only sit in the classroom, longingly watching them.

One time he couldn't resist joining in the fun with the boys in his class; shortly afterward, his heart went into disarray and he couldn't catch his breath, terrifying his teacher into rushing him to the hospital.

The doctor advised him, "You can't engage in intense exercise anymore. It could be life-threatening."

Young Dang Lei asked, "Does that mean I can't play basketball?"

The doctor chuckled, "Of course not, basketball is also a strenuous sport."

Dang Lei hung his head. He knew basketball was strenuous, but he couldn't help asking the doctor anyway, just in case.

It seemed like a cruel joke of fate that he, destined to be sidelined from sports, would encounter basketball.

It was the summer of 1997 when a TV station began to air an animated series about a redhead who plays basketball. In front of a 21-inch color TV donated by a benefactor, Dang Lei became deeply engrossed by "Slam Dunk Master," which brought him endless joy throughout the entire summer vacation.

The once pristine white walls of the orphanage were marked with dark patches from the repeated bounce of his rubber ball.

In 1998, China's Central Television broadcasted the NBA Finals between the Bulls and the Jazz. Kids from the surrounding neighborhoods gathered in the city park, wagering their Water Margin cards from Little Raccoon potato chips on who would win the championship.

With most people betting on Jordan, the unconventional Dang Lei wagered all the Water Margin cards from the orphanage (given by volunteers), insisting that Karl Malone and Stockton's Jazz would win.

Following Jordan's last shot, all the Water Margin cards of the orphanage were snapped up by others. Dang Lei spent the entire summer winning them back in various ways, even earning extras to give to his friends at the orphanage.

In 2001, Wang Zhizhi donned the Dallas Mavericks' No. 16 jersey, becoming the first Asian in the NBA.

China's Central Television began a regular weekly broadcast of NBA games, especially those of the Dallas Mavericks.

That year, Dang Lei graduated from elementary school and started boarding at a middle school ten kilometers away from the orphanage. With no Aunt Jiang or friends from the orphanage around, and faced with the demanding life of a middle school student, he needed something to keep him steady.

In 2002, Yao Ming joined the Houston Rockets as the top draft pick, bringing NBA fever in China to its peak. Most kids who loved basketball became Rockets and Yao Ming fans.

Dang Lei was no exception.

Whenever time and circumstances allowed, he wouldn't miss an NBA game, especially those featuring the Rockets and Yao Ming.

At noon, if CCTV was broadcasting a game, Dang Lei would join a bunch of classmates at the school gate's snack bar to watch TV; at the same time, he'd buy a 50-cent pack of shrimp-flavored snacks for the store owner as a "broadcasting fee."

"Sports Weekly," "Basketball Pioneer," and "Dunk" magazines became his go-to reads to relax outside of tedious schoolwork.

Back then, each student didn't have much allowance, certainly not enough to buy magazines after meals, so whenever the newsstand received new issues, Dang Lei would gather everyone to pool their money for one, and then all the boys in the class would share it.

He was always the first to buy but the last to read; by the time it reached him, the fresh magazines often looked like they had been dragged through a dog's hole, but this didn't diminish his enjoyment in the slightest.

The distant and fervent world of basketball across the sea became the stage on which the young men released their energy and let their imaginations soar during the monotony and uncertainty of adolescence.