A sweaty player dribbles, passes the ball to his left hand and then dribbles past his defender. His sneakers are worn after years of playing, the letters are peeling on his NBA jersey, and his jeans look uncomfortable and hot in the spring weather. He backs up, launches his shot. It bounces off the bottom of the rim in an awkward direction — brick. It’s one of many missed shots seen on the basketball courts at Tsinghua University.

Basketball in China is governed by a playfulness free of good form or rigid rules. It’s intense but messy. Fun but unorganized. It’s the Chinese attitude toward playing sports — high on style, low on skill. Some ballers wear sweater vests — in a phrase, it’s no Carrier Dome. But an estimated 300 million people play basketball in China, according to the Chinese Basketball Association, and that figure will only grow in the future.

China is so basketball crazy that 184 million people watched the U.S. team whip China’s Olympic men’s basketball team in 2008. NBA merchandise is sold in 30,000 locations in China, with the most favored jersey belonging to Kobe Bryant over Yao Ming.

The courts outside my dormitory are packed with players and the constant patter of basketballs hitting pavement. So we decided to give Chinese basketball a try. A group was assembled, and we marched out to the courts in the hopes of beating these wannabe NBA players.

Surely a group of American college-aged men could beat these upstarts. After all, I played in high school and had scored many a 3-pointer against the Archbold Gymnasium crowd. Our opponents were not much to look at. They seemed undersized and decidedly unathletic. They didn’t like to call fouls or travels, but they liked to chuck the ball toward the hoop. The out-of-bounds line had been worn away from so much use that normal boundaries didn’t seem to apply. And yet it was the most fun I’ve had playing basketball in a long time. This game certainly lacked epicness, but offered just plain fun. The Chinese players spoke only a little English, but would shout out if someone made the hoop.

We started to get behind on the score. One of our players fell and scraped his hand. They had substitutes for when their players were tired. And we ultimately lost.

I was angry at first as I thought, ‘Who invented this sport, anyway?’ I was frustrated with my teammates and pissed with myself for letting them down. But then I thought, ‘It’s not about the game.’ In China, it really isn’t about who wins or loses. It’s about who can survive the longest without getting kicked off the court or about building a friendship.

My frustration reminded me of something George H. W. Bush wrote when he was the U.S. envoy to China. His son Marvin — not George or Jeb — had thrown his racket during a tennis game. Frustrated at his son’s reaction, Bush Sr. wrote, ‘Sportsmanship and that kind of thing means so much more here. We joke about ‘friendship first’ here a little bit, but carefully. But it is an important concept, and I ate him out for that display.’

We won some of the next games we played over the following week. We adapted to their style of play. We got better.

But it’s not about the game in China — not for me, anyway. It’s about a personal test — a test to see how far you can take yourself without losing your cool, of how to adapt in a strange country; and it’s also a test of turning those shots that bounce awkwardly off the rim into baskets.

Andrew Swab is a junior magazine journalism and international relations major. His column appears occasionally. He can be reached at ajswab@syr.edu.

Published on April 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm