Review by Ian Keogh
Throughout his life Gene Luen Yang has had no interest in sports, but when stuck for a subject for his next graphic novel he overhears students at the school where he teaches talking about the “story” connected with the basketball team. With no other inspiration forthcoming, Yang chats with the basketball coach Lou Richie and knows he’s found his story.
The Bishop O’Dowd Dragons basketball team won the inaugural California State Championship for high schools in 1981, but eight further visits to the final between 1983 and 2014 saw them lose every time. Five of those defeats were teams coached by Richie who’d also been a player in the most controversial final in 1988, but he’s convinced he has players good enough to ensure victory in 2015, and that convinces Yang he has a new project. As a complete novice Yang has to research the background to basketball, and presents a potted history from its invention by James Naismith in 1891 as a way of engaging fitness students training indoors to how present day urban Oakland is a hotbed of basketball.
As things play out, Yang would have an astonishing enough story just relating events as reportage, but it’s elevated by his own inclusion. That leads to a surprising crossroads, and it transcends naval gazing via his honesty in depicting moments of realisation that would be obvious to others. It takes a while before the penny drops that sports don’t conform to narrative needs, while the sample page delivers another light bulb moment. Although he sees himself as a teacher wanting to chat to a couple of pupils, he’s actually acting like a reporter for the sake of his story by trying to coax out information they don’t want to reveal.
However, on that score Yang makes some interesting choices. Before Richie the school basketball team was coached by a man with a formidable reputation who eventually had to resign, and for most of the book Yang chooses to say nothing about why. However, he calls out the hollow reasons for not embracing women’s basketball, and is no impartial observer in relating the story of a season.
Artistically, Yang’s cartooning isn’t greatly suited to depicting the rush of basketball, with his players too often static, but he’s not alone in that, as with few exceptions it’s not been a sport that’s transferred well to graphic novels. Give him credit, though, for a great Michael Jordan pin-up. Another minor minus point is overuse of the first step as a visual metaphor, sometimes strained to be accommodated.
By the misguided logic of American sports, only a winning season is ever considered successful, but is that really the only matter of importance? Eventually, success for the Dragons is irrelevant to the creative success of Dragon Hoops. Yang tells stories, and they’re present whether or not the team wins, and they’re often illuminating, such as when it comes to the very different people really only united by basketball. In order to explain them Yang delves deep into what ancestors of the current players endured and believed, and eventually he addresses the topic that’s been hanging over the entire story, one that has no narratively convenient certainty, just a balance of probability founded on belief.
Notes explaining narrative choices end a thoroughly uplifting experience. How often does someone of Yang’s age develop a previously unsuspected love for a sport? Or anything else for that matter. And what a great souvenir for the guys actually on the team.
