Dragon Hoops

This book has it all for basketball fans and even non-fans like myself. In a bit of a meta turn, Gene portrays himself in the graphic novel as he gathers notes and observations of the Bishop O'Dowd men's basketball team, to write a graphic novel about their season. The team is expected to shine this school year, and Gene thinks this may make an interesting graphic novel. But at times he doubts his ability to get the project done. He doesn't know anything about basketball, the star players are not forthcoming in interviews, and he wrestles with whether to include the dark back story of a former beloved coach. This was like watching a basketball documentary, featuring intriguing people and stories, a bit of basketball and world history, show more and the authenticity of a real school, a real team. The theme of taking that first step into the unknown is as true for adults as it is for the kids.The page turns during the state championship evoke the suspense of a closely contested game. This is about as perfect a graphic novel and sports book as I've seen. show less

Yang did it, he made me actually appreciate sports. I even cried over sports because of this damn book.

Gene Luen Yang is a lifelong comics-nerd who was never any good at playing sports and never had any interest in watching them - until the Bishop O'Dowd men's basketball team. Yang, a teacher at O'Dowd, senses there's a story in the team, and approaches the coach and the players; he tags along, observing and interviewing throughout the season, learning about the game's history and the current players' personalities, abilities, and styles. As the phenomenal season progresses, Yang also has decisions to make: whether to accept an offer from DC Comics to write Superman; whether the basketball book will be a book at all, if the team doesn't win the California State Championship; and whether to include legendary coach Mike Phelps, who was show more accused - but never convicted - of sexual abuse. Teen readers may be less interested in Yang's adult musings, but they're a relatively brief part of the story: the focus is on the game, the team, and the coaches (one of the assistant coaches wears his baby to many practices, and covers their ears every time he or anyone else swears).

Quotes

"What made you choose history?"
:You have to know your past if you want to create a future, Yang." (author and Coach Lou Richie, 44)

...because it required little equipment and no grass, [basketball] was embraced in urban areas like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles... (63)

"Well...people have always been telling me what I could and could not do.
I wanted to prove them all wrong." (Coach Lou, 137-138)

[Jeevin's hairline changes from panel to panel as he and the author discuss it, p. 144]

"Bobby Knight once said that basketball is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins. Life is kind of like that." (Coach Lou to the team, 145)

[23-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant Sendra Berenson, a physical education teacher at Smith College in 1892, adapted James Naismith's game of basket ball for women, p. 175-176]

Basketball and church have a lot in common.
The indoor gym is a bit like a sanctuary.
Overhead banners, like stained-glass windows, remind adherents of the community's past achievements.
And much of what happens is determined by ritual.
National anthem at the beginning, like an opening hymn.
Sermon-like pep talk in the middle.
And handshakes - offerings of peace - at the end. (249)

So maybe it isn't the fewest mistakes that wins.
Maybe it's having the courage to take the next step--even at the risk of making a mistake. (358)

"Basketball doesn't really work like that. There aren't good guys or bad guys."
"Then how do we know who wins?"
"We gotta play to find out." (Yang and his daughter, 435) show less

Yang presents a number of worthwhile subjects and recounts the history of basketball from several different points of view. Being a graphic novel and having many talking head sections, it felt a lot like a documentary (moreso than just a non-fiction or docu-fiction narrative). There's a little bit of preciousness to how some of his editorializing contrives happy endings, but it wasn't too much to handle. One bit that struck me deeply was its most troublesome section--the one regarding an allegation of molestation, and how one man chose to forgive it.

Oh let me tell you a tale of woe! (Not really.)

Once there was a woman who was in awe of Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. Oh, how she longed to read Boxers and Saints or anything else he'd written and/or drawn. As an employee of the larger company to which First Second belongs (disclaimer), she oh-so-casually browsed the take shelf near First Second at least once a month, hoping to find one of Yang's books to read. Alas, it was not to be.

Then, lo! Shortly before its official publication, a beautiful copy of Dragon Hoops came to her hands for quality checks...and what quality! She performed her checks--perfect, of course, First Second doesn't mess around--and set it on her desk, eager to read something else from Yang at last.

It was show more mid-March, 2020.

The next day, her sister explained what "flattening the curve" meant and why it was so important for protecting others and helping hospitals. The woman went to work the next day, gathered the food from her desk and anything she'd need to work from home for a month or two. (Ha!) No books--no room in her backpack.

She wouldn't return to the office for over a year.

And when she did, alas! Dragon Hoops was gone...as was her favorite tea strainer. Still, she took consolation that nothing personal was gone and that, since they were likely taken by people forced to keep going to the office throughout the pandemic, they were in deserving hands.

Then, lo! As she browsed the take shelves on her floor...there she found an advanced readers copy if Dragon Hoops. Oh freakin' yeah!

And so the end of her quest was a beginning...

Like Yang in his prologue, I'm not really into basketball. I totally only read this book for the author, and Yang did not disappoint, even in an ARC. My copy has a boring paper cover instead of a fancy basketball-textured one, a few of the text boxes are too small or a little awkwardly placed, and I suspect the colors aren't as bright and rich as they could be. It's been over 18 months since I held the final, gorgeous book in my hands, but I'm sure that all those issues were corrected there.

But this isn't Monstress, where the art is a main attraction, so imperfect advance-copy printing colors are barely relevant (though I also think Yang is way too hard on himself with his footnoted comment that he's not that great a character artist. Gene, are you kidding me?!). Yang's great strength, which so awed me in American Born Chinese, is his skill in story-telling.

What keeps this basketball book from being a (to me) boring sports book is Yang's presence as a narrator, a human being, a graphic novelist, and a storyteller.

When Dragon Hoops begins, Yang is a math teacher at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, CA, home of the Dragons. The boys basketball team is one of the best in the state, but though they've made it to the state championships several times, they've never won. Although about as interested in sports as I am, Yang gets caught up in the excitement of the 2014-2015 season, which has a great lineup of players lead by a coach who's a school alumn trained by the school's previous coach, who was one of the best high school coaches the state ever had. Yang's in search of a story to tell for his next graphic novel...and he can tell this is it.

While I was initially skeptical about calling a book about a routinely excellent team at a private Catholic school an underdog story, the individual stories that Yang tells us do show a remarkable number of people overcoming odds in their lives, from the coaches whose dreams were cut short to the foreign exchange student giving up family for his basketball dream, from the students who don't talk about their home lives to Yang working his way out of an inspiration slump.

It would be easy for any storyteller to get tangled in the multiple narrative threads of basketball history, O'Dowd lore, interview-informed life sketches, action-packed games, and personal memoir. But Yang, who so impressively wove together three radically different stories in American Born Chinese, creates a seamless tapestry of the season. As he goes, he makes great use of similar images to bring out themes, such as small steps in new directions and people--not always stuffy old white dudes--disparaging and underestimating players who later became successful. This is also one of the most thoughtfully laid out graphic novels I've read; so often the left page sets up a scene that a quick glance at the right can give away, but Yang builds tension by ensuring that you always have to turn the page to see what happens next in a pivotal moment. One of my favorite pages was almost blank--i thought it was a printing error until I read further and realized that it was representing an image that had been lost.

Look, I'm not here for the sports all right? Yang finds the compelling to keep me engaged, but he's also compelling himself. He gives us glimpses of his creative process when a student gives feedback on how he's been drawn and when he agonizes about whether to include a controversial coach (the only blip in the story, in my opinion, because what kind of suspense is there about what happened to the old coach at a Catholic high school?). He shows us his family, even if the amusing back notes admit to a little more harmony than in real life, and his struggles to balance his love for his family, his teaching, and his graphic novel creating. Even if he's only a small corner of the larger story, Yang makes the story.

I never thought I'd recommend a sports book, but in this case, I heartily do. show less

Gene Luen Yang is one of my favorite graphic novelists. His new book Dragon Hoops is about his 17 years as a teacher at the Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. The book focuses on his interactions with the school's basketball team during his last year as a teacher.

The author begins with his story as a youth. Being unathletic he hated sports and focused on academics in school. After he learns that his first graphic novel will be published, Yang tries to find something interesting to write about in his next book. He decides to have a talk with O'Dowd's coach Lou Richie. The men's varsity basketball team, the Dragons, is headed to the state championships. Yang decides to follow the team all season, interviewing the athletes, show more coach and former coach who had to resign due to sexual abuse allegations. This book is the result.

I am not a sports fan but because Yang wrote the book I was excited to buy it. I knew that he would make it interesting and he did. The book is more than a memoir as Yang gives mini-bios of the athletes on the team as well as the history of the game. He even has a section on women's basketball. He also delves into the race issue from all perspectives: middle school, high school and college. I learned a lot a out the game while being entertained with great writing and graphics. With an impressive 434 colored pages, the artwork was drawn by Yang but colored by Rianne Meyers.

I highly recommend this book for young adult readers as well as adults. show less

Gene Luen Yang gives an outsider's look at basketball as he undertakes the effort to document in graphic novel format a possible championship season at the Catholic high school where he was teaching in 2013. But it's also a look at himself as the documentarian as his personal life intertwines in the subject and he finds themes and parallels between the two. Throw in frequent looks back at the history of basketball and you'll understand why this graphic novel is so darn thick.

I don't follow basketball at all, but I found myself drawn into the story of this team. Yang's own story is a bit less enthralling as it begins to circle around his decision to take over writing Superman (mostly because I wasn't a fan of his run on that title, show more though this book touches lightly on why it might not be as good as it could have been) and whether he should include a controversial figure from his school in this book.

Yang does a fairly decent job of justifying the insertion of himself into the book, but I am left wondering if it might have been better if he'd pulled back more strongly on the parts about his process and kept focus on the team. show less