Fish on Sundays

I wonder what Fish is doing now. Fish was a minor playground legend on the outdoor basketball courts of Lowell High School in San Francisco during the mid 90s. On Saturdays, after a day working at my parent’s dry cleaners, I would race north on interstate 280 to catch the last hour of daylight, looking for a little run on those courts. A few friends might already be there, and sometimes, Fish was around. But the real action at Lowell was on Sundays, when at least 3 courts would be running 5 on 5 games with a minimum one game wait. Fish usually arrived when the day was peaking with competition, sauntering in sleepy-eyed, looking like he didn’t want to play, much less be there. He would always be distractedly eating something – a bag of chips, a candy bar, a banana. He didn’t seem to want to do that either.

Fish was Chinese and likely got the nickname from the way he looked. He had big, bulging eyes, a small mouth that was always open, and a pronounced profile. Fish’s head would look good on a coin. Eventually he would loaf onto the court, shoes lazily scraping the ground. Ballers sitting on the sidelines waited in anticipation for his lefty jumpshot, launched usually from well beyond the 3-point line. He would always try to bank it in and was usually on the money. The real beauty in his game though, was the way he would dictate play with his ball-handling, getting even the most limited players the ball in exactly the right position at exactly the right time for them to score easily. He championed his makeshift teammates as if they were his little brothers, urging them on and instructing them with genuine enthusiasm. Fish would light up as the day went on, his gloomy disposition brightening as the weather eventually and predictably deteriorated. Basketball never stopped even though a summer fog always rolled in annoyingly in the mid-afternoon to that southern part of San Francisco known as the Sunset, bringing with it a cold, misty wind. Nevertheless, we ran until it got dark.

Sometimes after a full day of basketball my friends and I would drive to the Vietnamese spot in Daly City and each get a bowl of pho before heading home for a proper dinner with our families. Pick-up basketball at Lowell was mostly an Asian thing. Chinese, Philippinos, and Koreans owned those courts. Back then, we chased basketball.

Lowell was just one of a handful of possibilities during the week. On Fridays, I’d often meet up with childhood friend Ben Lei at the RSF (Recreational Sports Facility) on the campus of UC Berkeley for a night of intense runs. And I’d play at least three afternoons in San Jose State University’s gym, racing there after sleeping through an art history or graphic design class. At night there was either an intramural game or a less serious run with the after-dinner crowd looking for light exercise. Basketball junkies chase fleeting moments when they feel unconscious and unstoppable, when they reel off 5 or 6 games in a row, when they beat a clearly more talented team, when they shut up a trash talker. For me those moments were a sign from higher powers at how right the universe could and should be. It was a little piece of nirvana. Basketball will never quite be like that for me again. When life revolved around hoops, Fish was the man. Now, I struggle to remember what kind of sneakers he wore.