Tibet Is Going Crazy for Hoops – Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Johnson arrived in Ritoma in August 2015. The place felt empty: The nomads and their animals were off in the high summer pasture.

At the Norlha guesthouse, where he’d be staying, he met with Jampa, the team’s soft-spoken veteran guard. Jampa, now 30, is also a poet, whose work has been published as far off as Lhasa, some 1,400 miles away. “We want to be the best team in Gannan,” Jampa said. “We can start tomorrow. Tell us what to do.”

At the first practice, about 25 Norlha employees gathered on the court. To them, the moment was surreal: Here stood a professional player from the United States. (“We all thought, NBA,” Jampa recalls.)

For his part, Johnson saw a “hodgepodge of guys.” Most of the players were wearing jeans. One sported dress shoes; another, a worn business suit; and another, mittens. Moments before practice was to begin, there was a roar and a cloud of dust as a motorbike bearing another player screeched to a stop at mid-court. “Holy shit,” Johnson muttered to himself. “What is this?”

Johnson is careful to describe his coaching style as a collaborative effort between himself and the players. Still, he knew what he saw when practice began. Players hogged the ball. They made clumsy attempts at virtuoso dribbling. Shooting forms were askew. “Nothing was right,” Johnson says. “These guys just beat the crap out of each other.”

Johnson’s first impression of Dugya Bum was negative. He had an arrogant vibe, and off the court, he dressed in flashy clothes: big coral necklaces, orange bandannas, porcupine-style hair. His jump shot was herky-jerky, and his skills were underwhelming. But at 6-foot-1, Dugya Bum at least carried himself like a basketball player. He was fast and he was fluid.

Constantly following Dugya Bum to practice was Jamphel, who admired his co-worker’s athleticism. Unlike Dugya Bum, though, Jamphel, at 5-foot-10, was timid and constantly had the ball stolen from him. His shot resembled an overhead catapult, and was wildly inaccurate.

Still, Johnson was enthusiastic as he ran his new players through drills for the first time. Practices, which lasted from 5:30 p.m. until sundown, became must-see events. Villagers brought stools and thermoses of hot water. They laughed when shots were missed and clapped when they went in. They watched as Johnson shouted at his guys and occasionally played alongside them. Sometimes, to everyone’s delight, he would dunk the ball.

Johnson led the players on jogs through the village and sat with them to meditate. During lunch, he had them lift weights—mostly bricks and bags of flour or rice—in the factory courtyard. He showed them film of the San Antonio Spurs, whose style emphasized teamwork. The players called Johnson gegen, meaning “teacher.”

Jampa phoned representatives of rival teams to schedule games. Occasionally, local businessmen sponsored tournaments. Nomadic teams traveled to them by motorbike and camped out in tents. All-monk teams also joined the competitions. Across the region, Johnson noticed, were passionate players without coaches or “any concept of what we would consider organized play.”

At times, the most effective way to guide and motivate his team, Johnson realized, was to play himself. So he suited up for one tournament in August 2016, in a cavernous gym full of cigarette smoke in Maqu, 125 miles from Ritoma. Despite Johnson’s participation, Norlha was overwhelmed by a more aggressive, better-shooting team and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Dugya Bum had scored a few baskets, but he hadn’t played impressively. Johnson had forbidden him to shoot anything but layups because of his faulty jumper. As for Jamphel, “I wouldn’t even consider putting him in,” Johnson says.

With winter approaching, practice was put on hold until April. Nonetheless, Dugya Bum began messaging Johnson, requesting one-on-one instruction. They met at the court at 6:30 a.m., or during lunch, or before dusk, to run drills and lift weights. Johnson deconstructed Dugya Bum’s jump shot. Jamphel tagged along. Together, over the long, brutal winter, the two teammates worked on their game. Dugya Bum quit smoking. “I’d give up my life for basketball,” he told fellow Norlha employees.

By the summer of 2017, Dugya Bum was a different player. He blew past defenders for easy baskets. He dished the ball off to teammates for assists. His jump shot had improved; he got the green light to shoot from mid-range. With added muscle, he finished more easily at the rim, powering through contact with opposing players. There were moments, Johnson thought, when Dugya Bum could have held his own playing New York City street ball.

Players informed Johnson they couldn’t practice, because they had to chase mastiffs that were roaming around the village and terrifying people.
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Norlha was also playing better as a team. Players no longer ignored their teammates to go one-on-one. Now they worked the ball around for an open shot. At summer’s end, Dugya Bum was selected as an all-star to play in Gannan’s annual tournament. Afterward, he was named one of Gannan’s top 10 players.

In the workroom, meanwhile, Dugya Bum’s attitude had improved. He made eye contact with co-workers and talked more openly. Basketball had helped him “find meaning,” Dechen Yeshi, who called him a “model employee,” told me. By this time he had also married Lhamo Tso, the Norlha model.

Jamphel had also progressed on the court, and was earning minutes. He was a more adept ball handler, had improved his court awareness, and made open shots. But what Johnson admired most were his intangibles: Whatever Johnson asked him to do, he did without hesitation.

Even more significant was Jamphel’s evolution off the court. The once-quiet young man was now opening up to teammates. “We’ve become best friends,” Jamphel recently said of them.

Jamphel’s wife, Jamyang Dolma, works at Norlha as a tailor and a model. Like other nomadic women suddenly thrust into a 9-to-5 job, she had found the concept of free time after work completely alien.

For women especially, nomadic life is difficult. Days are long and dominated by chores: starting fires, milking animals, chopping wood, churning butter, cooking meals, collecting dung for use as fuel, cleaning pots, caring for children. The idea of a hobby never came up. “In traditional life, women don’t play basketball, but it doesn’t mean women don’t like it,” Jamyang Dolma told me. “It may be because they never had the opportunity, or anybody to lead them.”

In 2016, a female Norlha employee, Wandi Tso, asked Johnson whether women at the company could form a team.

“Whenever you want to play,” Johnson told her, “let’s do it.”

The women who signed up were initially too afraid to even catch the ball. But as they learned the fundamentals, their confidence rose. Their shooting form was generally “textbook,” Johnson says, unlike the men’s, whose years of bad habits had to be trained out of them. Villagers in Ritoma gradually grew accustomed to seeing women on the court.

Dugya Bum and Jamphel helped Johnson train the women’s team, which included both of their wives. Lhamo Tso became the team’s best all-around player, and Jamyang Dolma the team’s best shooter. At home, she and Jamphel would discuss the drills they’d worked on that day.

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http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/tibet-going-crazy-hoops