Well if my kids don’t end up in the 2020 or 2024 US administration (cf yesterday post!) they can always hope for the NBA!!!Joe Alexander's journey to the NBA is about to reach its destination.
But Joe Alexander's journey to the NBA is unlike that of any of the other 59 players who will be drafted Thursday night.
Alexander grew up in Maryland, which is not exactly a hoops hotbed, but that's not the unusual part. He went to West Virginia University, which hasn't had a first-round pick in 40 years, but that's not the unusual part either. He played there three years, and despite the one-and-done wave we're in the middle of, that's not the unusual part either.
Because when Alexander was 10, his father's job took his family to Beijing, about as far from Maryland as you can get, both literally and figuratively.
Surprisingly, Alexander says that the adjustment wasn't difficult. He attended the (*)International School of Beijing for six years, integrated with other Americans, as well as students from all over the world. And his family lived in an ex-pat community.
"It was just like a community in the States," he says. "There was definitely a degree of separation [from the general Chinese population]."
Still, he grew to love Beijing, the cheap cabs that could take him anywhere in the city, and the food, Kung Pao chicken being his favorite. He met Yao Ming before we did, when the big man was playing for the Shanghai Sharks.
"It was a nice place to grow up," he admits. […]
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| Joe Alexander |
