What's a Platform Without a Voice?

I love basketball, but I can't talk about *just* basketball when people are getting murdered and children are being taken away. This is where my voice came from and why I can't be quiet.

Credit: Matt Krohn / Associated Press

I love basketball, and that love was ingrained in me by my father. Not directly — as in he never pushed me to love it — but it was imbued into the fabric of my being because it was a way for him and I to be close.

I joked about how the Spurs, his favorite team, and Tim Duncan were “boring”. He told me that they played fundamental basketball, the way it was supposed to be played. I said there was no fun in that.

He told me there was fun in winning.

That’s where my love for basketball began. Those talks with my dad, where he taught me to appreciate the little things, even though I was too hard-headed to ever agree with him at the time.

I hope ya’ll see that love today.

With every post I make, I try to convey that. Every article I write is a love letter to basketball and what it means to me.

It’s not just a distraction — and damn, do we need distractions these days.

It’s also how my dad talked about basketball to me.

He worked 10-14 hours a day, every single day of the week. But I cherished every single minute I got a chance to talk hoops with him.

I had posters of LeBron all over my room, ripped from magazines. I traced over his autograph with a marker to make them feel legit. I looked up to LeBron, but — and maybe I didn’t know it at the time — my dad was my real hero.

My dad, along with his brothers, immigrated here after his older brother joined the U.S. military and sponsored his American Citizenship.

My dad worked and worked, until he became a cannery foreman.

I worked alongside him for two summers while I was in high school, and it was there I saw what it meant to chase the American dream.

There were dozens of immigrants, leaving their homes and families to move to another country just to make the federal minimum wage, or $7.75 an hour. But that $7.75 an hour was more than some doctors made in my home country. So those long hours, where you left smelling like fish guts and covered in scales, slime, and salt water were all worth it.

Even though they sacrificed so much — their careers, their homes, their time — as long as they could provide for those they loved, it was worth it.

I learned then what I know now: That the American Dream has and will always be laid down upon a foundation built by immigrants.

So, while I deeply love basketball and convey that love with every post I make on twitter or ever article I write here on substack, my entire foundation is rooted in much, much more.

Telling me to “stick to basketball” is an impossible thing to do, because basketball and life, as a whole, do not only intersect but are actually interconnected.

Basketball is not just a distraction or a hobby. It’s a foundational piece of my identity — a reminder of simpler days with my dad.

And, at the end of the day, I carry on my dad’s American Dream

When I was 17, he passed away in his sleep after working a fourteen-hour shift. He worked and he worked until he couldn’t. For me and my family.

He fought until he couldn’t.

And like him, I will fight until I can’t. I’ll write, speak and stand for those that can’t.

Credit : Octavio JONES / AFP via Getty

After all, how can I be silent when Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, spent every breath of his life — even his last — trying to help others?

How can I be silent when Renee Good — whose glove compartment overflowed with the toys of a child who’ll never see his mom again — was shot and killed in front of her wife?

How can I be silent when five-year-old — wearing a fuzzy blue hat with ears and pom-poms and a Spider-Man backpack — was taken from his home as his mother’s cries for him went unanswered?

How can I be silent when Keith Porter was shot by an off-duty ICE agent who felt empowered enough to call himself both judge, jury, and executioner?

How can I be silent when the federal government is arresting independent journalists just for speaking?

So, if you want to use your free speech to tell me to ‘stick to hoops’, that’s your prerogative. I’m glad you have the privilege to speak.

(I will talk hoops, by the way. I love it too much not to.)

But I have too many reasons not to ‘stick to hoops’.

I’ll never forget my dad, who was an immigrant himself, and the people I worked alongside in the canneries, straining themselves daily for minimum wage just so their families could live.

I’ll never forget Alex Pretti or Renee Good’s last words. They were Pretti. They were Good.

And they’ll resonate forever.

Far longer than the hate and division ICE and the federal government have tried to imbue into our society. For there is no substance in something rooted in hate. It’ll fall apart the more we stand together.

So I’ll continue to speak up because this isn’t the American Dream my father chased after.

This is a nightmare.

But we wake up from nightmares, right?

And, when we, as a country, wake up, we will dream everything we stand for — That All Men are Created Equal and Endowed with the Unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — back into reality.

Credit: Erin Trieb / ERIN TRIEB PHOTOGRAPHY