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Obama finds refuge, identity in basketball
Presidential hopeful would like a court in the White House
 Frank Polich / Reuters U.S. Senator Barack Obama,center, beats Devin Randle,left, and Kory McKay to a loose ball during a 3 on 3 basketball game in Kokomo, Indiana April 2008. |
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HONOLULU - Confined to the bench back in his high school basketball days, Barack Obama felt the need to campaign for change.
The scrappy "Obomber," nicknamed for his jump shot, wanted playing time for himself and the other reserves. At a team meeting, Obama confronted his coach, a man who could be fiery and intimidating.
Obama had a flashy style the coach, Chris McLachlin, didn't fully appreciate, a game he described as "streetball, get after it, the defense doesn't know what's coming."
"He could've played and started on any other team in the state. He was that good. We just happened to have just a team that was pretty loaded," McLachlin said.
As a result, Obama found himself stuck behind a couple of veteran forwards. Punahou School would win the state championship 60-28, with Obama scoring only two points.
Thirty years later, as the presidential campaign went into motion, another team stocked with veterans stepped up to compete. Obama resolved to stay off the bench, and his hard-charging ways paid off with victory in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Basketball has been an important part of Obama's life, from his island childhood to his years at Harvard Law School. Even today, he brings to the presidential contest qualities that teammates and other old friends remember seeing on the court.
"I could play basketball, with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited talent," Obama wrote in his memoir.
Connection to his father
On a playground under the sweltering sun, "Barry" found refuge and identity. The pudgy boy of mixed race — his mother a white woman from Kansas, his father a black man from Kenya — spent hours alone, working on his jumper, crossover dribble and other moves. With his maternal grandmother watching from her 10th-floor bedroom window, he would shoot hoops into the night.
"At least on the basketball court I could find a community of sorts, with an inner life all its own," Obama wrote. "It was there that I would make my closest white friends, on turf where blackness couldn't be a disadvantage."
He also used the sport to connect with the father he longed to know. The elder Barack Obama left Hawaii when his son was 2. When he returned eight years later for a brief Christmastime visit, he gave his son a basketball. In a rare photo of the two together, Obama and his father stand in front of a Christmas tree with the orange ball.
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Anonymous / AP In this 1977 photo, Barack Obama, second row center, is seen with is junior varsity basketball teamin Honolulu. |
On the sprawling campus of the prestigious Punahou School, Obama could often be seen carrying books in one hand and dribbling a basketball in the other. He eventually earned a spot on the heralded varsity team.
"He'd be the first one to practice, and after practice, he'd go to the park and play more," said McLachlin, who is the father of PGA Tour golfer Parker McLachlin. "So his passion for the game is unmatched by most of the players I've ever had."
Starting center Dan Hale, the youngest member of the championship team, remembers Obama as a tough competitor who wasn't into talking trash.
"If he did, he would always cap it with a smile," Hale said. "So there was never an edge to it in that sense. But if two guys were tied up with the ball, he's not going to back down. He was a guy that would get in there and fight for it."
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