A weekly pick-up game shared by first- and second-generation Canadians has connected them to Toronto, the sport of basketball and each other for 25 years and counting.
Basketball has been a part of Trevor Lui’s life for as long as he remembers.
Lui, who stands six-foot-one in his throwback Ben Wallace Detroit Pistons jersey and Nike sneakers, still gets a thrill every time he scores a basket. “There’s an inner kid in all of us. I still feel like when I was 17 hitting a basket at a high school game.” Michael Chow, who has been part of the pickup run since its inception, didn’t even play basketball growing up in Toronto. “It was ice hockey and ball hockey,” he says, “until the Raptors came here.”
Growing up in Scarborough, Regular played in Filipino leagues and volunteered at Raptors games during their first season at the SkyDome. The downtown location of Pai has become a popular hangout for NBA players, starting when Jonas Valanciunas and Patrick Patterson played in Toronto. “I grew up in an age without internet and cellphones, predominantly in immigrant-heavy neighbourhoods. We relied on the playground community life, spending hours on hours living out those game-winning-shot moments,” Lui says. “These youthful memories essentially helped shape who we are today as we’ve grown with the culture of sport in our communities. These weekly runs are really reliving those moments.
“I don’t want to be ashamed of being Chinese anymore,” he says. “The pandemic gave us a retrospective look at who we are as immigrants and what our purpose is.”
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