The Sense of Wonder

Contents
 
 
 Cover
 Title
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 
 Part One: Won
 
 1. A Joke about Wonder
 2. High School Romance
 3. Love at First Slight
 4. Oriental
 5. Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear
 6. Debts
 7. They Called It the Wonder
 8. Chopping Post, Trading Block
 9. Sympathy from Mr. Vengeance
 10. Cinderella Stories
 
 
 Part Two: Carrie
 
 1. It’s a Cake!
 2. They Said I Made Everything a Production
 3. Seeing Is Believing
 4. Boys Club
 5. Cassandra Complex
 6. Emergency Room
 7. Making Out
 8. Karaoke
 9. Manners Make the Man
 10. A Brief Treatise on the Body
 11. Fandom
 
 
 Part Three: K-drama
 
 A Primer
 1. The Woman Who Sees Ghosts
 2. The Fortune-Teller
 3. To Give Up the Ghost
 4. Up and Down
 5. A Vision
 
 
 Part Four: Won
 
 1. Ducky Ducky Goose
 2. Powerball!’s Story
 3. Another High School Story
 4. Before the (Week) End
 5. The Dunk Contest
 6. Star Turn
 7. Glory
 8. Run-Ins with Whiteness
 9. In Ball, the Past Is Never the Past
 10. History Redefeats Itself
 
 
 Part Five: Carrie
 
 1. Internment
 2. Freedom Is Crowdfunded
 3. Catch a Tiger by the Toe
 4. Watch Out for Ducks
 5. Korean Dinner
 6. Loving Is as Loving Does
 7. Dying to Live
 8. Humanity Is Humanity’s Last Frontier
 9. And at the End of the Story Is the Telling of It
 10. A Good K-drama Is Always a Cake
 
 
 Part Six: Won
 
 1. A Joke About Wonder, Continued
 2. To Whom Does a Person Belong
 3. Public Relations
 4. The Nature of Dreams
 5. A Jury of Peers
 6. A Series of Fates
 7. The Fates of Powerball! and Robert Sung
 8. The Fate of Ducky Sung
 9. The Fate of Fate
 10. The Fate of Brit Young
 11. The Fates of Won Lee and Carrie Kang
 12. Coda with Ball Boys
 
 
 Part Seven: K-drama
 
 The Second Half of a K-drama
 1. The Misunderstanding
 2. The Challenge of the Parents
 3. The Trip Abroad
 
 Acknowledgments
 Discover More
 About the Author
 Also by Matthew Salesses
 
 
 Navigation
 
 
 
 
 
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The events and characters in this book are fictitious. Certain real locations and public figures are mentioned, but all other characters and events described in the book are totally imaginary.
 Copyright © 2023 by Matthew Salesses
 Cover design by Gregg Kulick
 Cover art © Getty Images
 Cover © 2023 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
 Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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 First ebook edition: January 2023
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 ISBN 9780316425919
 E3-20221130-NF-DA-ORI
 
 
 
 
 
 
 For my kids
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Coaches have said recruiters, in the age of who-does-he-remind-you-of evaluations, simply lacked a frame of reference for such an Asian-American talent.
 —Mark Viera, New York Times
 
 
 
 
 
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 Part One
 Won
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1. A Joke about Wonder
 
 Let me tell you a basketball joke. It’s the dirtiest joke I know, because it’s the truest. I heard it from Robert Sung, but since he was covering the team then, what I said was, “Your mic on?” And he said, “Off the record, just between us two gooks.”
 The joke goes like this: An Asian American basketball star walks into a gym. No one recognizes him, but everyone stares anyway. They’ve never seen an Asian so big before. They just have to know the size of his dick.
 
 
 
 
 
 2. High School Romance
 
 I got to know Robert Sung pretty well in the end, and the key to him was what he was like in high school. In high school, he was the second-best baller on a team that won three straight New York State championships—and he got none of the credit. That lack of credit became the defining story of his life. In other words, in the story of his life, he was a subplot.
 When we met, Sung was ESPN’s beat writer for the New York Knicks. I had just signed with the Knicks after two years on the Clippers bench, after two years All-Ivy in college and one year as conference MVP. Sung had grown up wanting to be the first Asian American basketball star; I was the only Asian American in the NBA. In other words, people often compared us. We were the same height (six two), both point guards, and—most importantly to this story—had both played with the same superstar, Powerball! (né Paul Burton), captain of the Knicks and perennial favorite for MVP, though he never won.
 I had grown up watching Powerball!, copying his moves; Sung had grown up playing in PB’s shadow. I was five years younger, but since Powerball! had gone pro after