Talking NBA Basketball with K
Right around the middle of the Dallas Mavericks-Los Angeles Clippers series in the first round of the NBA playoffs, a friend, K, sent me a direct message. K said she'd started watching NBA basketball last season, and called herself "a basic Golden State Warriors fan." She said she really enjoyed how the defending champs Denver Nuggets played too, and wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the game. I looked forward to chatting about basketball with her, of course. I wouldn't call myself an expert on basketball, but I'm Filipino -- we are the biggest basketball fans outside the United States -- which means as a teen I've played a lot of backyard basketball in flip-flops during summer vacations under the scorching Philippine sun (even the power forward position despite only standing five feet five, LOL) and watched both the PBA and the NBA as early as I could remember, thanks to my basketball-crazed father. Those backyard basketball games in high school became...