Richard Chang (張嗣漢) no longer plays basketball for a living, but he carries his hoop memories with him everywhere — on an iPhone.
For the general manager of Costco Taiwan, one of the biggest wholesale clubs in Taiwan, the photos and video clips stored on his smartphone remind him of the earlier part of his life when he played college basketball in the US, represented Taiwan in international competitions and became a “legend” in local hoop history.
In a recent interview Chang said his cross-Pacific experience was why he was able to relate to the success of Jeremy Lin (林書豪), the first Taiwanese-American player to sign a contract with a club in the NBA.
PHOTO: CNA
“Jeremy Lin serves as a good role model for Taiwanese athletes,” Chang said of the Harvard graduate of Taiwanese descent, who signed with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors in July and became the first Harvard basketball player to make it to the NBA in 57 years.
Chang’s experience was also why he encourages local players to strive for their best on the basketball court, while at the same time making plans for their lives off the court.
Chang said Lin’s inspiration lies not only in the fact that he made the league with a height of 190cm — relatively short by NBA standards — but that he has been able to successfully balance his studies and basketball career.
“Eight out of 10 Taiwanese players have no goals in life. Playing basketball is all they know and all they do,” said Chang, who played college basketball for the University of California at Berkeley in the mid 1980s.
“Coupled with local basketball’s lack of management and commercial success, it’s not surprising that most Taiwanese parents do not want their children to play basketball,” he said.
Chang said he never thought about playing in the NBA when he was young, because “times were different back then.”
He was invited to play for Taiwan’s national team in the annual Jones Cup invitational tournament in 1985 and did well, helping the team to victories over Japan and South Korea and leaving local fans with a strong impression of his “power play” style.
Soon, Chang found himself playing for the McDonald’s team in the local league. Being able to play ball and get paid “was pretty cool for me at the time,” he said, adding that he also had a day job working at a trading company.
After a little more than two years, Chang felt that something was wrong. With the lack of competition in the league, which was going nowhere, he found that playing basketball “was not fun anymore.”
Chang decided that his basketball career was over at the age of 25 and returned to the US to look for work. He was sent to work in Southeast Asia by a US company before coming back to Taiwan to establish Costco Taiwan in 1995. The discount megastore now has six branches across the country.
For Taiwanese athletes, “a bad goal is better than no goals because at least you can work toward a certain direction,” Chang said.
He added that he has hired a lot of former athletes at Costco because he wanted to give them an opportunity to excel and athletes are often better at persevering than others.
Playing sports and running a megastore might seem like completely different jobs, but Chang said there are many lessons in sports that one can apply to other fields, including business management, perseverance, time management, integrity, teamwork and the belief that “practice makes perfect.”
Sports management is also similar to business management in a lot of ways, Chang said. To vie for modern day consumers’ “entertainment dollars,” people who run sports leagues are advised to have a “consumer first” mentality and produce the “best product,” which means the best sports competition and consumer service.
“You have to try to manage your sports like managing a brand,” he said.
The 2m tall executive from Huntington Beach, California, also urged Taiwanese children and athletes against viewing basketball stars Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant as their role models.
“Let’s face it, you’re never going to be the next Jordan or Bryant because they are ‘one in a million’ type of athletes, but if you work hard, you can be a successful accountant or surgeon like your neighbors. That is a more realistic goal,” he said.
Chang lamented that the sports scene in Taiwan remained unchanged after all these years as sports associations and clubs “have not done anything” to improve sports development to benefit athletes, especially professional ones.
As a result, most unprepared athletes can only find work as physical education teachers or coaches when they retire.
“But do we need so many coaches and PE teachers?” Chang asked.
Nipah virus infection is to be officially listed as a category 5 notifiable infectious disease in Taiwan in March, while clinical treatment guidelines are being formulated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. With Nipah infections being reported in other countries and considering its relatively high fatality rate, the centers on Jan. 16 announced that it would be listed as a notifiable infectious disease to bolster the nation’s systematic early warning system and increase public awareness, the CDC said. Bangladesh reported four fatal cases last year in separate districts, with three linked to raw date palm sap consumption, CDC Epidemic Intelligence
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
RSS