When most athletes finish high school or college, it’s the end of the line for their sporting careers. Only a small percentage of the most gifted ones go on to become professionals in their field, while the others tend to take great pleasure in reminiscing about how good their glory days used to be. Sean Cheng (鄭鑫), co-founder and commissioner of the Glory Days Basketball (GDB) league, came up with the idea for a basketball league late one night two years ago.
“In my dream, I was David Stern of a league that was just like the NBA — but for the average Joe who still loves to play and play hard,” Cheng said.
“All athletes want to perform at the highest level and show the entire world that they can do it, or still do it. GDB is a place where people can relive that dream every weekend and share this experience with all of their friends and family.”
Photo courtesy of Glory Days Basketball
Cheng woke up and told his wife and co-founder, Jess Cheng, his idea, and they were off to the races.
“Our first game had two teams, two refs, two scorekeepers, one videographer, and one photographer in the upper gym of the Taipei American School,” Jess Cheng said.
“Today we have over 35 teams, over 20 staff members with games located in three different top-notch gyms in Taipei City.”
Photo courtesy of Glory Days Basketball
GDB’s rapid growth can be attributed to their weekly Facebook postings of pictures and highlight videos, their new non-profit status, working closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of course, Jeremy Lin (林書豪).
“Linsanity introduced an entirely new fan base to the game of basketball, young and old,” Jess Cheng said.
“Our players still play just as hard, but I think their love for basketball is appreciated by the general public 100-fold. This means that a lot more friends and family members show support, whether in person or on Facebook.”
This Sunday, GDB will be partnering with Nike to run a three-on-three tournament at the Ximending movie park basketball courts, and then have a two-game exhibition with the top four teams in the league. This means that two years of hard work is finally paying off for the Chengs.
“GDB is more than just a full time job for us now. It’s a part of who we are,” Jess Cheng said.
Sean Cheng added, “I think there’s a lot of people, not just in Taiwan, that want their glory days back and that’s why we are where we are today.”
In Taiwan there are two economies: the shiny high tech export economy epitomized by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and its outsized effect on global supply chains, and the domestic economy, driven by construction and powered by flows of gravel, sand and government contracts. The latter supports the former: we can have an economy without TSMC, but we can’t have one without construction. The labor shortage has heavily impacted public construction in Taiwan. For example, the first phase of the MRT Wanda Line in Taipei, originally slated for next year, has been pushed back to 2027. The government
July 22 to July 28 The Love River’s (愛河) four-decade run as the host of Kaohsiung’s annual dragon boat races came to an abrupt end in 1971 — the once pristine waterway had become too polluted. The 1970 event was infamous for the putrid stench permeating the air, exacerbated by contestants splashing water and sludge onto the shore and even the onlookers. The relocation of the festivities officially marked the “death” of the river, whose condition had rapidly deteriorated during the previous decade. The myriad factories upstream were only partly to blame; as Kaohsiung’s population boomed in the 1960s, all household
Allegations of corruption against three heavyweight politicians from the three major parties are big in the news now. On Wednesday, prosecutors indicted Hsinchu County Commissioner Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a judgment is expected this week in the case involving Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and former deputy premier and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is being held incommunicado in prison. Unlike the other two cases, Cheng’s case has generated considerable speculation, rumors, suspicions and conspiracy theories from both the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
Stepping inside Waley Art (水谷藝術) in Taipei’s historic Wanhua District (萬華區) one leaves the motorcycle growl and air-conditioner purr of the street and enters a very different sonic realm. Speakers hiss, machines whir and objects chime from all five floors of the shophouse-turned- contemporary art gallery (including the basement). “It’s a bit of a metaphor, the stacking of gallery floors is like the layering of sounds,” observes Australian conceptual artist Samuel Beilby, whose audio installation HZ & Machinic Paragenesis occupies the ground floor of the gallery space. He’s not wrong. Put ‘em in a Box (我們把它都裝在一個盒子裡), which runs until Aug. 18, invites