It’s a story about basketball, but it’s also a perfectly accurate portrayal about the agony and joy of writing. But the difference, as always, is in the telling:⠀ It’s a story we’ve seen countless times before. On the surface it’s just your typical tale of a team on its way towards victory. There’s just so many things Dragon Hoops does right for me. There’s a reason why after finishing the book I: read Phil Bildner’s A Whole New Ballgame have been keeping up with The Last Dance documentary miniseries on ESPN bought Kwame Alexander’s Crossover and, yes, re-watched Space Jam (still a masterpiece).⠀Like Yang, I haven’t become suddenly a superfan - I don’t think I’ll sit down and follow every single game once they start back up again - but I am definitely more interested in it, and appreciative of its history, and of its cultural impact.⠀ Which perfectly mirrored my own journey with Dragon Hoops. He ends it, not exactly a superfan, but as someone who now appreciates basketball and its deep cultural importance.⠀ Which, for me at least, made Yang the perfect audience surrogate: he begins his journey caring not much for the game but for the stories it generates. And its about the rich history of the game they play.⠀Ī game in which, when I first picked up this book, I had next to no interest in, it having gone away in the aftermath Space Jam and Michael Jordan’s second retirement. It’s about the people that make up the team, and their stories. He’s hesitant at first - the computer science teacher and comic book guy writing about sports of all things? But he feels the hook in his heart and so, tentatively, he takes the first step.⠀ĭragon Hoops is the true story about a basketball team overcoming all manner of odds on their way to becoming champions.

Yang does not follow basketball so he has no idea what this means, but the hold it has on other people fascinates him, and he starts to think there might be a story there. Their basketball team, the Dragons, is set to go to State and is causing quite the stir.

Until he starts hearing the excitement in the hallways of Bishop O’Dowd High School. He’s felt a hole in his life since his last book was released, and that was over six years ago, but he’s unable to find a story that just grabs his heart and runs away with it.⠀ At the beginning of this book, Gene Luen Yang, high school teacher and acclaimed author of graphic novels, is worried that he has no more stories to tell.

Dragon hoops book