Hoop dreams: From Ludhiana to Dallas via NBA
Satnam Singh Bhamara wasn’t sure the Dallas Mavericks, or any other NBA franchise, would pick him. He had no inkling that he would be the first Indian draft in the world’s richest sporting league that, on an average,
pays its players $4.9 million for a season.
“There was no real vibe, there were no hints that one team was more interested in me than the other,” Satnam said afterwards.
On Friday, the 7’2” teenager made history when the Mavericks picked him as the 52nd player in the 2015 National Basketball Association (NBA) Draft. The belief that the Texan side showed in the 19-year-old mirrored the hope that a tiny hamlet in Punjab, by the name of Ballo Ke, had on the unusually tall kid who was very different from everybody in the village. Satnam wasn’t just tall, he dreamt big too.
“My son has added a few inches to my height with pride. We all knew he was made to do bigger things in life,” said Balbir Singh Bhamara, Satnam’s 56-year-old father, who stands an inch shorter than his son at 7’1”.
India’s very own hoop-dream story began about a decade ago, when Balbir’s misfit son was enrolled into the Ludhiana Basketball Academy. NBA wasn’t something the Bhamara household was aiming for, not at that point at least. They hadn’t even heard about the American league.
Balbir just wanted his son, nicknamed Bhola, to stop idling away his time and stay away from trouble. “He nearly drowned in a village canal once. On another occasion, he crashed a scooter into a wall. We were worried for him those days,” said Balbir.
There was another reason that made Balbir push Satnam to take up basketball. “We have a flour mill and a cotton processing unit. Sitting next to the machine or the charkha is tiresome, especially if you are tall. I have a crooked back because of this. I didn’t want Satnam to end up like me,” Balbir said.
Balbir is glad Satnam will shortly become an earning member of the Bhamara family. “We have been through plenty of hardships. Another salary will always help. I earn Rs 1 for every kg of flour we grind,” he said. Satnam’s siblings and his parents remember rallying around him when villagers would insult or ridicule the boy for his height.
“From the day he was born, Satnam has been too big for his age,” said Sukhwinder Kaur, Satnam’s mother. “He weighed 4.5 kg when he was born. By the time he was a year old, he looked bigger than most three year olds.”
Satnam’s older sister, Sarbjot Kaur, nodded in agreement. “When we were in primary school, I, like most elder sisters, would walk him to school by hand,” she said. “But by the time we were in primary school, he was a little over a foot taller than me and watching me walk hand-in-hand with this shy, overgrown boy would make everyone around burst out laughing.”
She also remembers her brother’s hatred for English at school. “He would tear his English books every week. At home, we have kept a count — he tore 108 English books till Class V. Now we see him speak that language so fluently,” she said.
Although the 2015-16 NBA season begins only in October, Satnam has been in the US for the last five years, as a member of the IMG Academy.
Beant, Satnam’s younger brother, smiles when you ask him about his brother’s days in America. “Here in the village, we do not use toothpaste and toothbrush like city folk. Satnam too wasn’t in the habit when he first went to the US. So we used to constantly call him and remind him to brush his teeth because he would forget otherwise,” said Beant.
“Just the other day, he sent us a photograph of him sitting in a what seems to be a clinic. In this picture, a female doctor is seen working on his teeth. All of us saw that picture and burst out laughing. Our Satnam, who forgets to brush his teeth, was visiting a dentist! That’s when we knew he had made it,” Beant added.
That, and when he was picked in Friday’s draft, of course.
