Awesome full circle moment I just have to share.
Last night I was walking around Tokyo and wound up at a basement card store (as we do). I expected to see plenty of overpriced Shohei, Roki, and now Kazuma, which I did - and then in the slabs section, sandwiched between Kareem and Jordan Poole was ... a Mengke Bateer 2001 U.D. Flight Team Rookie.
Ok, you’re in a Japanese basement, looking at a shelf with maybe 60-70 slabs total, tell me you expect to see Mengke Bateer in PSA 10. So that was unexpected. Also, Mengke is my uncle. No, my side of the dna tree did not get his height.
Little backstory, I grew up in Houston and when he came to the Spurs in 2002, we got to hang out a ton. Some might know he won a chip with them in '03 despite hardly putting up Scalabrine minutes. Even fewer might know that he had an unlikely but close friendship with Tim Duncan who we always joked was Chinese on the inside. If I could telekinesis to the old house I’d find you guys some pics of those two giants together, next to my 5'5 dad and 3'2 me. There may be a follow up post next week with said pic.
For what it’s worth, Mengke got traded to Toronto the next year and I heard from him a lot less afterwards. When his stint with the north was done, he moved back to China/Mongolia and got into playing tough guy side characters in movies while playing ball on the side. Still, he made history by being the first Asian player to win an NBA championship, and actually frontran Yao Ming to be the first Chinese player to start an NBA game.
Anyways, the guys in the store (Mint Tokyo, shoutout Yu) hooked it up, and I even made another friend from the Netherlands named Che who was ready to buy it for me if I didn’t have the yen. But MAAAAN. This is what the hobby is about for me.
Only question left: do I crack the PSA 10 and have uncle sign it at the next Thanksgiving?
