At the start of the season, Evan Scott was refereeing an NBA game in Portland when a member of the Trail Blazers coaching staff approached him during a timeout.
As a second-year umpire in the league, Scott is used to coaches complaining about calls during downtime.
Jon Yim had been looking for him for a different reason.
For much of Yim’s nine years as the Blazers video coordinator and player development coach, he rarely shared the pitch with another Korean American. Scott, 28, would be the first Korean American to officiate in the NBA
“It was a nice little interaction to feel recognized and to recognize him too,” said Scott, who was born in South Korea and adopted by an American family. “We talked about the fact that there are a few more in the league.”
Recently, a small contingent of Korean-Americans have been hired for notable positions in the NBA, WNBA, and G League. But for decades, Korean Americans in basketball have privately assisted their young colleagues, striving to create more representation at the highest levels of the sport.
Early in Yim’s tenure with the Blazers, he was contacted by John Cho, who worked for 19 years as the Houston Rockets’ basketball technology director.
“If you need anything, let me know,” Yim recalls, telling Cho.
Yim extended a similar offer in 2018, when Yale Kim began working in basketball operations with the Phoenix Suns. Like many of his Korean-American colleagues, Kim ended his playing career in college; in Phoenix, he was suddenly asked to spot college players. To ease the learning curve, Yim advised Kim on various video detection technologies.
“You’re always looking for people to admire,” said Kim, 28. “I technically knew that it was possible to be a Korean American in basketball operations, but until you were exposed to these people and learned about it, that’s when- there that seems achievable.
In Major League Baseball, a group of black athletes created a similar network based on mentoring and discussing shared experiences in a professional sport where their representation has fallen far below what it is in the general population. .
It is believed that there is only one player of Korean descent who was part of an NBA team. Ha Seung-jin, now a popular YouTube personality in South Korea, played 46 games for the Blazers in the 2004-5 and 2005-6 seasons. From 2018 to 2019, Ji-Su Park played for the WNBA Las Vegas Aces, and she is expected to be in camp for the coming season.
Recently, efforts have been made to bring more players of Korean descent into the NBA.
Milton Lee, director of basketball operations for the Nets from 2010 to 2014, housed Korean guard Daesung Lee in his New York apartment while Daesung Lee trained to prepare for the 2017 G League draft. They were presented by Kiwook Kim, holder of a Nets subscription from South Korea.
Although Daesung Lee played for a year with the G League’s Erie BayHawks before returning to South Korea, renewed hope surrounds Davidson sophomore Hyunjung Lee, who was the Wildcats’ second in scoring last season.
Eugene Park, the NBA’s senior director for identifying elite basketball talent, spotted Hyunjung Lee at the league’s 2017 Asia-Pacific tag team camp, then invited him to the NBA Global Academy program for some youth. talents. In the off-season, Hyunjung Lee trains in South Korea with Brian Kim, who recently coached the G League’s Grand Rapids Drive and is another Park disciple.
Park, who also plays pickup basketball with Milton Lee, wrote in an email that while he has the same level for all the players he signs, he keeps “a close eye on the competitions. basketball base in Korea in the hope of identifying more Korean prospects. ”To potentially recruit at the Global Academy.
Park added that more Korean-born basketball employees “would present a more complete picture of our history.”
The news media and education systems in the United States have long struggled to properly characterize the depths of the Korean-American experience, the diversity of which is evident in the family histories of Park and his colleagues.
Yim’s ancestors were among the first Koreans to come to the United States, arriving in 1905 and working as a pineapple farmer in Hawaii. Scott was one of some 200,000 children placed for adoption after the wars, and the resulting economic crisis devastated the Korean Peninsula for much of the 20th century.
Milton Lee said his father fled North Korea during the Korean War, never seeing his mother or sisters again; he immigrated to the United States and became a doctor. Arnold Lee, assistant coach of the Chicago Bulls, saw parallels between his family’s journey and the story told in the Oscar-nominated film “Minari”. His father was in his twenties when he traveled to America in the 1980s and decided to move here, seeking to escape the financial uncertainty that plagued South Korea as it struggled to establish a democracy. after decades of coups and military rule.
“I hope others find strength in these American-Korean trips and use it to step out of their comfort zone,” said Marshall Cho, the boys’ basketball coach at Lake Oswego High School. in Oregon. Cho, who previously worked in the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders program, co-founded the Kimchi Family Speaker Series on YouTube to highlight the stories of Korean Americans in basketball.
Rachael Joo, a professor at Middlebury College whose research focuses on how sports media connect the South Korean and Korean-American communities, called Korean NBA employees “mavericks” for not playing professionally but still entering a field dominated by former athletes.
Due to their lack of playing experience, many Korean Americans in the NBA claim to have suffered from impostor syndrome at different stages of their careers.
“Every day I want, do I really belong here?” said Arnold Lee, who has worked for the Bulls since 2016.
Many Korean-American staff interviewed said they had experienced racism in the game.
Scott said fans in high school gyms and professional arenas had cursed him and discussed the incidents with Isaac and Jacob Barnett, Korean-born brothers who officiate in the WNBA and G League. The three of them grew up together in Northern Virginia, and the Barnetts encouraged Scott to become a referee.
Microaggressions are also common. Yim recalled being introduced to an NBA GM during the Summer League and a colleague reported that the executive viewed Yim as passive and gentle and someone who should be “glad you got a job”.
Yim, 36, is now well regarded in the league. At 28, he gave up his teaching career to intern with the Los Angeles Clippers, going to work at 6:30 am to do everything from “wiping the sweat on pickup games” to training with the Los Angeles Clippers. players.
Blazers coach Terry Stotts called Yim an “instrumental” part of his team, and Yim forged a solid relationship with Portland star guards Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum.
Yim is also ready to be confronted with the referees. When he approached Scott this season, he started their conversation by discussing what he thought was a missed foul on McCollum, before congratulating.
“I was proud of him as a Korean for being the first Korean referee in the league,” said Yim. “Seeing him do that gave me some inspiration that I could be the first Korean NBA head coach Evan thanked me and then said, ‘When you are the head coach, I will be the first to give you a technique.’
“I said, ‘It’s a deal.'”