Jemison Gains Overseas Perspective in China
2/14/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
As soon as Demetrius Jemison’s plane landed in Beijing, he began to feel very far from home. Out the window he could see airlines from around the world??one was from Israel, one from the Middle East??and the people surrounding him and the rest of the American basketball players could not understand him nor could they make themselves understood.
In the car on the way to the hotel, Jemison and the other seven basketball players on the team took in the Chinese capital: the sprawling buildings, the countless cranes poised in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics, and for the sophomore who had never left U.S. territory, it was a long way from Birmingham, Alabama.
But as the group made the 17 kilometer drive from the airport to the Lido Hotel??a Holiday Inn??they saw something inside that didn’t seem foreign at all. Amidst the ponchos and sombreros hanging on the wall was the Texan Bar and Grill: serving U.S. beef and pork, and well-known for its seafood dishes.
It was a taste of home 7,000 miles away, a taste of a culture very different from the one Jemison thought he would experience his 10 days in China.
“It’s way different,” said Jemison, whose weight dropped from 235 to about 228 on the trip. “They say our Chinese food is watered-down American. It was really good though, the fried rice was the best fried rice I’ve ever had.”
Jemison, with Alabama sophomore Mikhail Torrance and six other college basketball players, took the 10-day trip to China as a part of Reach USA, a Christian sports ministry that uses basketball to share the Gospel. For the players, it was eight exhibition games in 10 days against teams from China and a chance to see a nation they may otherwise have never gotten the opportunity to visit.
And for Jemison, it was a chance to do something no one in his family had done before.
“It’s something a lot of people don’t get a chance to do, especially being from Birmingham,” he said. “My parents were telling me, ??A lot of people don’t get the chance to go to a place like China,’ and they’ve never been out of the country before and a lot of my friends and family had never been so I figured I’d get to do something nobody’s ever done where I’m from before, and it was a great experience for me.”
Jemison joined five other SEC players on the trip, including Auburn’s Quan Prowell and Rasheem Barrett, LSU’s Garrett Temple and Mississippi State’s Brian Johnson. The team was also joined by Lipscomb’s Eddie Ard and Texas Pan-American’s Paul Stoll. While it was nice to get experience playing with guys he had never before played with, Jemison said what he takes with him from the trip are the relationships he forged with the players.
“I made a lot of friends,” he said. “A lot of good guys. We really got together and would talk about a lot of religious stuff and life and how we take stuff for granted in America here, so we grew closer and won a couple ballgames and had fun and just took the trip for what it’s worth, as a life-changing experience.”
On the court, Jemison and Torrance helped lead Reach USA to a 6-2 record in China, including a 4-0 start, with Jemison putting together double-doubles in the first four games, averaging a team-high 15.6 points and 8.3 rebounds a game and shooting 63 percent from the field (49-of-77). Torrance, who ran the offense for the team, averaged a team-high 5.2 assists-per-game.
Getting to experience European-style basketball ?? which includes a wider lane, longer three-point line and shorter shot clock, Jemison said, will benefit him as a player this season for Alabama.
Having to cover guys his size that could shoot like a guard, he said, won’t hurt either.
“I learned really that the way they play overseas and the European style of basketball is way different from how we play here,” he said. “I was guarding guys that were 6-foot-11, and normally here in America if you’re guarding a guy that’s 6-11 you just put your back to the basket, but over there they’re picking and popping and putting the ball on the floor creating shots themselves. It was kind of crazy for me at first because it was like guarding a point guard, but it helped me defend the shots in the lane a little better and read offenses better.
“The quicker shot clock makes your brain work quicker trying to get quicker, better shots. It’s a lot of little things that can help my game here and I shot almost lights out over there, so it won’t hurt.”
While in China, the team spent most of its time in Beijing but was able to take trips to the Great Wall and to see the Terracotta Warriors ?? a collection of 8,099 soldier and horse statues almost 1,800 years old. The sights will stay with Jemison like the friendships he made with his teammates and coach (Texas Pan-American’s Tom Schuberth), and the memories of their bus breaking down, the hordes of people who would crowd around for a picture or autograph, and a common misunderstanding among the Chinese.
“A lot of people think that because you’re American you know Dewayne Wade and LeBron James and would ask me if I knew Dewayne or Kobe [Bryant],” Jemison said. “I was always like, no I’m a fan just like you, I don’t know these people.
“But it was fun. It was a great experience. It’ll make you appreciate a lot when you go and see how other people live in other countries.”
