7-foot-9 native of China begins basketball career with Dodge City

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, May 7, 2006 by Joshua Kinder

By Joshua Kinder

MORRIS NEWS SERVICE

Special arrangements are always needed for the Dodge City Legend's Sun Ming Ming. Finding clothes that fit, a bed that he can sleep in and even walking through doors can all be difficult.

But for 7-foot-9-inch Sun, it's a way of life - a way of life that doesn't get any easier to deal with or accept, even at age 22.

Being more than 6,000 miles from his homeland of China only complicates things, let alone being transplanted to Dodge City as he pursues his dream of playing in the NBA alongside fellow countryman Yao Ming.

Wherever Sun goes, he gets attention - whether it's getting off the plane in Dodge City and garnering repeated "Holy moleys" from a young Legend fan, or walking down the streets of New Jersey during the team's recent East Coast road trip and having a taxicab driver stop in his tracks, get out of his car and gaze at his astonishing size.

Even though Sun's height is a luxury in his sport, being one of the tallest people in the world is also a burden for a shy young man who wants to be treated just like everyone else.

"I've gotten used to the attention," Sun said in a recent interview through interpreter Janney Duncan. "But most of the time, it's not very convenient for me. I've tried to accept it, but it's hard sometimes. I don't like all the attention, all the time."

Though Sun often completely ignores many stares and swarming hordes of gawkers, Legend head coach and general manager Dale Osbourne said his prized pupil is often caught between two conflicting reactions - embracing the attention or just wanting to hide.

But when you're as big as Sun, hiding and living a public "normal" life is almost impossible.

"He's trying to understand Dodge City," Osbourne said. "It's new to him, and he's a very humble and quiet guy that doesn't want to be disrespectful to anybody. He's always going to get a lot of attention, no matter where he goes. I don't think people realize what he has to go through everyday, being 7-foot-9 and 370 pounds. It's not easy and something that most people really wouldn't want to go through."

Legend guard Keith Salscheider said just being in an airport with Sun is "crazy enough" to be memorable.

"He's got to duck to miss about every sign hanging from the ceiling in the airport," Salscheider said. "And then to see him get on the small planes or even the bigger planes ... things are just not made for a man that size.

"It's almost like a 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' thing, where everything is just way too small and you're walking around in a tiny house."

Learning basketball

Sun's story can't be told without mentioning the major brain surgery he underwent just six months ago to remove a pituitary gland that was causing him to grow at an increased rate.

Sun has grown three more inches just in the last three years, since he turned 19. And it's not that Sun, who grew up in a small town in Northern China, just awoke to find himself towering over everybody else. He was already 6-7 by age 15 when he was discovered and started playing basketball.

However, because of the surgery, he hadn't played competitive basketball for almost a year when he arrived in Dodge City. During the last six months of recovery, he was living in Ventura, Calif., where he was working out with a junior college team and taking English lessons five days a week.

But Sun has lacked the professional coaching that would translate to the pro game. He's raw, to say the least. He struggles, but he's getting better with time - and he said he's got a lot of time if it means he could play in the NBA some day.

"Everything takes time, and I need to go step by step to get to the goal," said Sun, who likes to spend his free time playing on the computer. "I think I've improved, but I'm not where I want to be yet. Since I came over here (to the United States), there wasn't a lot of systematic training. I had to prepare for the surgery and the recovery.

"Now I need to get in better shape and get faster. This is a good opportunity that I have here, so I want to take my time to do it right."

But he did say, with a big smile on his face, that if he had his way, he would be playing in the NBA right now.

Osbourne said the speed of the game in an up-and-down-the-court league concerned him at first, but Sun has started to make adjustments and changed the coach's opinion of what he might be able to do.

"We were concerned with the speed of the game, with this being his first professional game," Osbourne said. "But I think he's adjusting pretty well.

"I think he's really trying and as a coach, what I need to do is stop thinking of the ways he was going to hurt us and start thinking of the ways that he can help us. We've been using him in a positive way and becoming more consistent with his minutes and choosing our times with him."

Although Sun says he's playing the sport now because he wants to and because he loves it, it didn't start that way. In China, since he was so tall and so young, he had more of a mandate to start playing basketball than the opportunity it has now become.