Brief Summary of School Reading List Books - Ievgen Sykalo 2026

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

Let’s begin with feet.

Not metaphorical feet. Literal feet. Size-fourteen Nike sneakers squeaking across a polished gym floor. Thundering. Pounding. Feet belonging to teen giants with biceps like bridges and last names that echo like legacy — Lou, Lin, Aragonés. And then, somewhere in the corner, smaller, nervier steps. Quieter. Hesitant. My own.

Hi. I'm Gene. I draw comics. That’s my job. Or was, depending on which page you're on. I used to write about caped crusaders and mystical monks, pixelated avatars and dragons with flaming swords. Fantasy stuff. Safe stuff. Stories that lived in panels and never sweated.

Until one day, I looked up from my desk at Bishop O'Dowd High School and realized something terrifying.

Real life was better. Bigger. Bloodier. And it was happening right across the hall, where Coach Lou’s boys were chasing something I’d spent years ignoring: a story about feet, faith, fathers, failure, redemption, identity — basketball.

But before we get to the hoops and the heartbreaks, let me rewind.

I didn’t like sports. Still don’t, not really. Growing up, I was the nerd on the sidelines. The skinny Chinese kid who flinched whenever a dodgeball whistled past. The one who found refuge in ink, panels, and flat characters that did what I told them. Basketball was chaos. A thudding, sweaty, shouting chaos. There was nothing about it that felt safe. Which, of course, made it perfect.

Coach Lou was the opposite of me. A former player turned institution, with a voice like a gravel road and the kind of charisma that could make even algebra seem exciting. He was building something, he said — a team, a dynasty, maybe even a miracle. And this year, 2014, he had the pieces. A senior lineup stacked like mythic heroes: Paris Austin, the cocky floor general; Ivan Rabb, the soft-spoken giant with NBA dreams; Jeevin Sandhu, sharp-shooting and thoughtful; and a supporting cast of depth, sweat, and sacrifice.

I didn’t know any of that when I first knocked on Coach Lou’s door. I just wanted to tell a story. Something human. Something I couldn’t control.

He looked me over, raised an eyebrow. “You sure?” he asked.

I wasn’t.

Let’s talk about arcs. Comic book arcs are clean. A hero wants something, faces obstacles, overcomes them (or doesn’t), and changes. But real kids? They’re messier.

Paris Austin wanted glory. He had that bounce, that swagger, the gravity of someone who knew where the hoop was even when blindfolded. But beneath it, you felt something tight — an old pressure, a father-shaped silence in his life. He talked big, but you could see the edge in his eyes. The need.

Then there was Ivan Rabb. Six-foot-ten. Eyes kind and tired, like he’d seen more than a teenager should. He moved like water, like music, but spoke like prayer — soft, slow, deliberate. The world saw a future NBA star. Ivan saw... uncertainty. Expectations weren’t dreams; they were weights.

The team’s journey wasn’t just about points and brackets. It was about stepping through fear. And fear, I learned, didn’t only exist under a basket with two seconds left — it lived in living rooms where immigrant parents argued in Punjabi about their son wasting time; in churches where boys tried to balance God and game; in classrooms where a kid with dyslexia rewrote his destiny with a jump shot.

Jeevin Sandhu — let’s pause on him. The first Sikh player on the team, a boy with a turban and a sniper’s focus. His story hit like a freight train. How many times had I heard my own parents worry about "practical futures"? Jeevin was caught between cultures, bouncing between identity and assimilation. He’d stand at the three-point line, hands ready, back straight, knowing every shot wasn’t just for the scoreboard — it was a statement.

There was also Alex Zhao, a Chinese-American transfer with fire in his veins and a temper that flared hotter than his crossover. He was me, sort of — if I’d been braver, angrier, less afraid to miss.

These kids were myths in motion. And I — this balding cartoonist with a notebook — I had to follow them into the storm.

Let me say something dangerous: I started to care. Really care.

It began with a game. O’Dowd versus Moreau. Local rivals. Packed bleachers. You could feel the floor quake. Paris slicing through defenders like a razor. Ivan swallowing rebounds like gravity incarnate. And the crowd — oh God, the crowd. They screamed and roared like ancient Romans, fists up, hearts pounding.

It was art. Not comic art, not ink-on-paper — this was kinetic, ephemeral, glorious chaos.

And they won. Not just that game, but the next. And the next.

Suddenly, State was in sight.

Coach Lou... he’d been chasing that ring for decades. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. He’d built generations of players, watched them rise and fall, but the crown? Always just out of reach. You could see it wearing on him — the tension, the years, the near-misses. But also, the hope. Hope like armor. Hope like oxygen.

And me? I was changing too. Less of a narrator, more of a witness. I started skipping comic deadlines. I started drawing less. Watching more. My wife raised an eyebrow. “So... are you a sports guy now?”

God, I hoped not. But something inside me had cracked open. Maybe I needed to believe that real stories could end well.

There were detours, of course.

I dug into history. That’s what comic guys do — we research, obsess, dig until the bones of a story start to surface. I found tales of early Black athletes who broke barriers while crowds spat on them. I found stories of Catholic schools fighting to desegregate, of coaches who bent rules to save players from racist policies. I found the ghosts of past Dragons — like Mike Phelps (not the swimmer), a local legend who’d danced just shy of State decades earlier and disappeared into obscurity.

Basketball wasn’t just a game. It was history. Culture. Resistance. Identity in motion.

Every step on that court echoed with a thousand stories — most of them never told.

The season burned forward. The team kept winning. The stakes climbed. And somewhere in the heat of that journey, I had to make a choice.

DC Comics had called. They wanted me to take over Superman. SUPERMAN. The holy grail of nerdom. The alien boy who became Earth’s greatest hero. The immigrant metaphor with heat vision. He was my childhood dream — now real.

But I hesitated.

How could I leave this story? These kids? How could I jump from hardwood to cape, from Oakland to Krypton, without finishing the arc?

Coach Lou gave me a look — part sympathy, part challenge. “Sometimes,” he said, “you gotta take the shot.”

I thought about that for weeks. I talked to Paris, Ivan, Jeevin. Their futures were shifting too — college offers, scholarships, pro scouts. None of us knew what was coming. But we all knew it would change everything.

State Championship.

O’Dowd versus Mater Dei. North versus South. Goliath versus Goliath.

The arena pulsed. National TV. Thousands of fans. Sweat. Fear. Magic.

The game was war. Lead changes. Clutch plays. Missed free throws that felt like stabs. Coach Lou pacing like a caged bear. Paris flying. Ivan rebounding like a god. Seconds left. Tie game.

Paris had the ball.

He dribbled, hesitated, drove. Fouled. Two shots. Down by one.

First shot — swish.

Tie.

Second shot — breath held. Release.

In.

The crowd erupted.

Defensive stand. Buzzer.

They’d done it.

Coach Lou collapsed into his players. Tears. Screams. A ring.

A ring.

I stood there, stunned. A comic book ending in real life. Joy that felt radioactive. The kind of climax no editor would buy — too perfect, too on-the-nose. And yet, it was true.

They’d won.

And I had my story.

After that, everything moved fast. Paris went to Boise. Ivan chose Cal. Jeevin stayed steady. Coach Lou finally — finally — got to breathe.

And me?

I said yes to Superman.

But part of me stayed behind. In that gym. With those kids. With the echo of squeaking sneakers and the smell of popcorn and adrenaline.

I drew the book. Dragon Hoops. I tried to make it true. Not just the plays and stats, but the sweat. The fear. The contradiction of being an Asian-American who hated sports but fell in love with a team. The truth of identity as something you step into, like a pair of shoes a size too big, hoping you’ll grow into them.

So yeah. This isn’t really about basketball. Not just.

It’s about taking the shot when you're scared.

About finding magic in your blind spot.

About realizing that the stories we live are messier, braver, and sometimes even better than the ones we make up.

And sometimes? They even have happy endings.

But not always.

And that’s okay, too.