[Indeed, the
23-year-old queen, who plays almost every day, is surprisingly good. The royal
set shot is as sweet as honeyed ghee, and the royal dribble as poised as a monk
in meditation. Her statistics in that game were like those of an N.B.A. star:
34 points, 3 rebounds and 4 assists. (Perhaps it helped that the Bhutanese
custom forbidding citizens from touching a royal without an invitation seems to
extend to the basketball court.)]
 |
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times
Students at the Pelkhil School in Thimphu, Bhutan. Few in this nation of 742,000 are taller
than 6 feet.
|
THIMPHU, Bhutan — With just seconds left in
the game, the queen of Bhutan went to the hole like a hungry snow leopard
pouncing on a mountain goat, taking two dribbles and three long strides before
putting up a royal layup.
Yes, your majesty!
Queen Jetsun Pema
Wangchuck’s final basket was just one of 17 she made in a friendly game of
basketball last month with nine other women. Basketball may be a street game in
the United States, but it is the game of kings and queens in Bhutan.
Indeed, the 23-year-old
queen, who plays almost every day, is surprisingly good. The royal set shot is
as sweet as honeyed ghee, and the royal dribble as poised as a monk in
meditation. Her statistics in that game were like those of an N.B.A. star: 34
points, 3 rebounds and 4 assists. (Perhaps it helped that the Bhutanese custom
forbidding citizens from touching a royal without an invitation seems to extend
to the basketball court.)
“If I had known you’d be
counting, I would have played harder,” she said with a laugh. The queen’s
husband, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, his brother and two of his three
half-brothers also play regularly. But after decades of being a largely royal
preserve, basketball in Bhutan is about to have its breakout moment.
A South Korean coach has
been hired to cobble together a national team that many hope will someday be
able to challenge its neighbors for bragging rights in South Asia and beyond.
Bhutan has tried many times to win an international game but, except for a
single victory in a three-on-three tournament, has never succeeded.
Bhutan’s main problem is
height. Few in this nation of 742,000 are taller than 6 feet. The queen is 5-5,
and her husband and brothers-in-law are not much taller. Dunking is almost as
rare as dragons.
“And I don’t think our
backboards are strong enough to take a lot of dunking,” said Paljor Dorji, an
impish 70-year-old known as Benji. He is widely credited with bringing
basketball to Bhutan and instilling a passion for it in the royal family.
There is a saying in
basketball that height cannot be taught, and Kiyong Kim, the new national team
coach, says he does not intend to try.
“In order to cover the
height problem, I’m trying to get them into a faster style of play,” Kim said
through a giggling young interpreter. “We need stronger defense and better fast
breaks.”
On a worn parquet floor in
the tired gymnasium where Queen Wangchuck played, Kim began that process Sept.
2. About 50 young men showed up for the first of what Kim promised would be
years of regular practices.
“The most important things
are attendance, physical fitness, your ability to understand the game and,
lastly, your enthusiasm as defenders,” he said in an opening speech that could
have been taken straight from “Hoosiers,” a movie about an underdog basketball
team in a tiny Indiana town.
And like the coach in
“Hoosiers,” Kim promised that his players would rarely handle a basketball in
the first weeks of practice. For the next two hours, Kim put his recruits
through a series of lunges, squats and pivots — the essential moves of a
vigorous defense.
Bhutanese players say their
best hope for a win could be against the Maldives, a country with half of
Bhutan’s population that is threatened by global warming. As sea levels rise,
Maldivians may have trouble finding places to play, players noted. And facing
them in Thimphu’s thin air (the city’s altitude is 7,710 feet) could provide a
crucial advantage.
“The thing I’ve noticed
about Bhutanese basketball is that you guys don’t really care about defense,”
Kim shouted while his players sweated and groaned in an extended squat. “That
has to change. That will change.”
It is a problem that could
have resulted from basketball’s royal birth. Bhutanese royalty — like some
princes of American basketball — is known more for enthusiastic shooting than
vigorous defense. Bhutan’s fourth king, 57-year-old Jigme Singye Wangchuck, now
retired and widely referred to simply as K4, still plays daily and is rumored
to have made 65 3-pointers in a game (the N.B.A. record is 12). No one seems to
know how many shots he missed in that mythic match, as security guards shoo
away the curious when K4 plays.
The present king, known as
K5, can shoot jumpers with both hands, and the royal drive to the basket is
said to be like a freight train’s. But defense? Not in his tool kit, several
players said.
Perhaps because of the
royal’s exalted status, in two observed games, no one seemed excited about
putting a body on an opposing royal. And fouling one? The question led to
stunned looks and nervous giggles.
“I fouled the queen once,”
Yeshey Om, a 20-year-old college student in Thimphu, said as though remembering
a car wreck. “I was a little scared, but she said, ‘It’s OK.’
“She wants us to check her,
and she gets mad if we don’t. She thinks we’re scared of her,” Ms. Om said, and
then added thoughtfully: “We are scared of her.”
Before the queen arrived to
play, a royal retinue rolled out a red carpet between the gym’s entry and the
basketball court. Beside the court, courtiers placed a chair covered in saffron
silk and brought in an elaborately carved wooden table covered in more silk on
which they placed chilled bottles of water.
A clutch of women filtered
in and whispered among themselves until the queen appeared carrying a Louis
Vuitton purse and wearing a teal T-shirt, black tights and neon-pink Nike
sneakers. She greeted the players cheerfully but quickly went out on the court,
where the women split into well-remembered teams.
A man standing at attention
at a small scorer’s table started a digital clock, and a klaxon sounded. Queen
Wangchuck scored her team’s second basket on a well-practiced give-and-go. She
then scored on two fast breaks, and on a 15-footer that led her to check a
fingernail with some concern. Near the end of the first quarter, she drove to
the basket through a suspiciously wide lane.
Her majesty’s team built a
huge lead until the opposing players — performing a role akin to that of the
Washington Generals, the famously inept nemeses of the Harlem Globetrotters —
tightened their defense. To her credit, Queen Wangchuck rose to the challenge,
hitting a jump shot just inside the 3-point line and driving hungrily to the
basket with a defender in her face in the last seconds. The final score was
74-60.
In an interview after the
game, Queen Wangchuck said that she has been playing basketball since she was 9
“and I haven’t stopped since.” (Marketing opportunity alert: she would “love to
be invited” to the N.B.A. finals.)
“For me now, basketball is
a great way of meeting girls and interacting with them in an informal way,”
said the queen, a former commoner and a renowned beauty.
And then a courtier who had
just tried to block her majesty’s shot (and had made three of her five 3-point
shot attempts, a fine showing) opened the door of the royal Toyota Prius and —
the game decidedly over — bowed low as the queen hopped inside and was driven
away.
