The Brotherhood of Wounded Knee

As many of us do, I feel a kinship to the Blazers. Not just the team, or the fans, or the city (all of which I dearly love) but the players themselves. Call it weird if you like, but I root for them not just to serve my own selfish need to fulfill some childhood dream of being "the fan with a championship" but as if they were friends and family I'm rooting for. I love to see them succeed, no matter who it is. If they are on this team, they are part of my family. And when the individuals succeed in unselfish ways, the team prospers, and we all reap the joy from a hard fought win, whether earned physically, or vicariously.

And even when they leave the team, I wish them the best. I even want to see them have a record night when we play (just so long as we win. Or at least have an amazing game of it).

While I feel this way from LA to Alaa Abdelnaby, there are no two members of the Blazers family I feel a deeper kinship with than Brandon Roy and Greg Oden.

You see, I was once an athlete myself. Nothing on the level of the NBA of course. Not even basketball, although its a true love of mine instilled in me by my own family and their connection to this state and team. I was a martial artist. I owned a successful school. I was active in the community. I was a point away from fighting for the gold medal in the ITC national championships in the year 2000. And all of that went away when a freak misstep during a routine exercise, tore my ACL.

Running the school was my fulltime job. Making that work was complicated by the fact that I was raising twin babies alone at the time. The school didn't bring in enough to support our family, so my wife had to work a retail job two hours away just to make ends meet. In fact, due to the economic hard times, most of our students were on free scholarships just so they'd have a place to go. Because providing this safe haven for kids with ADD and OCD and whatever other affliction had gotten them kicked out of school or other extra-curricular activities was SO IMPORTANT to us, my wife quit her job, put back on her instructor's collar, and took over the school while I recuperated.

Even though I was insured through her work and the accident clearly happened while insured, the insurance company wrapped us up in red tape and backed out of paying for the bill and for the rehabilitation, so the surgery never healed right. Many of our paying students had contracts that just happened to end around the same time, and figured they'd come back when I was healthy. Some of the male students couldn't deal with a female instructor. Some just couldn't handle seeing their instructor wasn't indestructible (as so many movies had taught them). Our student count went from 75 to 15 over the course of three months. One little slip, and we lost EVERYTHING...

We were forced to sell the school to another instructor. The money he paid was for the equipment mainly, and was just enough to feed us for the next three months. Rather than bolting, like many people do when such a radical and seemingly negative life change happens, I remained dedicated to helping build that school up again. I couldn't do the moves, but I could still teach, and together, we built that school back up to 75 students before I relinquished it.

We had to move in with my parents for several years. It could have been humiliating, but we bore it with whatever grace life had taught us, and worked hard to move on to the next step. I became a writer (so that I could create animated shows that would teach kids the same values I tried to instill through martial arts instruction). I moved to LA, and after several years of hard work I have a handful of shows I created and wrote being released this year on the web. I've built up my network, and spread my philosophies of hard work through good deeds and self sacrifice wherever I go. I like to think in my own way, if I haven't changed the world, I've changed the world immediately around me.

Little by little, I finally let go of my dream of being a martial arts champion, and let reality sink in until I was at peace with it. And the more I let go of my old dreams and worked on making the dreams of kids around me come true, and inspired them to their own dreams based on my experiences, the more at peace I felt.

This year, the martial arts organization I helped found (the Saenghwal Taekwondo Organization) has invited me back to be an inspirational speaker, and teach the new generation about the power of grace, compassion and tenacity. I've been working myself back into shape in the meantime, and amazingly, after seven years of limping and agony, my knee pain is almost gone. I was so happy, I jumped and touched the ceiling. :D

So, I know a little bit about what Greg and Brandon are going through. I can only imagine what it would be like to add the burden of the world stage and all the expectations that come with that to the pressure of trying to heal a part of your body you depend on so much. I understand the utter frustration of KNOWING your body can and HAS done something a million times before, and not being able to make it happen. I know the HURT of feeling all the eyes on you. Even the sympathy is a burden, much less the ones who let you know you let them down.

But the beauty is, for all the tragedy a simple misstep caused, I had to give it up, before I can get it back. And if a simple martial arts instructor (and former janitor) can do it, and not only survive but thrive to reclaim all the old dreams, I have no doubt in my mind that my brothers of the wounded knee, Brother Brandon and Brother Oden, can do the same. Whatever their futures hold, they are always a part of my extended family (and so are the rest of you).