National Basketball Association ( NBA ) players, who are currently visiting Taipei for an exhibition game, on Wednesday coached Taiwanese children affected by Typhoon Morakot to help them recover from psychological trauma. The participating children, aged 12-15, are from indigenous communities in Chiayi county and other areas that have struggled against poverty or suffered severe property losses during Typhoon Morakot, which devastated southern Taiwan from Aug. 7-10, killing more than 600 people. The "Basketball clinic" is part of the NBA Cares program that promotes social responsibility and community charity.
All of the children are sponsored by the Taiwan chapter of the Christian charity organization World Vision. NBA Cares chose to work with World Vision Taiwan because the two share a concern for children welfare.
The charity and the NBA are hoping that through playing sports, the children can begin to heal scars left behind by the trauma of the typhoon, including having to flee their homes or losing their homes, family, friends and neighbors.
"We always go through periods in life when we are down and everything has gone bad, but you always can come back. There is always a brighter tomorrow," Indiana Pacers star Danny Granger told the CNA.
Granger believes that playing sports is definitely a good way to help with the healing process for children who survived natural disasters.
"When you play Basketball or whether it's baseball, you are not thinking about the problems that you're having at that given moment, so it definitely is an outlet just by an event like this," he said.
Describing himself and his teammates as big kids at heart, the 26-year-old NBA star said that playing with the children was a lot of fun.
Granger added that he is excited about sightseeing in Taipei during the visit and said he has often heard that the NBA is popular in Taiwan.
Xiao Hau, a 15-year-old boy who participated in the Basketball clinic, said that he was really looking forward to the event because he is a fan of the NBA and he plays for his school team.
Taiwan will host an NBA game for the first time when the Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers play an exhibition game at the Taipei Arena on Oct. 8, a breakthrough for a country in which the NBA has a devoted following.
Taipei will become the 8th Asian city to host an NBA exhibition or regular season game. Japan's Tokyo, Yokohama and Saitama hosted six regular season two-game series between 1990 and 2003, while exhibitions have been held in recent years in Beijing, Guangzhou, Macau, and Shanghai.
