Set in the mid ’90s, Wish I Was a Baller by Amar Shah, illustrated by Rashad Doucet, is a graphic memoir that follows the author’s real-life experiences as a teen sports journalist covering the golden era of the NBA. “It’s a book about kids chasing their big dreams,” he says. “I got on the cover of Sports Illustrated for Kids with probably the most famous athlete of the time, Shaquille O’Neal. I still can’t believe that it actually all happened to me.” We spoke with Shah about sports-focused fiction, researching a memoir, and resurging ’90s nostalgia.
You’ve written several stories centering around sports, including the middle-grade contemporary basketball trilogy Play the Game, the final book of which is also releasing in August. What draws you to that subject matter?
My dad was a huge New York sports fan—the Knicks, the Jets, the Rangers, the Mets—and I inherited his love of those teams. I became addicted to watching games on satellite television in the mid- to late-’80s. I also played sports, like soccer and baseball and basketball, but never got the growth spurt I so desperately wanted to be a professional! In elementary school, I gravitated to the sports books, whether trivia or biographies on players and coaches or Matt Christopher-type books about a kid overcoming the odds. I devoured Gary Carter’s Iron Mask series by Robert Montgomery. Carter was a New York Mets catcher, so those were special.
By fifth grade, I knew I wanted to write sports books and ones that featured someone like me as an athlete—those that told us we could succeed not only in a spelling bee or other academic pursuit, but also on the field or on the court. I had a great high school journalism career covering the NBA and then I went to work at ESPN. But it wasn’t until my son was born that I put the ambition into discipline and focus, because I now had someone to write for.
What kind of research did you do to portray the feel of the era accurately? How did you make it relevant for today’s young readers?
I’m a pack rat. I have memorabilia. I have my yearbooks. I have my clips and books. I have AOL Buddy Lists and Instant Messenger conversations. I have posters of NBA players and Kelly Kapowski [from Saved by the Bell]. I’m still friends with the people I was friends with then. It was cool to be able to call them up throughout the writing process, to verify and ask, “What was your interpretation of this event versus my memory of it?,” and then find the truth in it for the reader. I wanted to make sure that there was authenticity in what I was doing. [These things] give the reader a texture of what that era was about and who I was back then. Rashad Doucet deserves mad props. He also grew up in that era. We were like, to use a ’90s reference, Big Boi and André 3000. We had that chemistry as a writer and illustrator.
I know this era really well because I grew up in it, but there is universality to the experiences of growing up—asking the girl that you have a crush on to prom or homecoming; hanging out and feeling the rejection of not being able to fit in; the thrill of interviewing one of the most popular athletes on the planet. The names change, the clothing styles change, but being young and wanting to do something, that’s always going to be there. There’s also a huge nostalgia for the ’90s. Kids now are watching YouTube clips of Michael Jordan and Penny Hardaway and Kobe [Bryant]. They never saw these players play in real life, but they know who they are. They’ll know these references because it’s easily accessible to them.
This is your first original graphic novel. How did writing the script for this comic compare to your previous books?
This book began as a 100,000-word memoir about that time period—the first big thing I ever wrote. My son was born and my ambitions changed and I became more focused. I was pushing him around in a stroller in California and the idea of writing this as a memoir started percolating in my head. Then we moved to Florida where I worked for the Orlando Magic, coincidentally. The team that gave me my start ended up being a place I worked for. I finished the memoir during the pandemic and that got me an agent, Jas Perry of Looking Glass Literary and Media. But we couldn’t sell it. Jas encouraged me to skew it younger and write it as a graphic novel. She teamed me up with Rashad. I wrote the script and pitched it to my editors at Scholastic [Abigail McAden and Anjali Bisaria], and sold it. I had screenwriting experience, but it was a process. You’re taking 1,000 words and then distilling them down to 100. It was hard to cut scenes that I loved. I had good mentors. Jerry Craft gave me notes that were so important to making it better. Christina Soontornvat was incredible in terms of helping me make some scenes really pop. And Dan Santat provided great feedback on the book. They were so instrumental in supporting the book. It’s been a 10-year process and the book has evolved into what it’s supposed to be.
Are you working on any more graphic novels? Or have you thought about trying your hand at a different genre altogether?
I have a couple other projects in the works: a middle-grade graphic novel in collaboration with Rashad, a middle-grade memoir, a middle-grade sports book with dual POV that I’m writing with a friend of mine, and a new adult coming-of-age novel about working in the world of professional sports—The Devil Wears Prada meets Sports Center.
Wish I Was a Baller by Amar Shah, illus. by Rashad Doucet. Graphix, hardcover $24.99 ISBN 978-1-5461-1051-4; $14.99 paper ISBN 978-1-339-04244-2 Aug. 5
