{"id":37315,"date":"2015-02-13T21:45:14","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T01:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=37315"},"modified":"2015-02-13T21:45:14","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T01:45:14","slug":"justins-japan-nba-d-leaguer-yuki-togashi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/13\/justins-japan-nba-d-leaguer-yuki-togashi\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin\u2019s Japan: NBA D-Leaguer Yuki Togashi"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Click image to read story<\/p><\/div>\n

By<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0JQ\u00a0magazine<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0editor\u00a0Justin Tedaldi<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>(CIR\u00a0Kobe-shi<\/a>, 2001-02) for\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Shukan NY Seikatsu<\/a><\/strong>. Visit his Examiner.com Japanese culture page\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0for related stories.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Originally hailing from Niigata Prefecture, 21-year-old Japanese national basketball team veteran Yuki Togashi joined the Texas Legends of the NBA Development League as a point guard last November after playing in four games with the Dallas Mavericks last year during Summer League.<\/p>\n

Togashi made his D-League debut in New York on Jan. 24, shooting a field goal in the third quarter that helped the Legends rise to a 93-92 victory over the Westchester Knicks in their inaugural season.<\/p>\n

That same week in January, the New York Times<\/em> featured a story on Yuta Watanabe, 20, a towering 6-foot-8 point guard for George Washington University. A native of Kagawa Prefecture in Shikoku, the Times<\/em> dubbed him a \u201cBasketball Ambassador\u201d in the headline, drawing comparisons with the Asian American NBA star (and former New York Knick) Jeremy Lin.<\/p>\n

While the 5-foot-7 Togashi could be viewed as a long shot for the NBA (where the average player is at least a foot taller), he follows in the footsteps of players like Yuta Tabuse, the \u201cMichael Jordan of Japan\u201d who was the first Japanese-born basketball player to play in the NBA, appearing in four games with the Phoenix Suns during the 2004-05 NBA season.<\/p>\n

As the influence of American basketball continues to captivate Asia, Japanese youth with dreams of turning pro are working hard to take part in this exciting new era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0JQ\u00a0magazine\u00a0editor\u00a0Justin Tedaldi\u00a0(CIR\u00a0Kobe-shi, 2001-02) for\u00a0Shukan NY Seikatsu. Visit his Examiner.com Japanese culture page\u00a0here\u00a0for related stories. Originally hailing from Niigata Prefecture, 21-year-old Japanese national basketball team veteran Yuki Togashi joined the Texas Legends of the NBA Development League as a point guard last November after playing in four games with the Dallas Mavericks last year during Summer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,53,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-events","category-justins-japan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-9HR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37317,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37315\/revisions\/37317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}