Kosaku Yada, Ko for short, is a basketball player from Harvard University. I’m afraid most of you have never seen him, or heard of him. You will see a lot of “DNP”s, which stands for “Did Not Play” on his statistics during his college years. Most of you will go, “oh, he doesn’t even get any playing time, he’s not worth it.” And Ko sat with us to tell all of you out there, that “DNP” is not enough to tell everything behind.

“It was disappointing how I wasn’t getting any playing time”

After missing one game during his freshman year when his grandfather, who lived with him growing up, had a severe stroke, he never played. Never.

He had a great preseason that year. “The coach was very happy with how things were going,” said Ko. “But from that day, I never played.”

Obviously, he had some conflicts with his coach.

“But I kept working hard. I kept hitting the weights. I wanted to improve.”

The “0″ playing time did not discourage him to play basketball. He still loved the game.

He did not mention if the conflict between the coach was racial, but he did mention the quote of the year.

“On the basketball court, race doesn’t matter”

Of course, race doesn’t matter on or off the court. But it shouldn’t matter even more on the basketball court.

Read his blog here.

Listen to the interview here with Kosaku Yada who will play in bJ League next year. [right click the link "here" and save as to download].

Here are the table of contents.

• Introduction
• Ko’s Introduction
• Why He Chose Basketball
• High School Basketball
• Ko’s Position
• College Recruits
• Academics
• His Playing Time
• “Keep On Playing”
• Going Pro In Japan
• Japanese and American Basketball
• What Ko’s Working On
• Possible Career in Korea?
• Ultimate Dream
• Ko on “GIRLS”
• Inspirational Speech
• Closing