Since I’m out of inspiration for video descriptions right now, I looked up Joe Harris’ hometown of Chelan, Washington to see if inspiration would strike me. Sometimes inspiration can come from weird places, like Wikipedia articles or Google Maps street view. And if inspiration doesn’t strike, well, I have a proven track record of writing a bunch of meaningless garbage about nothing.
Chelan is a small city of about 4,000 people. Nothing about it screams “this place is capable of generating NBA-quality talent”. It’s just a little town in the middle of Washington state. It’s not close to Seattle. It’s not close to Spokane. It’s not close to Yakima. It is close, however, to a whole bunch of nothing. And a lake.
Unlike many NBA players, who grow up in “hood” or “ghetto” areas, Joe Harris grew up in an area that is definitely neither “hood” or “ghetto”. It’s not even urban really. It takes over half an hour to get to the nearest McDonald’s in Brewster. If you want chain restaurants you can go to Subway. Due to the lake, there’s a bunch of touristy stuff. So it’s a very, very different environment from that which most players grew up in.
Chelan would be a good place, however, for an unnaturally talented basketball player to totally dominate the high school scene. Even though I’m doing all this research on a random town in a state very far from my own, I’m too lazy to look up Joe Harris’ high school stats, but let’s just assume that he dominated. How could he not? His opponents from Brewster probably consisted of players like Redneck Ricky, Meth Mike and Trailer Park Travis. And his teammates were probably Heroin Harry, Poverty Pete and Affluent Albert, whose parents live in a big house on the lakefront for half the year. Thirty points per game would not be surprising for Harris in these circumstances. And, being a cut above in the physical attractiveness department, in addition to his athletic gifts, probably allowed Harris to monopolize the Chelan High dating scene as well.
Now Harris plays in a very different environment, New York City. The country boy is now a city slicker. But I’m betting he still gets all the chicks.