It’s a world within a world created by the expatriates from Kerala, specifically the Malayalee Christians, for whom perhaps basketball is the best way to stay connected to the church and the American way of life.

Welcome to the annual Dynasty Classic, a tournament comprised of Indian American Christian basketball teams from churches all around the US. The team members are all Malayalees (‘Maloos’), and more often than not, play terribly, but that’s not the point.

At this year’s tournament this past July, in Long Island, New York, a priest takes the first shot, as per custom, reported Teresa Mathew for Deadspin. Mathew is herself an Indian American, with her/parents roots from Kerala.

“It’s the way these basketball tournaments always begin. After the Indian and then American national anthems have been sung and the prayers said, a priest takes—and, more often than not, misses—the tournament’s ceremonial first shot,” Teresa writes. She adds, “Dynasty is one of the largest Indian-American Christian basketball tournaments in New York state, and everyone in the gym—with the exception of six referees and a girlfriend in the crowd—is brown. Over 200 players from 22 Indian churches have gathered this morning. They say Our Fathers in pregame huddles, and if one church has a wedding, most of its team has to skip a tournament.”

She writes in her witty piece: “Most of the congregants from the over 20 Indian churches in the New York City area come from the same part of India: Kerala, a state nestled in India’s southern tip, which is 18 percent Christian. These families speak the same language (Malayalam), eat spicy fish curry that annihilates Western stomachs, and are way too up-to-date on each other’s business.

“Tony Patteril estimated that 90 percent of the young Malayali Christians in New York played basketball. I had interviewed Patteril a while back for a story on Indian Catholicism, and he mentioned his church’s basketball team as a throwaway line. Curious, I asked where they played, and was dumbfounded when he replied that there were a number of Indian Christian tournaments around the state. In Silicon Valley, where I’m from, the sport of choice for young Indian-Americans is either debate or robotics.

“We play basketball? Enough of us play basketball that there is an entire Indian-American Christian basketball league in New York? No parent had short-circuited the whole thing by turning it into an SAT prep class?

As I sputtered all of this out, Patteril looked at me and laughed. “I think this will be good for you.”

“You’ve never seen this many Indians balling before. Three games are played at any given time; the gymnasium is split into thirds and six teams of varying levels of skill and athleticism face off against each other. During warm-ups, I watch one guy go for a layup he doesn’t have the skills to make, and he reliably misses. Five minutes later, after the game begins, he tries the same move with an endearingly similar outcome.”

She adds later: “Dynasty was founded in 2010, and its genesis story is a plot straight out of a sports movie: A group of underdog Indian Christians trying to make a name for themselves and their church. Benny Mathew (no relation), one of Dynasty’s founding members, was tired of his church—St. Mary’s Syro-Malabar Long Island—not being given a chance to compete in more prestigious invitational tournaments.”

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