In some places, they would erect a statue of the man, for everyone to see, young and old.
Not in a museum, they’d put it up in public, out on the streets so everyone walking by could be informed by his story and amazed at his limited size that concealed an unlimited ability.
He made basketball more important, more accessible, more imaginative, first in his Hilo neighborhood, later at Hilo High School where he carried them to three consecutive Territorial Championships, and eventually his brilliance influenced “Pistol” Pete Maravich and all the others whose ball handling skills opened up the game.
Ah Chew Goo is the name and it seems only those past the age of 50 or 60 even recognize it, an unfortunate consequence, perhaps, of the urge to move forward, build malls and look ahead. Nothing wrong with planning for the future, but let’s not sacrifice our memories of the past in the process.
There was a time, roughly midway through the 20th century, when people in Hawaii were often heard to say a disproportionate amount of rain here explained why so many good basketball players came out of Hilo.
The statement suggested keiki decided not to play baseball or soccer or football because those sports require being outside on the Big Island.
Not buyin’ it.
It probably comes from the recognition received by Hilo’s Red Rocha, the first NBA player from the state, and later a coach at the University of Hawaii, but before him came Goo, whose spectacular vision and court awareness — unique at the time — became a new wrinkle that could dissemble and reorganize the way the game was played.
Ah Chew Goo, born in 1918, five years prior to Rocha, made basketball appealing and accessible to all people, regardless of their height.
This is no criticism in any way of Rocha, an elemental player in West Coast college basketball who took his thin 6-foot-9 frame to Corvallis, Ore., where he played for the legendary Slats Gill, and put Oregon State on the map. He was a three-time all-Pacific Coast Conference selection and led the Beavers to their first NCAA appearance.
By the time Rocha was done, Oregon State was drawing overflow crowds that prompted the school to build a new facility that became known as Gill Coliseum, where the team still plays.
Not bad for a Hilo kid, and that doesn’t get to his playing career as a professional or all his years as a coach.
Unquestionably, being just five years apart in age, Rocha and Goo kept up the basketball conversation in Hawaii, and nobody missed that they both came from Hilo.
But Goo didn’t have a headline grabbing college career and he never played in the NBA — there wasn’t one at the time. He went to work on Oahu after high school and played in senior leagues that were fan magnets when he was playing, with stories of games being delayed because officials assigned to the game couldn’t get through the throng of customers crowding the ticket window.
Add on to that the 5-foot-5 frame of Goo in a game in which players like Rocha — a foot and a half taller — were becoming more frequent on major school rosters, and you had the makings of an almost mythological figure.
It’s one of those stories that, if you saw it in the movies, you would assume it was fiction. Instead, it could be thought of as stranger than fiction, yet 100 percent “Hilo real.”
They started calling him the “Mandarin Magician,” a malaprop in that Mandarin refers to a ruling member in old imperial China, and Goo was the off spring of Chinese and Japanese parentage. No matter, he was absolutely capable of creating sleight of hand tricks on the court that opened the floor for his teammates and rendered him impossible to cover defensively.
“He was incredible,” said former University of Hawaii at Hilo men’s basketball coach Jimmy Yagi, “his balance was unbelievable and for me? He was my hero, a great role model.”
You could make the case that without the influence of Goo, for whom Yagi played sporadically as a junior and senior at the University of Hawaii, Yagi might never have become a basketball coach.
“He kept me in basketball, that’s for sure,” Yagi said. “I got in about two minutes a game, but sitting on the bench, sort of absorbing all his coaching and direction was like an education.
“He was about 50 years ahead of his time.”
Goo wasn’t a great coach at UH, going 31-46 over three years in the early 1950s, playing a patchwork schedule of club and collegiate teams. Al Saake, who preceded Goo as coach, took over for six more years after Goo and then he was replaced by Rocha, the second Hilo boy to coach the state university squad in that era.
But he was unique and there was some truth in that nickname.
Goo lived on Mamo Street, in the heart of downtown Hilo, a stone’s throw from an open lot where various street musicians, entrepreneurs and others would stop off to sell their wares or show off their talents.
There was a magician Goo watched, apparently as young as 7 years old, who captivated the youngster with his hocus-pocus trickery and mysticism.
How did he do that? Goo would look as intently as he could and yet he couldn’t figure out the tricks. It made him think, a lot. It was there, and then it was gone. He showed it and then — poof. Goo was entranced and began incorporating the concept when he practiced his basketball skills.
You couldn’t always find a basketball in those times, but legend has it that Goo used a volleyball to practice tricks, walking downtown streets, hitting spots on a wall with behind-the-back passes, between the legs, anything was possible for this ambidextrous keiki.
They say he got to the point where Goo would fire a behind the back pass at an upright utility pole, hit it every time and have it bounce right back to him, walking down Keawe Street, attracting attention. He didn’t miss.
The better he got, the more Goo worked at it and the more his legend grew. When Press Maravich, stationed on Oahu during World War II, got to see Goo perform, he told the height-challenged basketball wizard that if he ever had a son, he would teach his boy all those tricks.
And that’s how the world came to know Pistol Pete Maravich and his no-look, full-speed passes that did the same thing Goo’s tricks did — the floor opened up.
Ah Chew Goo was the original can opener, the one player whose ball control was at such a high level, players had to back off and play more cautiously, knowing his passes could go anywhere.
He also had an ankle-breaker crossover move that was a revelation.
“He could do a V-cut (player contacts a defender, positions his foot inside defender’s two feet, then pushes off at an angle, opening space), but then cut the opposite way and still be open. You just didn’t see that.”
Here was a Hilo boy who taught himself basketball chicanery, thrilling fans throughout the islands and eventually passing on the insights to a father-coach who taught them to Pete Maravich, who became the modern day inspiration for ambidextrous point guards who see the whole court and can initiate a devastating flow to a fast-paced offense.
Slater Martin and Bob Cousy were deft guards with the ball, but they both had dominate hands, making it more feasible to be defended.
The game progressed to the point that Earvin “Magic” Johnson, as tall as Rocha back in the day, could handle the ball like no player of that size we had ever seen?
Larry Bird? Steph Curry? Tiny Archibald? Those three and many more, deft with high level ball handling skills, helped breathe air into stagnant, stand-around offenses, but none of them possessed the elite ball-handling skills of Goo.
It’s about practice, tireless practice, day in and day out, that’s how you get there.
But where Ah Chew Goo got the idea?
That was magic, on the streets of downtown Hilo.
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