Earlier this year, U of T’s Vice President, International Joseph Wong was quoted in The Toronto Star about his suggestions on how Toronto Raptors legend Vince Carter could be honoured in the city. 

“[I have] been quoted many times in the media before, as a political scientist, but never for my ‘expertise’ as a Raptors fan,” Wong posted on X in response to the article. 

For many, basketball serves as a beacon of community. It provides opportunities for people to come together and delve into issues that are prevalent not just in sports but in the world around us. Wong, also a professor at U of T’s Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, is no exception to this philosophy. 

The Varsity sat down with Wong in an exclusive interview to talk basketball, podcasts, and politics. 

Last year, Wong hosted Joe’s Basketball Diaries, a six-episode video series on the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy website discussing the ups and downs of basketball and its intersections with global affairs and politics. A Toronto Raptors season-ticket holder since 2004, he has featured guests on his panel including former Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, Asian-American trailblazer Jeremy Lin, and two-time Olympian and Varsity Blues women’s basketball head coach Tamara Tatham. 

Wong is a self-proclaimed “die hard” Raptors fan. Basketball has always been something that his family has enjoyed, with his mother having played basketball during her time at university in Taiwan. However, he describes himself as becoming a “delusional fan” who developed an “irrational love for the Toronto Raptors” over time, with the Raptors’ first NBA championship win in 2019 “[cementing his] and a lot of people’s love of both basketball and the Toronto Raptors.” 

In addition to being a basketball fan, Wong describes himself as an avid “consumer of basketball podcasts” — most notably The Raptors Show (now relaunched as Hello and Welcome) hosted by Will Lou and Alex Wong. Like its many listeners, he enjoyed tuning in to hear conversations about playing basketball, Chinese-Canadian heritage, and the multicultural sport communities that support basketball. Intrigued by the concept of building a community made up of “tens of thousands of listeners who don’t know each other but feel an affinity with one another,” Wong said he saw the value of sport and the community, which culminated in the fruition of Joe’s Basketball Diaries. 

Wong also credits the conception of Joe’s Basketball Diaries to an article he read about sports and social activism in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) magazine Pursuit written by Jelena Damjanovic, a public relations officer at U of T. Damjanovic discusses why some athletes are also social activists, drawing from the Black Lives Matter movement, where the WNBA led the charge in solidarity, and the NBA followed suit to make a powerful statement on the systematic oppression of Black people in the US. Wong describes the example as signifying how it is “quite clear that sports have this amazing impact when it comes to things that we as a society and we as individuals care about.”

Wong factored the aspects of sport, community, and social activism into Joe’s Basketball Diaries, where he aimed to “use sports as a lens through which to understand society around us.” In episode three, he highlighted this lens in a conversation with Janelle Joseph — an assistant professor of Critical Studies of Race & Indigeneity at KPE — whose IDEAS Research Lab wrote a “very powerful and impactful report” on the state of racism in collegiate sports in Ontario. The report included the stereotypes she had to contend with, and how these issues can “permeate into community-level and collegiate level sports.” 

Wong also discussed how he enjoyed filming the series’ sixth and final episode, “Women in Sports,” where he talked about the impact of Title IX — a landmark US federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools. 

“What was really amazing was talking to these [women] athletes, coaches, leaders, and so forth and [hearing] their own experiences with continued gender discrimination, and then the intersectional discrimination they might face… it was one of those conversations where I just sat back and listened, and [really] took it all in. I think viewers who watched the show got a sense of that as well.” 

In addition to providing a unique approach to talking about global issues, Wong also believes that sport can serve as “a critical driver in global development.” He stated that his dream podcast guest would be Raptors President Masai Ujiri — “not because [he’d] ask him about the Raptors, but rather [because of] his work with the Giants of Africa, which is his effort to use basketball to facilitate youth development in several countries in Africa.”

Giants of Africa is a not-for-profit organization that travels across Africa to enrich the lives of African youth through basketball, both on and off the court. While the initiative is centred around basketball, it is a proponent of access to education, health services, and other youth supports, and is “designed to provide young people in Africa with the skills and confidence through basketball to become global citizens.” 

Joe’s Basketball Diaries exemplifies how sport is not just a form of entertainment but also an indicator of the greater world around us. The series reflects a multitude of sociopolitical attitudes, and serves as an everyday reminder of how injustices are embedded within all aspects of life, affecting people in explicit and implicit ways.