The baller and his book

Book: Kibwe Trim: From Nerd to Pro
A review by Lisa Allen-Agostini

Kibwe Trim's book From Nerd to Pro is a short, easy-to-read account of the career of a Trinidad-born professional basketball player. Aimed at teenaged readers, the book contains engaging accounts of Trim’s games and his travels—he played all over the world during his time on the court.

The book is written from the perspective of the young, naïve boy he was, and the reader experiences his anxieties, yearnings and dreams through that lens. He often emphasises how his own hard work and discipline helped him achieve what he has.

The book was launched last year in Trinidad.

Set out chronologically the story takes readers through Trim’s primary school days, his years at St Mary’s College, Port of Spain, and his academic career at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, USA. Chapters outline the highs and lows of each of his sojourns in the international pro teams. It ends in an account of his first and only championship, played in Japan just before the end of his basketball career.

Of his move from basketball in Trinidad to basketball in the US, he writes, “I left a world where being a basketball player hardly raised an eyebrow, to enter one in which grown men fawned over a babyfaced seventeen-year-old as if he were a potential bride-to-be.”

Trim’s writing rises to the level of art when he writes about basketball games and studying, his two lifelong passions. He describes himself as a “young, nerdy, clumsy kid with big knees and oversized feet” who only reluctantly took to basketball at first, but who eventually grew to love the sport. The love comes out especially in his virtually play-by-play report of the Puerto Rico vs Trinidad and Tobago game he played as captain of the national team during the Centro Basketball Tournament in the Dominican Republic.

He also loves travel, and that shows in his rhapsodic passages about Okinawa, Spain, Switzerland and even New Jersey. However, one of the book’s weakest points is how little detail he gives of the destinations he visits. Even in a book intended for younger readers Trim could have provided more information, as some of these passages end up being generic and waffly.

Adult readers might want to know about the fast lifestyle some professional athletes live, and more about Trim’s non-basketball related activities—he acted in a feature film and some commercials, and endorses a brand of sportswear. But that is a whole other book Trim has to write.

Trim, who lives in the US, started a not-for-profit foundation to help student athletes like he was. The DreamChaser International Foundation, started in 2013, not only gives awards to TT youth (two every year so far), but also holds basketball clinics and camps, workshops, scholarship exposure camps and school/campus meet and greets, he said in an email. From Nerd to Pro gives an account of the work of the foundation and why Trim started it.

The book is available electronically on Amazon.com and the print copy is available on the website www.dcifoundation.org.

Trim will be doing a book signing on February 10 at the Fort Picton Basketball Court, Straker Village, Laventille. He said in an email, “I will be speaking to the community there and signing and giving away some of my books. I am also partnering with Sole Brothers LLC (which has) donated 50 pairs (…) which I will be giving away to the people from the community at this event.”