“We’ve just been here five days and he’s picked up four pounds,” his dad, Sharavjamts Tserenjankhar, said with a laugh late Thursday afternoon. “His mom and I are staying in Centerville and every day after practice he comes over for dinner and she cooks Mongolian food.
“He especially likes the Mongolian soups.”
It was Napoleon Bonaparte who said: “An Army marches on its stomach.”
So, too, do young basketball players, especially this 20-year-old, 6-foot-8 freshman point guard when his mom – Erdenebulgan Purevsuren – is making the meal.
Although he spent much time in the United States the past few years – and was born in Phoenix when is 7-foot dad was playing for the Harlem Globetrotters – Sharavjamts was raised in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
When he signed with the Flyers, he became the first-ever Mongolian player to get a Division I basketball scholarship.
He begins his career tonight when the Flyers meet Capital University in a 7 p.m. exhibition game a UD Arena. And with returning starter Malachi Smith injured, he will get more playing time.
His dad and mom will be in the crowd, just as they hope to be for all the Flyers games, home and away, this season.
“My wife and I plan to be here for six months, until the end of the season,” Tserenjankhar said.
He said when they are around – when there’s a little bit of a home atmosphere, Mike “calms down and relaxes… And when he’s relaxed, he grows very fast in basketball.
“Over the years we came here two times – once when he was playing for Prolific Prep (the Napa Valley basketball academy in California that’s sponsored by Adidas) and last year when he was at ISA (the International Sports Academy in Willoughby) – and he did well both times.”
Actually, Sharavjamts has mostly played well no matter who was in the stands.
Something of a basketball prodigy with fabled hoops genes that go back three generations, he first came to America at age 11 to be mentored by the late Bruce O’Neil at the United States Basketball Academy in Blue Ridge, Oregon, a place that has helped thousands of Asian basketball players over the years.
Sharavjamts first showed up in the Miami Valley as a high school freshman at Legacy Christian in Xenia, thanks to the school’s ties to Athletes in Action. He averaged 10.5 points per game that season and the following year joined Prolific Prep, a national showcase team, that played in the Flyin’ to the Hoop tournament that year.
When COVID upended everything the next (2020-2021) season, Sharavjamts returned to Mongolia. While being around family might have been some tonic for the times, it did take him out of the spotlight and caused him to be under-recruited.
He returned here in the summer of 2021 and played for the Cincinnati-based AAU team, the Midwest Basketball Club, coached by Centerville High School coach Brooks Cupps.
Last season (2021-22) at IMS he averaged 10.2 points per gamewhile shooting 51.3 percent (44 of 86) from long range.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Over the summer he trained with the Mongolian national team and would have played with it in the FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers had those game not been moved back to next month.
Since joining the Flyers – where he’s known as Mongolian Mike – his marquee status has grown back home.
Once his dad – who the Globetrotters billed as The Mongolian Shark – was the most famous basketball player in the nation. Now his son wears that mantle.
A month ago the Dayton Flyers - Mongolian Fans Facebook page was launched and it has over 3,100 followers.
Young basketball-playing Mongolians now look up to him and Tserenjankhar said he guided two of them to this area: “One is 6-foot 11 and is at Chris Wright’s Flyght Academy and another, who’s around 6-7 and really strong, is at Centerville High.”
The television channel SPC, the Mongolian Premier Channel, has sent a film crew to Dayton to do an expansive documentary on Sharavjamts and his family, entitled “Mongolian Mike.” The first of eight trailers recently was released and already has 195,000 views.
The short clip features photos of three generations of the family, clips of Sharavjamts with the national team back in Ulaanbaatar, here in the Cronin Center practice gym and then taking the floor in the otherwise deserted UD Arena.
“Everybody back in Mongolia knows him,” his dad said. “They all are just waiting for his (UD) career to begin.”
From volleyball to the Globetrotters
When Tserenjankhar joined the Globetrotters in 2001 – becoming the team’s first Asian player – it was said he hailed from the tallest family in Mongolia.
He said his dad, who played for the national basketball team, was “around 6-5″ and his mother, a national volleyball team player, was near 6-foot 1. His brother was about 6-foot-9 and his sisters were over 6-feet, as well.
Although he’d grow to 7 feet, Tserenjankhar initially was a volleyball player and knew little about American college basketball and the NBA.
Until he was 16, Mongolia was under Communist rule, he said: “There wasn’t freedom of speech. There were no international trips. It was all closed to the outside world.
“The first time I watched an NBA game was on Russian TV – the Los Angeles Lakers against the Boston Celtics.”
Seeing all the tall athletes, he said: “I was in shock. That’s when I decided to play the game, too.”
He played in a league in Ulaanbaatar and once part of the national team, he starred at the Asian Games.
Eventually, the Asian Basketball Federation convinced Dale Brown, the former LSU coach, to accompany O’Neil to a basketball camp in Mongolia.
Afterward, Brown told Sports Illustrated how Tserenjankhar caught his attention, not just because he towered over his teammates and scored the fastest 50 points he ever saw, but for how agile and skilled he was – even though he was rail thin at 210 pounds.
But Tserenjankhar was 27 – over the age limit for Division I college freshmen – so Brown contacted Globetrotters’ owner Mannie Jackson, who quickly signed him.
When an American coach suggested he take on a nickname that would be easier to pronounce, Tserenjankhar came up with Shark: “I didn’t want to call myself Shaq, but my first name kind of sounded that way, so I became Shark.”
As for the difference in his last name and that of Mike and an older son, he explained:
“In Mongolia, it is tradition that we use our father’s first name as our last name.”
As for the Globetrotters, The Mongolian Shark became an attraction like teammates Matt “Showbiz” Jackson, Michael “Wild Thing” Wilson and Paul “Showtime” Gaffney.
“Being a Globetrotter was a dream come true,” he said. “I’d always wanted to play in America.”
He would end up playing some 400 games with the Globetrotters.
“I’ve been to 48 states and over 300 (U.S.) cities,” he said.
On December 31, 2001, he played at UD Arena.
“Who would ever think that 20-some years later my son would play there, too?” he said.
After his playing career, Tserenjankhar taught high school, worked as a sports director for the government and ran a basketball academy.
He hoped that one day his two sons might embrace basketball and while his eldest -- Munkhiin Od Sharavjamts – is a coach in Mongolia, Mike is embarking on the college career he never got to have.
‘There was so much here he liked’
“As soon as he started to walk, you could tell he was going to be something special,” Tserenjankhar said of Mike. “The very first time he saw a basketball and a backboard -- one of those small ones for children – he picked up the ball and walked over and dunked it. He was maybe a year and two months old.”
While he taught his son some of his early basketball skills, he said his ability to dominate their 1-on-1 matchups ended when Mike was 16 or so.
“And now he’s just too quick,” Tserenjankhar said. “He’d dunk on me.”
Actually he and his son teamed up in a dunk contest in Mongolia a while back.
“He stood out front, pulled of his shirt and underneath was my old (No. 55) Mongolian jersey. Then he came and jumped over me and dunked.”
While COVID limited his early scholarships, Sharavjamts did get offers from Rutgers, Providence, Eastern Washington and UD.
“He chose Dayton because it was very close to his heart,” his dad said. “He had all the ties to the area and the Dayton coaches are great people and then there are the Dayton fans.
“There was so much here he liked.”
And now there’s more.
Every day after practice there’s that Mongolian meal Mom has waiting.
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