WBUR:

The long story started four years ago.

“You know, Barkley has a big personality,” my dad, Lin Wang, told me last year, when I recorded him talking about Barkley.

As I talked about the relationship with more and more people, I began to think that either my dad was one of the luckiest basketball fans ever — or this whole thing was an elaborate joke, a “Dinner For Schmucks”-type situation.

But no. The friendship was real.

This is a lovely but bittersweet story.