No, Anthony Edwards, you can’t beat an Olympic table tennis player

PARIS — Lily Zhang and three teammates from the United States table tennis team were hanging out on a large boat last Friday, making small talk with NBA star Stephen Curry — as one does at an Olympic opening ceremony — when he asked what sport they played.

They told him, and his eyes lit up.

“Can I borrow you for a second?” Curry asked.

Moments later, the four table tennis players found themselves engaged in a brief but spirited debate with Curry and his teammate Anthony Edwards about whether Edwards, one of basketball’s brightest young talents, could notch a point against them on the table. The friendly trash talk was captured on camera and eventually watched by more than 15 million people online.

On one hand, the table tennis players said, it was one of those extraordinary, and extraordinarily funny, interactions that can happen only at the Olympics. On the other hand, they said, they have interactions like this all the time.

Everywhere they go, the world’s best table tennis players meet strangers who believe they can hold their own against them. They tell them that they play “Ping-Pong,” too. They wonder aloud what the score would be, or even who would win. They suggest that they should play sometime.

This, alas, is the table tennis players’ cross to bear.

“You’ll meet someone, and their first reaction is, “I bet I can beat you, let’s play,’” Zhang said, laughing. “I don’t think you’d really say that to anyone in another sport. If you saw Michael Phelps, I don’t think you’d say, ‘I bet I can beat you in a race.’”

Zhang, 28, and her fellow players are good sports about it. They have to be. They know their game doesn’t have a huge following. They know many people think of it only as an idle pastime — and that amateurs tend to overrate their ability in it.

Zhang said that she believed this was an American thing, a bravado rooted in the prevalence of tables in suburban basements and community center rec rooms. But players from other countries insisted that none of them were spared.

At dinner parties, at the gym, at the Olympics, they said, people are constantly sizing them up.

“If I meet someone, they either say, ‘Ah, we can play a match?’ Or they say, ‘And how do you earn money?’” said Sofia Polcanova, 29, a member of the Austrian team.

“People can be a little … overconfident,” said Kristian Karlsson, 32, of Sweden, picking his words carefully.

“Some people who don’t play table tennis actually think they have a chance to win a single point,” said Anders Lind, 25, of Denmark, the No. 62-ranked player in the world. “It’s cute. But it’s not true.”

It’s one reason that the players hope their game can grow. Few laypeople have witnessed a professional match. And even if they had, the skills that set professionals apart — the intensity of the spin, the chessboard tactics, the intricate footwork — can be hard at first to perceive.

“They just don’t understand the sport,” said Rachel Sung, 20, an American competing in the team event, who was delighted to meet Curry and Edwards on the boat. “So it’s hard to see the difficulty level.” Sometimes, the players feel compelled to make it clear.

Zhang, who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in psychology, said she was often challenged by “frat guys” at school who thought they could keep up. Every now and then she would oblige them in a rec room on campus.

“I’d hustle them a little, give them a little,” she said, “and then destroy their egos.”

Liam Pitchford, a four-time Olympian for Britain, once filmed a video with the England national soccer team, challenging star players like Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham to return his serves.

“They were sort of thinking they had a bit of table tennis skill about them,” Pitchford said. “But once I sent in a few serves, they understood.” (“It’s impossible, bro,” England forward Jack Grealish can be heard saying in the clip.)

Zhang, a four-time Olympian from Redwood City, California, does not like to brag. But when asked this week if she would indeed blank Curry or Edwards, 11-0, as she told them on the boat, she could not lie.

“That’s for sure,” she said. “But if they wanted a challenge, I’m always open to humbling them a little.” There may not be any schooling necessary.

On Monday in Paris, Zhang played what she called one of the best matches of her life to reach the round of 16 in the singles tournament, the deepest she has advanced at the Olympics. After clinching the last point, she fell to the ground in tears.

Witnessing the proceedings was none other than Edwards, who had come to cheer in the stands. The table tennis players, when they heard, could not believe it.

“They said they would come,” Sung said of the NBA players, laughing. “But we thought they were lying.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.