Around the Web: A basketball MVP, a tennis upset, and an unpopular proposal for soccer
Yesterday ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
Mengke Bateer who, unbeknownst to many a casual fan, was the first Chinese player to win an NBA championship, was selected as this season's MVP for the Chinese Basketball Association. The big guy averaged 13.8 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4 assists and 1.2 blocks per game. It looks to me like this is a chance to honor one of China's most historically important players who will probably retire soon (Bateer is 35) than it does like a recognition of a stellar 2009-10 season. Bateer's Xinjiang Guanghui are in second place in league standings, with league playoffs starting next Wednesday. All-Star Weekend is March 20-21 at Wukesong Arena in Beijing.China's Zheng Jie (seeded 18th) beat Maria Sharapova (seeded 10th) at the BNP Paribas Open, 6-2, 2-6, 6-3. Sharapova was battling injuries in the match at Indian Wells.
Wei Di, the new chief of the Chinese Football Association, has introduced the apparently unpopular idea of entering China's under-21 national team as the 17th side in the Chinese Soccer League, to give those young players more time playing together. He hopes the plan will help him reach his self-imposed goal of qualifying a team for the FIFA World Cup in 2014, without dismantling the centrally planned football development system. The CSL begins play next week.
Gold medal-winning speed skater Zhou Yang angered some sports officials when she thanked her real mother and not Mother China (Reuters). David Yang at China Sports Review argues that the state has a point.
Tags: basketball, CBA, football, Mengke Bateer, soccer, tennis, Wei Di, Zheng Jie
Marbury's debut: Angry fans and a blown save
Sunday, 31st January 2010 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (4)
UPDATE: The "journalist friend" mentioned below is Anthony Tao, who was in Taiyuan on assignment for Deadspin. He wrote and reported The Lone Wolf in China, along with a photo gallery.Stephon Marbury just finished his first game in the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). Here are a few quick observations:
+ According to a journalist friend who was at the game, Shanxi fans were not happy with the referees, and not shy about showing their disgust. They threw lighters and shouted "Hei shao" (black whistle), accusing the officials of taking bribes.
+ Was the refereeing actually bad? I wouldn't know because only the last few minutes of the game were broadcast on CCTV-5. The national sports channel stuck to its regularly scheduled programming, a home game for the Bayi Rockets, the People's Liberation Army team led by Wang Zhizhi (first Chinese player in the NBA). You don't mess with the PLA's airtime.
+ Marbury clearly was not informed of his role on the team. With 22 seconds to go and down one point, he dished the ball from the top of the key to a man just above the baseline who didn't have much of a scoring opportunity. The play ended up in free throws, which the Shanxi shooter split to tie the game. A Marbury foul at the other end, followed by a made free throw, put Dongguan New Century up 102-101. With 5 seconds left and down one point, Marbury brought the ball up and dished to forward Maurice Taylor for... wait for it... the three! Psst: Stephon, your job was just to drive and score or get fouled. And Mr. Taylor, you had no excuse for being so far from the basket.
+ Shanxi team huddles during timeouts looked chaotic. Coaches spent more time talking to, and apparently arguing with, each other than they did talking to the players.
+ I've never seen a CBA gymnasium so packed. Less than 50 percent attendance seems to be the norm, but Taiyuan had a full house for Marbury's debut.
+ Apparently, even with a sellout crowd, Chinese gyms are still uncomfortably cold. Most fans wore heavy winter coats.
+ The bottom line: Marbury played 28 minutes, had 15 points, 8 assists, 4 rebounds, 4 steals, 2 turnovers and 5 fouls, plus two blown chances to be the savior in a 1-point loss.
Tags: CBA, Maurice Taylor, NBA, Shanxi Zhongyu, Stephon Marbury, Taiyuan
The Starbury has landed. Will it take off?
Thursday, 28th January 2010 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
Stephon Marbury at Taiyuan Airport, Shanxi, China
From the looks of this photo, taken at the Taiyuan airport, Marbury is counting up the stacks of cash he can make selling Starbury shoes in China. I wish him the best, but color me skeptical on whether he will stick out the culture shock he'll encounter from the minute he steps outside that airport and gets his first lungful of Shanxi's coal-heavy air. Interviewed for the Wall Street Journal, Bruce O'Neil, president of the U.S. Basketball Academy says: "If he lasts 10 days, I'll be amazed. The culture shock is tremendous." (That WSJ story is a must read if you're interested in this saga, with details about the team, city and arena).
There's no guarantee that Starburys will sell in China, either. He's reportedly putting out a special edition with the characters for Shanxi (山西）and Marbury (马布里）embossed on the side. That's a smart move, and I could see interest in that first edition as a collector's item. But he needs to sell a lot of shoes, and can a Shanxi shoe have staying power in big markets like Beijing and Shanghai? And I have yet to see a distribution plan. Where is he going to sell these shoes? Carrefour? Kiosks outside the Li Ning and Nike stores? There's no Dick's Sporting Goods, no Sports Authority, in China. The sportswear distribution is dominated by brand-name stores, and there are already a handful of homegrown brands that offer shoes near his $15 (100 RMB) price point. And those aren't the shoes that people are wearing to play basketball.
Hopefully Marbury has people working on all this—despite some of his antics, the point guard from Coney Island has shown some business sense in the past. It should at least be fun to watch.
Marbury landing at airport image: CQNews
WSJ: An NBA Problem Child Packs His Baggage for China
Tags: basketball, CBA, NBA, Shanxi Zhongyu, Stephon Marbury
Stephon Marbury headed to China?
Tuesday, 19th January 2010 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
Stephon Marbury, following in the footsteps of Bonzi Wells
According to this Reuters report, team owner Wang Xingjiang indicates that the team is getting a bargain on the 32-year-old point guard, who wants to sell his sneakers in China. The CBA officially has a salary cap that limits players to $30,000 per month, which would leave a max of 60 grand Marbury could earn this season, if (BIG if) teams actually adhere to the salary cap.
Starbury is sure to get all the minutes he wants in the CBA, but can he put up with the hijinx of the Shanxi Zhongyu club? NBA coach Rick Turner spent some time with the team early in the 2008-09 season, and spoke of rambling motivational speeches from one coach, a 10:30 p.m. curfew, and requests that foreign players indulge the team owner in pre-game one-on-one sessions.
Turner also spoke of epic miscommunication with foreign players, leading to confusion about which of the three or four guys around actually had contracts and would suit up for the team, which, by CBA rules, can only have two foreign players. Looks like that could be a problem again—according to Asia-Basket, Shanxi currently has four foreigners living in Taiyuan, including Maurice Taylor, Lee Benson (picked up from the bankrupt Yunnan team that's been suspended from the league), Dontae Smith (who was unceremoniously given the boot last year when Bonzi showed up) and Kenny Adeleke. Coach Turner says he was let go himself in a pretty awkward way—informed after Christmas, as he was preparing to return to China from visiting his family back in the United States, that his services would no longer be needed.
But this post is about Marbury, and it can't be finished without asking some obvious questions: What is Shanxi's fascination with guys who are notoriously bad teammates best known for bad behavior? Can someone hurry up and create a reality show if this happens? And what is there to do in Taiyuan after 10:30 p.m. anyway?
Maybe Marbury's desire to sell his value-priced Starbury sneakers in China will keep him around once he realizes what he's gotten into, but don't bet on it.
Image: Photoshop genius courtesy of Fred Dintenfass
Tags: basketball, Bonzi Wells, CBA, NBA, Shanxi Zhongyu, Stephon Marbury
Yi Jianlian celebrates National Games reprieve with a double-double
Monday, 19th October 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
But someone in China didn't want Yi in those games. Guangdong, his hometown team and a favorite at China's national games going on right now in Shandong, reportedly had a deal with the Milwaukee Bucks (the team that drafted Yi in 2007) that would have had Yi back in China for the last two weeks of October, missing the start of the NBA season. But Yi's new team, the New Jersey Nets, has no such agreement.
It may seem crazy to think that Yi would be required to miss the start of his third NBA season to play against a bunch of guys who couldn't even ride the bench for a team in a major NCAA conference. But conflicts between Chinese interests, Chinese players, and NBA interests also had huge impacts on the careers of Yi's predecessors, Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi. For Wang (drafted by the Dallas Mavericks in 1999), a disagreement about whether he would miss the start of his second season to play for Team China in the Asian Games was the beginning of the end of an abbreviated NBA career. And Yao, after the negotiation of his release seven years ago from the Shanghai Sharks of the CBA, has balanced his work between the Houston Rockets and the Chinese National Team.
Related:
NJ.com: Yi Jianlian still seems the best option at power forward for the Nets
ESPN the Magazine: The reeducation of Lt. Wang
Yi Jianlian image: Gzxw.com.cn
Tags: 2009 National Games, CBA, NBA, New Jersey Nets, Wang Zhizhi, Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian
Jay Williams eyeing the CBA
Monday, 17th August 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (1)
In the NBA, summer is trading season. In the CBA, it's time for teams to jockey for the best foreign talent they can attract and pay to play in China. Instead of assessing what his personnel and salary cap room allows him to pick up, a CBA owner spends the summer talking to the agents that represent NBA castoffs, sizing up who could help his team and who'd be likely to settle on this side of the Pacific for half a year.This summer, the hottest name out there is Jay Williams—the point guard whose heroics at Duke were made for history books and highlight reels, the guy who would have been a number one draft pick if not for the availability of an intriguing giant from China. The Chicago Bulls made Williams the second overall pick after Yao Ming, he had a strong rookie season, and then it all unraveled in the off-season. Williams crashed his motorcycle and the injuries he sustained mangled his leg and his career. He rehabbed the leg and made runs at the league, but never suited up for another regular season game.
Now, after a one-week visit to China that was messed up in ways those of us who live and do business here know all too well (Williams' entourage found out on landing in Beijing that they were actually to wait hours for another flight and then take a bus ride to a city outside of Taiyuan, where they arrived at 4 a.m. the morning of his first game)—the 27-year-old is seriously considering a stint in the Chinese Basketball Association. He's mulling offers from four different teams and could be back this fall for a long-term stay.
CBA basketball isn't very fun to watch, but I'm pretty sure it'd be fun to watch Williams break some ankles next year. But will he actually last in this league?
"He's gonna be another Bonzi Wells," says Xia Song, referring to the one-time Houston Rocket who showed up last season, did an SI cover shoot, played about a dozen games, then checked out in somewhat shady circumstances. "He's not going to like the food, the game or his teammates." Xia knows a little bit about the foreign experience on the basketball scene here. He's John Calipari's man in China, and has worked with several NBA players on their China efforts. He knows the league from the inside, meaning he knows it's even shadier than this scathing report in the New York Times indicates. Xia isn't the only skeptic. My chats with Beijing-based Chinese basketball entrepreneurs turned up responses that ranged from lukewarm to outright critical.
But there are a lot of haters on the scene here, understandable as these guys are all competing for a pie that's a lot smaller than it should be, since basketball's popularity has far outpaced its commercial viability in the Middle Kingdom.
I, for one, could see this working out. I've asked Williams several times about dealing with the cultural adjustments he'd have to make on and off the court. Here's what he said to me in Beijing after a few whirlwind days playing in front of CBA coaches: "I went from being a draft pick to maybe never walking again, and worked myself back into playing shape. I've had the experience of working a full-time job in an office, and I've seen how hard my parents have worked all of my life. If I can get paid—good money—to play basketball again, I'm definitely going to do it." For some reason, these non-profitable teams DO offer good money. A guy with a decent NBA pedigree can command $200,000 to $300,000 for a 40-game season, and I'm guessing Williams is being offered more than that. On top of that, their living expenses are all covered while they're here, so they can bank pretty much all of that cash (if they actually get paid...).
Jay Williams is no Bonzi Wells—the differences between the two men are too many to recount here. But for me, it boils down to this: Williams is a young guy with a lot to prove, and his eye on a China plan that is bigger than himself, and bigger than 40-point performances in the league's unheated arenas with poor sound systems. He's also got an interesting mix of off-court experience--in a corporate office with 24-Hour Fitness and in the broadcasting booth with both ESPN and CBS--and contacts in both the NBA and NCAA that he could pull into future China projects.
It's been speculated elsewhere that Williams' interest in the CBA is really about interest in playing in the NBA. This blogger assumes that Williams wants to play here to "get noticed" by NBA teams. I'm pretty sure that the Duke grad is smarter than that. To shoot down that theory, one need look no further than all of the journeymen who find their way from the United States to China. Last year, they accounted for all of the league's top 10 scorers, with an average of 33 points per game among that top 10. Can you name one of them? Do you think NBA scouts care?
I met with Williams in New York this summer, just a few weeks before his planned trip to China. His vision then, and now, for China, is about building a brand here. He talks frequently about "putting in time" in China. He might find that harder to stomach once he actually moves in and realizes how helpless he is off of the basketball court. But he's got reasons to spend a lot more time in China than the likes of Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal and Chris Paul. Chinese sports journalists are bored by these stars' three-day shoe-pimping visits. They hop on a stage, throw down a few dunks, shake some government hands, maybe give away a diamond watch. The Chinese league is a shambles, but I think that China would welcome a guy with some talent and charisma who's willing to tough out a season in the CBA, welcome the media to cover his life and work here, and come back next summer to put on camps.
Time will tell, but if I could give Williams one piece of advice, it would be this: Be careful of following in Bonzi's footsteps in even the smallest way. That SI cover curse translates into Chinese.
Image: Hoopedia
Tags: basketball, CBA, Jay Williams
Titan front page: Guangdong CBA champs, Rockets-Lakers series, Barcelona's win
Monday, 4th May 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
The story at the right of the page (科比+湖人:强敌, or Kobe + Lakers, Formidable Opponents）is about the playoff series between the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers. Inside, nine pages are dedicated to coverage of the series, which starts Monday night in Los Angeles (Tuesday morning in China). It's the first time that Yao's Rockets have advanced past the first round of the playoffs. If you didn't know already, Kobe Bryant has more fans in China than he has in Los Angeles, and Yao Ming is, well, Chinese, so the conference semifinals should be as widely watched here the NBA Finals will be.
The story at the bottom of today's front page comes from European soccer, specifically Barcelona's 6-2 upset of Real Madrid.
Titan Sports is China's leading sports newspaper, putting out issues every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It is published jointly by Hunan Art and Culture Publishing House and Titan Publishing House (Danwei).
Tags: Barcelona, CBA, football, Kobe Bryant, Lakers, NBA, Real Madrid, Rockets, soccer, Titan front page, Yao Ming
Smush Parker in the CBA finals
Tuesday, 21st April 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (2)
If you're ever going to watch CBA basketball, now is the time to do it.
The Chinese Basketball Association finals start this Friday, featuring the matchup that's been expected all season. Xinjiang (44-6, regular season) will make its first finals appearance ever, facing Guangdong (45-5, regular season), the former team of New Jersey Nets forward Yi Jianlian and the winner of four out of the last five championships.
The two teams are unusual in that they are both led by non-Chinese point guards, unlike most CBA teams that use their two-foreigner allowance to pick up a big man and a shooting guard or swingman. Former Los Angeles Laker Smush Parker, the biggest name left in the league since Bonzi Wells' exit, runs the point for Guangdong, and Myron Allen steers Xinjiang. Also on Xinjiang's team is Mongolian center Mengke Bateer, the first Chinese player to start for an NBA team and the first to win an NBA championship (San Antonio Spurs, 2003).
Smush Parker image: Shanghai Daily
Tags: basketball, CBA, Guangdong Tigers, Mengke Bateer, Smush Parker, Xinjiang
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