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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.
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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