Bay Area welcomes its own Chinese 7-footer

Permalink of this article

While Milwaukee introduces itself to Yi Jianlian, we ought to do the same here in the Bay, at Cal to be exact. Enter Max Zhang, who made a cameo appearance at an Asian tourney last year that we wrote about.

It's late-night on Friday and I'm just checking good 'ol CalBears.com to find out the opponent and kickoff time of the #2 nationally ranked (pinch me!) California football Golden Bears of Jeff Tedford -- that's a well-deserved Swami aka Chris Berman shout out.

A quick click over to the Men's Basketball section where there's coincidentally news of the team's first practice and lo and behold, a mention of Zhang. A name I had not heard in 13 months!

Btw, I've also got the World Series of Poker on ESPN2 in the background and there's been, in sarcastic reference to Tony Bennett, a mention of fellow Cal alum William Hung. Make that two names I have not heard in 13 months!

So anyways, the official press release on Zhang's signing was nearly two months ago. Totally under the radar. Here's an excerpt from what I wrote on him last year...

"Max Zhang is an eighteen year-old skinny 7-footer from China. He really has no offensive skills yet, but can obviously dunk the ball and block people's shots with ease...He appeased other LVI players in the stands urging him to show off during warmups...At first glance, because the sheer thought of a 7-footer playing in an Asian American tournament borders on blasphemy, people tend to estimate his height at 6'8", then 6'9", then maybe ok 6'10". But after a good look, the consensus becomes seven feet."

The coolest part for us: if you do a google on "Max Zhang basketball", guess what comes up first?

P.S. It also looks like former Cal walk-on Thomas Fang is no longer on the team. Vinsanity, I guess you are no longer on the hook for that dreamblogue interview. If anybody out there wants to interview Zhang for us, let me know and I'll put you in contact with our insider at Cal.

__________

Not much gained for Yi playing with Team China

Permalink of this article

There's nothing like studying top draft picks in decent competition from the 2nd row at midcourt. You just can't witness naunces from a TV screen -- or worse, a laptop monitor -- like you can this close to the players. I went to Vegas last week to catch two games live of Yi Jianlian and the Chinese National Team. ESPN.com's Chad Ford had Yi ranked right behind Greg Oden and Kevin Durant for the 2007 NBA Draft, and Yi looked pretty good as a mobile 7-footer with skills in pre-draft workouts.

After watching a multitude of various summer league 7-footers, of which Spencer Hawes was probably the most skilled, you could see from the ESPN pre-draft workout clip that Yi really does have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the Chinese National Team is doing almost nothing to tap that potential...

Read the rest of the story

__________

Dish on Yi Jianlian makes it good to have Insider today

Permalink of this article

[Believe it or not, I actually compare Yi Jianlian to a dreamleaguer...read on!]

If you're a fan of Yi as we are, today's ESPN Insider article by Chad Ford makes the Insider subscription worth it (even though we got ours at a major discount, ha!).

Ford witnessed workouts by Yi over two days in LA and had rave reviews. Here are some samples, for those of you blocked out of the Insider wall...

• Don MacLean (former UCLA star and current trainer for Nick Young, draft prospect out of USC): "Have you seen the Yi kid yet? That kid was amazing."
  
  
• Joakim Noah, who was also training in LA, about Yi's workouts: "Something to behold. Where did that guy come from?"...

Read the rest of the story

__________

Team China in 2007 Vegas Summer League

Permalink of this article

Guess who's playing in the 2007 Vegas NBA Summer League? Yeah, yeah, we knew about soon-to-be new NBA players Kevin Durant and Greg Oden already, but how about a new team?

Perhaps as part of the recent NBA-China partnership, according to the NBA Summer League website, the Chinese National Team will be playing in the league this summer! It's probably a good deal for Team China too, getting valuable experience against top-notch talent one year before the Olympics.

Based on the modified look-and-feel of the site, the NBA appears to be taking over management of the league, as there are no more references to the league's founder, NBA coaches' super-agent Warren LeGarie, who had hinted recently (I can't remember where I read it) that the NBA could be aiming to do just that.

Don't forget how deep a draft this year is going to be! And can you picture Yi Jianlian going up against his former comrades?

Well, this just reinforces the probability that dreamleague will be hosting a tournament there to coincide with what's going to be the best Vegas Summer League on record -- probably the tail end, July 14-15.

__________

Asian Heritage Street Celebration

Permalink of this article

If you're in the Bay Area, join us this Saturday, May 19 from 10am onwards at the Asian Heritage Street Celebration.

Dreamleague will have its own booth (donated by AsianWeek) where you can shoot mini-hoops and win what will probably be coveted bottles of Gatorade, if the weather is nice and hot.

In case you're wondering, we're there to not only spice up the day -- how can you go wrong with shooting hoops? -- but also to promote our Beijing 2008 Olympics tour package, which will have free tickets to Team USA+China, among other things. More details on Beijing coming soon!

__________

Basketball Never Ends

At 72, Louie still got game.

[From NYC commish...]

A couple Sundays ago, I went on down to Chinatown – no, not to get my dollar dumplings, a 50 cent massage, or to play in a New York Rockit tournament that Denny Lee was organizing (after all, it’s been real cold if you haven’t noticed outside), but rather to watch a group of men run in their regular Sunday morning pick-ups that they’ve been doing since 1969.

?????

Okay, first, get back in your chair, cause I know you just fell out of it.

No, ’69 is not a typo. 1969. Nixon was the president. Led Zeppelin released their first album. Apollo 9 returned safely from the moon. John Lennon married Yoko Ono. The Vietnam War was just reaching its midway point. The Brady Bunch came out. UCLA wins the NCAA title...

Read the rest of the story

__________

Yao: Yi = Amare (what???)

Uhhhh, no Yao, no.

[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Two things this past week on Yi Jianlian. Before we get to the atrocious, Wang Mang of Titan Sports was quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News by Phil Jasner as saying:

"People in China think he won't be as successful as Yao. They think he doesn't seem to have [the same] desire, that he's not as hungry as Yao...But Yi is really hungry, especially this year. When we got confirmation that he will come to the NBA, he's worked so hard."

Oh good, so the Chinese people are apparently aware that there are certain shortcomings of the Chinese basketball academies.

Btw, the article also said Yi will be endorsing McDonald's coming up.

Now, the atrocious. In the same story, Yao Ming says:

"[Yi] is very close to a player who is in the NBA like I would say Amare Stoudemire."

Duuuuude. Why'd ya hafta make such a PREPOSTEROUS comment in the midst of Poor Man's Commish's impassioned defense of Yi?

__________

NBA China = NBDL affiliate?

Surprisingly, no other blog or news outlet has followed up on this, but according to this week's SportsBusinessJournal (online access for subscribers only), the NBA is going to create a new "entity" based in China -- not another "office" like the three they already have -- complete with its own CEO, courting of "outside investors", and "possible creation of a league and arena development". The entity will be unveiled at the next NBA owners' meeting in New York City on April 20.

We'll have to wait another month for details and the most profound issue, the possible creation of a league, doesn't come without political complications involving the government-run existing CBA (Chinese Basketball Association). However, if you think about it, starting an NBDL-like league or affiliate in China would make a lot of sense.

This is the perfect time for the NBA to come in and partner with the CBA. My guess is that the CBA is losing money. This is all speculation, but with the NBA China Games II this October and the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, if there's ever a time of lower-than-usual political barriers and preparation for a "high tide that lifts all boats", this is it.

Btw, dreamleague will be at Beijing Olympics '08. More details coming soon...

__________

Behind the scenes at Vegas All-Star

Hottest tickets in town, Celine Dion be damned. (All photos courtesy of D. Ho.)

[From Seoul Shibuya...]

On my way back from Cali, I swung over in LV and caught up with our very own Danny Ho, Moe’s Tavern power forward and employee of the National Basketball Association, and got to ask him what it’s like being him. Over 10 plates of food at the Wynn buffet, here’s how it went...

Read the rest of the story

__________

Adversity, not fundamentals

In this week's ESPN The Mag, Oakley Brooks uncovered a little tidbit about a certain group of 37 teenagers (5 of them over 7-feet, including Yi Jianlian) from China, spotted at a Rockets-Blazers game and currently training at the U.S. Basketball Academy in Oregon:

"From a skills perspective, they don't have to apologize to anyone," says Cameron Hill, a former assistant at Kentucky who's overseeing the Chinese ballers' six-month stay...Still, [they] lack fundamentals, particularly when it comes to lifting weights and running a standard half-court spread. That's why Chinese officials sent their best to the West.

I humbly submit that the missing ingredient is not the fundamentals as described. It is good old-fashioned adversity.

The mental aspect of the game is very complex, but it all starts with adversity, overcoming a challenge that you as a balla take personally. In the NBA, sometimes it's the difficulties of growing up in the inner-city that propels one's desire to succeed. Everyone has to find their own fuel, not matter what level you're at.

For me, it was simply being demoted from starting floor general to 3rd-string point guard in 9th grade -- this was before I sprouted 9 inches to 5'11" one year later -- after being yelled at as an idiot in front of the entire gym by my coach in preseason for forgetting the defensive switch from zone to man, crushing my confidence for years. I then slowly climbed my way back to starting small forward as a senior. With local playground ball still part of my staple, even as I left town for college I still vowed to become better than any of the starters that had been ahead of me or go-to guys throughout all those years, just in case I ever saw one of my old alums on the blacktop.

In the game of basketball, everyone has to find their own fuel. I'm not sure the Chinese basketball academies realize that.

On a side note, here's the illustration from Frank Stockton that accompanied the article. It's not particularly helpful in breaking down the stereotypes of Chinese/Asian ballas: http://www.frankstockton.com/espn.html

__________

LeBron's global strategy now hinges on playing 1-on-1 with Chinese kid (from Chicago?!)

Our beloved beacon of basketball brouhaha, TrueHoop.com, reported earlier on Tuesday in a line item that LeBron James just "announced" a promotional deal with Microsoft, so I had no choice but to drop everything and embark on a writeup which I was hoping could wait until the holidays.

I put "announced" in quotation marks because this is actually pretty old news. Microsoft has sponsored LBJ's Bike-A-Thon in the past and there's even an insightful transcription (scroll to the middle of the page) of LeBron's budding relationship with Microsoft, through a dialogue between Maverick Carter and a Microsoft executive at an advertising conference not too long ago in late September.

In fact, as you might remember from our dreamleague-wide posts (before we had this blog) on Nov. 27 entitled Chinese Youth with Skillz for LeBron Commercial (scroll almost all the way down), LeBron has been scouring the country for a male Chinese kid age 10-14 with good basketball skills to go one-on-one in his forthcoming commercial with Microsoft...

Read the rest of the story (UPDATED 1/15/2007)

__________