Not much gained for Yi playing with Team China

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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...

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Team China in 2007 Vegas Summer League

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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.

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Asian Heritage Street Celebration

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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!

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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...

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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...

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I dunno, Colangelo, I just don't know

Jemele Hill of ESPN Page 2 just interviewed Jerry Colangelo. Here's some bread-and-butter of what he said about Team USA:

"When that game ended against Greece, in the locker room, I know how they all felt. We don't ever want to feel that way again as long as we're together. I think that's going to bond us even more...It had nothing to do with the player-personnel (or)...having the right talent. We did a poor job in preparation in defending the pick-and-roll against Greece. It's as simple as that. And a team beat us that shouldn't have. They deserved to win because we didn't get the job done. If we played them 10 times, we'd win nine out of 10."

Sounds a lot like our Dream League All-Star squad, which coming off a heartbreaking championship loss to the L.A. Tigers Blue in 2005, went down to Vegas for the 14th Annual LVI this past September 2006 and promptly got slapped in the face by Arizona Desert Jade. Two consecutive weeks of open gym run/practice (heh, it'd be a crime to call them practices!) for our guys leading up to the tournament proved to be a non-factor.

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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...

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