After sitting out more than two months with an injury and missing 22 games, Beijing Ducks superstar point guard Stephon Marbury returned to the court last night against the Shandong Flaming Bulls in his team's first game of the new lunar year.
It was an eventful night, to say the very least.
Dennis Rodman sang Happy Birthday to Kim Jong-un, who then watched as his country's basketball team beat Dennis Rodman's USA team on Wednesday in Pyongyang. That's according to Koryo Tours general manager Simon Cockerell, who reports that "the DPRK team emerged triumphant" in a 20-minute game, played as two 10-minute halves.
The CBA is back, and thank goodness. As featured on Deadspin, here's Ivan Johnson, 29, doing a celebratory dance that in the NBA would have set him back 15 grand, because no one in corporate appreciates the Big Balls Dance.
This was ugly. The Sichuan Blue Whales, playing its first CBA game in 15 years, having just been promoted from the second-tier National Basketball League in September, lost by 53 points on Friday. The previous CBA record for most lopsided season-opener was a mere 40 points, nearly 25 percent less than Sichuan's deficit.
"His shooting is perfect," said a fan at the MasterCard Arena (Wukesong) in Beijing on Tuesday before the Golden State Warriors tipped off against the Los Angeles Lakers. He was talking, of course, about Steph Curry.
Taiwan's basketball team has done it again. For the second time in two months, it erased a double-digit second half deficit en route to an upset of China.
The Houston Jeremy Lins played the Indiana Pacers in an exhibition in Taipei on Sunday, and as you might expect, a capacity crowd was firmly behind the Jeremy Lins from the start. Some highlights are above.
On Sunday, the 25-member Chinese Basketball Association committee unanimously approved the league's newest team, the Sichuan Blue Whales, who will begin play this fall. Last year the Whales competed in the National Basketball League, China's second-tier basketball association, and finished fourth with a 12-6 record.
We haven't checked in with Jeremy Lin for a while, but it appears he's been busy. Currently in Taiwan, Lin gave an emotional speech at a youth camp recently about his struggles last season in his first full season as a starter. SI.com's Point Forward blog has this excerpt, via a two-hour video on YouTube.
Panagiotis Giannakis, former head coach of the Greek basketball team, arrived in May to begin a four-year contract to lead the Chinese basketball team through the 2014 FIBA World Championships in Spain and the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. As of this writing, however -- following a blowout loss to Chinese Taipei in the quarterfinals of the FIBA Asia Championship two weeks ago -- it doesn't look like Giannakis will survive the month.
