We were watching the CBA All-Star game on Sunday to see the best that Chinese basketball has to offer, and for the entertainment aspect, and the pageantry (it was a special Lantern Festival game), but, truth be told, what we really wanted was comedy, preferably one of errors, like last year.
The game didn't supply anything, but the dunk contest did. Oh did it ever.
Six months ago, seven-time NBA all-star Tracy McGrady shocked the basketball world when he signed a one-year contract with the Qingdao Double Star Eagles of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). With Stephon Marbury already setting the standard as the ultimate CBA success story, McGrady was expected to further raise the profile of the top league... Read more »
The CBA might have a flopping problem. Tianjin's flopping against Qingdao last week was a big reason that game got so out of hand, and on Friday, we saw another incident involving one of the league's high-profile players.
Watch as Guangsha guard Zhang Hanjun starts bleeding perilymph from his ear upon bodily contact with Beijing's Stephon Marbury. Who comes out of this looking good?
Less than a week after Tracy McGrady drilled a game-winner on the road against Liaoning, this season's other big import from the NBA, Gilbert Arenas, showed everyone he has some clutch bones in him as well. With the clock winding down and the Shanghai Sharks down 94-93 in Nanjing, on the home court of the Jiangsu Dragons, Arenas made his move, which you can watch in the video above.
What words do we have left for Sunday's colossal wreck of a basketball scrum between Qingdao and Tianjin, in which the two teams were whistled for a combined 89 fouls (an average of one and a half fouls per minute), shot 119 combined free throws, and each had three players foul out? I wrote that it was "how bad basketball can look when entrusted to the wrong people." NiuBBall's Jon Pastuszek called it an "abomination," "nightmare" and "pathetic." Andrew Crawford of Shark Fin Hoops tweeted, "In Chinese basketball, the biggest problem remains the standard of refereeing." It was a sad day indeed for fans of the CBA.
I'm not sure how, but Tracy McGrady has a way of attracting refereeing debacles. (As a Beijing fan, I'm not just talking about Wednesday night's avian contest between the Ducks and Double Star Eagles in Qingdao, though that was massively craptacular too, with the home team benefitting from so many calls that I wondered aloud whether the CBA was publicly making amends with T-Mac for suspending him.) The worst -- absolute no doubt worst bar none -- happened yesterday.
We daresay things are looking up for Tracy McGrady. His team, the Qingdao Double Star Eagles, has won three games in a row, and none more dramatically than Wednesday on the road against Liaoning. You’ll remember that in the season opener, McGrady had the ball in his hands with time winding down but turned it over,... Read more »
Tracy McGrady and the Qingdao Double Star Eagles have seemingly found a groove on the court, winning four straight, but as we’ve known all along, T-Mac’s season would be one that makes headlines on and off the court. Here’s another example of the latter, via Jon Pastuszek of NiuBBall: Considering that the iconic McGrady’s every move has... Read more »
Tracy McGrady’s wild, wacky, probably frustrating inaugural season in the CBA continues. On Wednesday, after his team was absolutely robbed of a chance to capture a signature road win at Bayi, T-Mac took to his official Sina Weibo account to vent his frustration. At 11:32 pm, he wrote: CBA has to do a better job with... Read more »
Late in the game on Wednesday in Ningbo, Bayi was clinging to a three-point lead and had the ball against Qingdao in a hard-fought, physical game in which the teams combined to take 81 free throws (43 for Bayi, 38 for Qingdao). Then, in the final minute, the refs botched a call so horribly that no one who was watching could have avoided the obvious question: "Is the fix on?"
