While Stephon Marbury usually commands all the attention, Beijing has a pretty good second foreigner on its basketball team in Randolph Morris. Last year the 6'11'' power forward/center averaged 23.8 points and 7.1 rebounds over the season, and hit the go-ahead free throws with 21.9 seconds left in the championship-clinching Game 5 vs. Guangdong in March. The team re-signed him in the off-season, and yesterday evening, Morris arrived back in town.
The National Basketball League (NBL) is a semi-pro basketball league managed by the same suits who control the top-tier Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). The NBL's playoffs are currently happening, but they're not happening very well. As Jon Pastuszek of NiuBBall reports, "I invite you to keep an eye on the NBL playoffs, where not one, but two all-out brawls went down inside of three days last Friday and Sunday."
I’m ashamed to admit that I missed this Shanghai Daily article from Saturday announcing a partnership between the NBA and Shanghai Film Group to produce Amazing. It “tells the story of a fictional world known as ‘The Sixth Sense.’ It uses basketball imagery to combine the visual elements of a video game with a movie, akin to... Read more »
In the wake of the “British rapist” and Russian cellist, this won’t help Chinese-foreigner relations: a basketball team called the New Orleans Hurricanes — possibly this one from Texas – was in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province yesterday for an exhibition against the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions that ended in the worst way possible. In the above video (and below, on Youku,... Read more »
UPDATE, 9:37 am: My headline originally misidentified the gender of the person holding the “kids” sign (upon closer inspection, as pointed out in the comments section, the person holding the sign does not look to be a dude after all). Everything makes a lot more sense now, though at the cost of being funny. Allen... Read more »
Former NBA stars Allen Iverson and Dennis Rodman were in Cixi, Zhejiang earlier this week to scrimmage against the Beijing Ducks, which still has (the newly minted) Stephon Marbury, as part of an eight-game, multi-team tour. One Beijing player said it was a dream to play against AI. Ducks coach Min Lulei, however, had no use for such sentiment. He chided his team in the post-game press conference for not taking the opening game seriously enough, which strikes me as just silly -- the Ducks are a month removed from winning the CBA championship, and they haven't practiced together since.
I don't think we'll be posting any more CBA videos for a while after this. It's fitting, then, that the above video is a highlight package of the final game of the season, played last Friday. The video after the jump is a segment that BTV put together for team translator and sometimes equipment manager Wang Lan (lots of people get very emotional during these six minutes). Both of the clips are from the BTV show 一赛季, 一生情, very roughly translated as "One Season, One Lifetime of Passion." After watching, I can unabashedly say that I like these Beijing Ducks, champions, more than ever. (You may also be interested in the 22-minute part featuring Stephon Marbury.)
The day after Beijing won the CBA championship, BTV hosted the official victory celebration -- the equivalent of a parade for a professional sports team in the US -- in the form of a show called 一赛季, 一生情, which I'll roughly translate as "One Season, One Lifetime of Passion."
There’s something visceral and raw to being a sports fan, knowing your passion and emotions are probably misappropriated but continuing nonetheless on your Quixotic pursuit to will your team to victory. Nothing quite captures this spirit like fan POV videos, particularly at the conclusion of major events. In the above, Beijing is 6.1 seconds away from clinching... Read more »
By Jon Pastuszek It’s November 2010, and Stephon Marbury has locked himself inside a hotel room in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, sad, hurt and uncertain over his future in China. Eight months earlier, after basically being told he wasn’t welcome anymore in the NBA, he had come to play for the Shanxi Brave Dragons of the Chinese Basketball... Read more »
