Some tickets for tonight’s deciding fifth game between Shanxi and Beijing are going for more than 10,000 yuan, according to CCTV’s courtside reporter. Security is at maximum. Don’t even think about taking in lighters, bottles or any miscellany that can be thrown (paraphrasing Stephon Marbury: Beijing is not Shanxi). Join us for our live-blog of the... Read more »
Via NetEase Jon Pastuszek of the excellent NiuBball was, I’m sure, waiting as anxiously as I for tonight’s fifth and final game between Shanxi and Beijing. Unfortunately, we’ll all have to wait a little longer. Per Pastuszek’s translation of an official CBA release: In order to ensure league safety, Game 5 of the 2011-2012 CBA semi-finals between Beijing... Read more »
The above is taken from a BTV preview of tomorrow's deciding Game 5 in Beijing. Sunday's incident in Shanxi is only alluded to because everyone is already pretending it wasn't a big deal. Asked about what Beijing's fans will be like, Stephon Marbury proceeds to bumble through 12 seconds of an answer before finally giving in to the temptation to diss Shanxi's fans, albeit gently. One sort of wishes he would've just come out and said they were pieces of shit, because they sure seemed like it.
Via CCTV special about Marbury I’m sure we all remember the post-game fracas in Taiyuan, Shanxi after Sunday’s game, so we’ll jump straight to Stephon Marbury in his own words in his weekly China Daily column: I couldn’t believe this. Yes, I had experienced opposing fans throwing stuff at us before while on their home... Read more »
At the 53-second mark in the above video, the Shanxi fan who accuses Stephon Marbury of punching him in the head and then kicking him after Sunday night's game tells the journalist:
Because there were too many (Shanxi) fans, too crowded, when Marbury came out, the fans were careless so they squeezed around him. He (Marbury) had a water bottle in his hand and hit me square in the head, knocked me to the ground and kicked me in the face.
Tudou video for those in China after the jump. UPDATE: Video of accuser and Marbury’s response: “He got a wild imagination.” First, let me say as plainly and firmly as possible that the end of last night’s Beijing-Shanxi game was a joke. I’ll repeat here what I tweeted last night in apoplexy: the referees were intimidated by Shanxi’s fans and gave... Read more »
The video after the jump depicts a Stephon Marbury unlike any you’ve seen. At 35 — currently winding down his third and best season in the Chinese Basketball Association (he just scored 52 and 53 points in consecutive games in the CBA semifinals, against his former team, the Shanxi Zhongyu Brave Dragons, no less) — he’s... Read more »
So the NBA All-Star game yesterday came down to the final shot. Big deal. Anyone can make basketball entertaining when they're among the best players the world has to offer. A much tougher task is to make basketball entertaining when you're not blessed with seven-foot wingspans and 40-inch verticals, just a regular guy persevering through the marshes of life with the rest of us: earnest, hard-working, perhaps even talented, but not superhuman like Dwight Howard, freakish like Kevin Durant, or LeBron James like LeBron James.
By Jon Pastuszek We have a saying over at NiuBBall: There is no parity in the Chinese Basketball Association. Understand: Since the CBA went to a best-of-five format for the first round and semis in 2005, never has there been a do-or-die Game 5. Since the CBA went to a best-of-seven format for the finals a... Read more »
The CBA All-Star game was last night in Guangzhou, with the very first minute portending an evening of heroic fails. The southern all-stars sprinted out to miss their first three shots, all three-pointers. Their first two buckets were scored by former Dallas Maverick Wang Zhizhi, whom a less discerning fan could be excused for thinking was dead. Still, the North still found itself down 11 near the end of the first quarter, ball in Stephon Marbury's hands, when the above happened.
