Marcus Williams became the first basketball player in China to be busted for “doping” on December 9 when he tested positive for marijuana, but so far he’s managed to avoid making silly, trite excuses such as “I was using for medicinal purposes.” We commend him for that.

His agent, however, is happy to do so on his behalf.

Shen Zhiyu, as quoted in Xinhua:

“Williams has been bothered by stomach problem for a long time so he brought some marijuana to China as a painkiller,” said Shen.

“He suffered from a stomachache before the match and the medicine from the team doctor did not work,” he said.

“So he had some marijuana and did not tell anyone,” Shen added. Williams was drawn to take the test in the Dec. 9 match when Shanxi clinched a 103-99 away win at Jilin.

Williams says he wants a second chance. “I really cherish the opportunity playing for the team,” he said, as quoted by Xinhua. “I will always ha[ve] them on my mind and keep watching the game.”

Because we’re talking about pot here — which, even in China, is still just pot — no one seems to care. Williams’s club, the Shanxi Brave Dragons, was fined 10,000 yuan, but the team’s deputy general manager, Zhang Beihai, says it would welcome Williams back. “Williams had contributed a lot to Shanxi. Although he can no longer fulfill his task this season, the club will welcome him back next season as long as his return complies with CBA’s regulations,” he said.

Williams’s contract is until 2014, and he said Shanxi would be his first choice if he returns to the CBA.

Meanwhile, if you want to know how Williams’s running mate, Charles Gaines, is doing, consider his stat line in the two games in which he’s been the lone foreigner:

January 2, vs. Zhejiang: 60 points, 29 rebounds
January 4, vs. Dongguan: 44 points, 12 rebounds

Shanxi lost both games by a combined 45 points. We’re obligated to note that this happened in one of those contests.

This is somewhat of a shocker. Marcus Williams, the leading scorer in the Chinese Basketball Association, has become the first player to test positive for drug use in the league. We had no idea the CBA tested for marijuana until now, but according to Xinhua:

Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) said in a statement that the point guard, playing for Shanxi, was banned for six months and the club was fined 10,000 yuan (about 1,500 U.S. dollars) following his positive test on Dec. 9.

“We should learn from this lesson, to conduct more tests, to improve our regulations. We won’t tolerate doping,” it said in the statement.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here: pot. It’s not a performance enhancement drug, and it’s barely illegal in many parts of North America. But one case of it in the CBA and suddenly everyone’s all, We should conduct MORE tests, improve regulations. Why is this a bigger issue than, say, point-shaving, and shitty refereeing?

China Anti-doping Agency agreed that more tests needed in the basketball professional league.

“The truth is there were not many tests done in the basketball league,” said Zhao Jian, vice director of CHINADA, adding that a total of 12 tests were conducted by far this season.

Twelve tests. Total. And the league’s leading scorer on one of the most controversial teams in the league — Shanxi’s owner, “Boss Wang,” is the type to not care about upsetting others — just happens to get caught? Something seems a bit fishy.

For the record, state media has talked about cannabis in such terms before, when an Olympic judo fighter was expelled for “doping.”

Williams was averaging 30.9 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game for the 11-4 Shanxi Brave Dragons, currently a game out of first place. The team will now try to find another foreigner to replace him, as Williams’s six-month suspension will last through the end of the season. The other foreigner on the team is Charles Gaines, averaging 29.2 points and 14.3 rebounds, who together with Williams formed the league’s most formidable duo. The former Arizona standout will be missed.

And to think, just Wednesday, Xinhua published a rosy profile on Williams titled, “Former NBA guard Williams finds career, homelike feeling in CBA.”

Journalists are fed a lot of crap by the world. Specifically by public relations flacks and sources, but really, the world at large, because we’re surrounded by crap, by fetid logs of horse and other rancid mammalian shit dripping with stupidity and awfulness.

It takes a decent journalist to filter that shit and present it in a way that is digestible to a halfway intelligent and educated human being. It means processing a piece of information in such a way that gives everyone else a little credit for not living in a cave of fecal stalactites.

Well, here’s China Daily, specifically its full story about American judo fighter Nick Delpopolo’s expulsion from the Games for a positive drug test:

HEADLINE: US judo fighter expelled for doping

Nick Delpopolo, 23, is the first of the 10,500 games Olympic athletes to fail an in-competition doping test.

His case is the fifth positive test for a banned substance reported by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) since its official London Games testing period began in mid-July.

The other four athletes were caught before competing.

Gee, what awful banned substance did he take? Androstenedione? Epitestosterone? He’s a judo fighter, so maybe dehydroepiandrosterone?

Cannabis.

Huh. You didn’t think that bit of info was relevant, China Daily? Here we have an illustration of a neat trick of journalism, specifically media. You can turn a story about one thing into another simply by withholding information. A story that deserves to be about IOC’s incredibly outdated drug-testing policy that considers cannabis a performance enhancing drug is, on China Daily’s pages, a story about the disgrace of an American Olympian who is only the fifth athlete to test positive for a “banned substance,” and the first since the London Games began.

By contrast, here’s Washington Post’s headline and lead:

Headline: US judo fighter Nick Delpopolo expelled from Olympics for positive test for marijuana

American judo fighter Nick Delpopolo was expelled from the Olympics for doping Monday, saying he unintentionally ate something before the games that had been baked with marijuana.

The incident is such that it’s inspired fresh rounds of debate on whether cannabis should ever even be banned in the first place. Reuters:

And many wonder whether the expensive time and effort of sporting drug testers might be better spent catching serious cheats who top up their blood with EPO or pop anabolic steroids to boost testosterone levels and muscle growth.

“There’s no evidence cannabis is ever performance enhancing in sport, and since its use is legal in a number of countries, there’s no reason for it to be banned by WADA,” said David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

“I can’t think of any sport in which it would be an advantage. And it seems ludicrous that someone could quite legally smoke cannabis in Amsterdam in the morning and then come over to London in the afternoon and be banned from competing.”

No, we won’t be finding this kind of rational discussion in China’s leading English-language newspaper.

To be fair to China Daily, I’m sure several small- and medium-market US papers have excised the conversation in the same way, and editors at more than a few publications probably equate marijuana with a performance enhancing drug, or at the very least, a dangerous and illegal drug. It’s these people who stink up the world by living in their holes of poop ejaculate. It’s these people for which China Daily writes.

(H/T Joe P.)

While we all await Ye Shiwen’s next race — she’s the top qualifier (and Olympic record-holder) in the 200-meter individual medley, which begins at 8:43 pm London time / 3:43 am Beijing time — you might be interested to know that women’s gymnastics is on right now. Other Olympics stuff happened too, as you’ll see if you read on.

Ye Shiwen has passed her drug test: “The International Olympic Committee has sprung to the defense of China’s teenage swim sensation Ye Shiwen, saying she passed a drug test after her world record win in the 400 medley. // IOC spokesman Mark Adams urged people to ‘get real’ and said it is ‘very sad’ if great performances cannot be applauded.” [Globe and Mail]

World Anti-Doping Agency clears her as well, and she also has the support of Lord Colin Moynihan, head of the British Olympic Association. [BBC]

Chinese delegation hits back: “But others have argued that young athletes can make remarkable breakthroughs and have pointed to the way the Chinese system picks individuals for their physique and drills them rigorously. // Jiang [Zhixue, who leads anti-doping work at China's General Administration of Sport] said China’s swimming team had made breakthroughs due to scientific training and sheer hard work. // He added: ‘The Chinese athletes, including the swimmers, have undergone nearly 100 drug tests since they arrived here. // ‘Many were also tested by the international federations and the British anti-doping agency. I can tell you that so far there was not a single positive case.’ // The deputy anti-doping chief Zhao Jian said Leonard ‘thinks too much’ and urged people to wait for test results.” [The Guardian]

And one more, via The Diplomat:

Swimming writer John Lohn admitted that while China has a record of doping, that was in the past.

He criticized the doubters.

“What a bloody shame,” he wrote. “For some of the sport’s avid followers, it was enough to sit back and appreciate what will go down as one of the finest performances in the pool in years.”

Lohn noted that while China has a record of doping, that was a different time. “Its track record opens itself up — to a degree — to a level of doubt…. Still, the accusations fired at Ye are out of line in this age of drug testing. … Instead of dirtying her achievement with unfounded claims and doubts, it would be wiser to appreciate a performance which was legendary.”

And now for your non-Ye news…

A “child” with a lot more dignity than this paper: “A Chinese newspaper apologized on Tuesday for attacking one of the country’s young Olympic weightlifters for her performance at the London Games. // Zhou Jun failed to lift the starting weight in the 53-kg category on Saturday, prompting The Metropolis Times in the south-west city of Kunming to label it ‘the most shameful defeat for Chinese female weightlifters.’ // The paper, scorned by readers and commentators, issued an apology and said it lost sight of the Olympic spirit and was aware Zhou, 17, was ‘only a child.’” [Reuters]

Point/counterpoint:

Reuters: “Chinese swimmer Lu Ying, fresh from winning a silver medal in the women’s 100 metre butterfly, spoke out after the race against the Chinese training system, in a rare display of criticism from one of the country’s athletes.”

China Daily headline: “Robots? Nope — just really good athletes.”

If you guessed Global Times would be the first to use the “Rising Sun” pun in relation to Sun Yang, you were correct. “Rising Sun stands tall with Chinese sport icons.” [Global Times]

No one understands why London is advertising Chinese milk, apparently:

Via Asia Society:

Yili, a Chinese milk company based in Inner Mongolia, recently launched an ad campaign on London’s iconic double-decker buses that had locals scratching their heads. The ad shows Chinese men and women, none of whom are recognizable celebrities or athletes, alongside the brand’s logo, in Chinese. No Yili products are for sale in London, and few clues on the buses hint as to the significance of these people.

With the help of Chinese translators, however, a handful of London bloggers were able to decipher the ad. Yili’s campaign is a coordinated effort with Youku, the Chinese YouTube, intended to promote the “Olympic spirit” of average Chinese citizens who lead active, healthy lifestyles.

Finally…

Twitter suspends journalist’s account… a journalist who happens to be highly critical of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics… Twitter, which just happens to be an NBC partner for these Olympics… [The Independent, via Deadspin]

China’s men’s basketball team is 0-2 after its 73-54 loss to Russia.

US and North Korea are playing each other in women’s soccer, marking the first time Old Trafford has hosted women’s soccer in its 102-year-old history. [NY Times]

We’re at the point where Ye Shiwen can no longer be found guilty in China, if that makes sense. This issue has become about more than swimming. If it ever does come to light that Ye used a banned substance, I suspect the relevant organs will find a scapegoat who admits that he accidentally put an illegal substance in her food or something, and no one — not the media, the Chinese swim officials, the millions on Weibo — will have to lose face.

It’s unfortunate we’ve reached this point. How did we get here? How did an off the cuff statement by the BBC’s Clare Balding — “How many questions will there be, Mark, about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?” — lead to Chinese netizens turning this into a nationalistic us vs. them issue?

There’s no good answer, of course, except that this always happens. And it’ll definitely happen during the Olympics, which are disproportionally more important to China — serving as a nationalistic spectacle that rallies the populace — than most countries. Let’s not forget, either, that this is a country that reveres its sports heroes, especially those who emerge as world-beaters. It’s difficult to tear down pedestals once they’ve been built.

Instead of even considering the possibility that we, as spectators, have been duped into believing in athletic greatness, many here seem to have decided to argue on completely different grounds. It’s a knee-jerk response that has, unfortunately, continued on past the knee-jerk phase. Here’s a sampling of comments on Sina Weibo from today:

@风小尧yumi: How brain-dead are you? You must be the ones on drugs. You must all be using banned substances, so you see someone else win and you suspect the same. Unbearable.

@candy肖涵: BBC = biased broadcasting corporation…

@Nani_天亮说晚安: I’ll say this directly: if you’re jealous of a our girl beating your male swimmer, then move from Great Britain (over to China), stop talking nonsense from home.

We’re conditioned to believe the Olympics aren’t political, but that’s a bald-faced lie, isn’t it? The Olympics are intertwined with politics, and the case of Ye Shiwen is a perfect example.

If you are interested in talking about the sports side of this issue, we can do that. The best piece I’ve encountered yet is from Ross Tucker, PhD, on The Science of Sport, as excerpted in the Guardian:

The only way to interpret that is to recognise that the physiology of a fast finish tells us that she must have a significant reserve for that final leg. It says that her first 300m was an extremely conservative effort. The simple question is: “Under what circumstances does a female have the capacity to finish a race as fast as a male?”

To answer this, think back to the key concept — finishing ability is a function of how close we are to our potential. To finish as fast as Shiwen does, relative to an unfatigued, isolated 100m freestyle, implies that she has a lot more potential in the event than was realised with her world record. The fact that Shiwen could close as fast as Lochte suggests to me that her efforts over the first 300m of that final took very little out of her.

If that is true, then her overall performance is a significant underperformance. The allocation of energy over the course of the race might be debated, but what physiology suggests is that it should probably be more even for Shiwen, and it would allow her to swim quite a lot faster than the 4:28.43 that she did.

But few seem interested in this. China’s sports officials certainly aren’t doing themselves any favors with responses like this one from Xu Qi, “team leader” of the swim team, as quoted by Xinhua:

Ye Shiwen’s swim result was expected. It is a little bit better than we had hoped, but not surprising…

To compare Ye’s result with [men's 400m IM winner Ryan] Lochte’s is meaningless. Ye was behind after 300m and she need to try her best to win the race, but Lochte had already established the lead before the freestyle and didn’t need to do his utmost.

…Michael Phelps won eight gold medals at the Beijing Games, and American swimmer Missy Franklin is also incredible. Why can’t China have a talented swimmer?

These are all meaningless quotes, failing to engage on the relevant terms.

Then we have other swim officials who seem unwilling to cop to China’s past transgressions in the Olympics, namely the fact that dozens of Chinese swimmers were banned for using illegal substances in the 1990s. “We never questioned Michael Phelps when he bagged eight gold medals in Beijing,” Jiang Zhixue, anti-doping chief of China’s General Administration of Sport, told Xinhua. He then noted Chinese athletes have undergone nearly 100 drug tests since arrival without a single positive case, yet… yet…

BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) — Teenage swimming world champion Li Zhesi has tested positive for banned substance, China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) announced here on Saturday.

It will, however, appease — or inflame, which could be as good — those back home, where the conversation is running on a parallel track. Nowhere on Weibo did I encounter anyone discussing the science of split times in these medley races, or critically thinking about how Ye can be so good at the freestyle yet not be entered in any individual freestyle events, or even mention the name “John Leonard,” the American coach who first accused Ye of doping. Instead, we get:

@beerao: Westerners are people too. Everyone is able to be jealous. Please excuse their ignorance.

Yeah, Ye Shiwen is officially too big to fail — too important to this country’s “feelings” to have cheated. That she’s a world-class swimmer — with or without drugs, mind you — is becoming ancillary to a fact more pertinent to Chinese netizens at large: she’s China’s world-class swimmer.

Thankfully, other athletes haven’t taken the bait on this narrative. “No swimmers accused Ye, who is 5 feet 8 inches and weighs 141 pounds, of using illicit substances to fuel her kick,” reports the NY Times. And thankfully, not all netizens are clueless. @瘦身部落 points out, matter-of-factly, “Stimulant testing is the best response.”

Right? And testing is what will happen, because samples are kept for eight years, which is plenty of time for science to catch up to whatever is today’s illegal substance du jour. Until the shelf life of these samples runs out — or until a definitive answer emerges — all this chatter is pointless speculation.

And politics, of course. Although, in my opinion, that’s even more pointless.

All eyes will be on Ye Shiwen tonight (8:43 pm London, 3:43 am Beijing) when she competes in the 200-meter individual medley (she set an Olympic record in her preliminary heat). If she’s anywhere close to the lead in the final turn, the competition is, as we say, over, because no one is in her league in the freestyle.

Before that happens though, let us relive her swim in the 400 IM, which has come under scrutiny after an American coach accused her of being too good to have not cheated.

A second quote from Ye has surfaced, a much cleaner denial than her first quote (included in the above link). Canada’s National Post reports that Ye told reporters: “My results come from hard work and training and I would never used any banned drugs. The Chinese people have clean hands.”

And according to The New Zealand Herald:

“There is no doping, the Chinese team has always had a firm anti-doping policy,” she said.

“Michael Phelps won eight gold medals at the Beijing Games, and American swimmer Missy Franklin is also incredible. Why can’t China have a talented swimmer?”

Ye believes she can go even faster.

“I feel like I still have room to improve my stroke,” she told China Daily.

“I’ve strengthened my backstroke and butterfly, so I am getting better at the start. But I am still young and have some more potential in my body.

“I dreamed of winning the gold medal, but I never ever expected to break the record. So I am overwhelmed,” she said.

I think the above will play for those in North America, though you may need to pause to let it buffer.

John Leonard and Ye Shiwen

Ye Shiwen, the 16-year-old swimmer who set a new world record on Saturday in the 400-meter individual medley, has been accused of cheating.

The Guardian’s Andy Bull, who on Sunday published a very interesting and insightful account of Ye’s swim and the reactions to it and her teammates (“Over the course of the 1990s [China] had 40 swimmers banned after positive doping tests. The sceptics – or perhaps cynics – would say that the doubts about Ye, [bronze-medalist] Li [Xuanxu] and [gold-medalist] Sun [Yang] are the inevitable consequence of that history”), has just published a much more controversial follow-up.

In this article, John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, is given all the space he wants to explain why he — and, he implies, lots of others — thinks Ye cheated. Since the article is basically Leonard’s editorial, we’ve gone ahead and cut out the middleman so you have just the American coach’s published words:

Unbelievable… disturbing… brings back a lot of awful memories.

We want to be very careful about calling it doping. The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, “unbelievable,” history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved. That last 100m was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of 400m individual medley by a young Irish woman in Atlanta.

…Looks like superwoman. Any time someone has looked like superwoman in the history of our sport they have later been found guilty of doping.

I have been around swimming for four-and-a-half decades now. If you have been around swimming you know when something has been done that just isn’t right. I have heard commentators saying “well she is 16, and at that age amazing things happen.” Well yes, but not that amazing. I am sorry.

Unbelievable… I use that word in its precise meaning. At this point it is not believable to many people.

No coach that I spoke to yesterday could ever recall seeing anything remotely like that in a world level competition. Where someone could out-split one of the fastest male swimmers in the world, and beat the woman ahead of her by three-and-a-half body lengths. All those things, I think, legitimately call that swim into question.

You can’t turn around and call it racism to say the Chinese have a doping history. That is just history. That’s fact. Does that make us suspicious? Of course. You have to question any outrageous performance, and that is an outrageous performance, unprecedented in any way, shape or form in the history of our sport. It by itself, regardless of whether she was Chinese, Lithuanian, Kenyan, or anything else, is impossible. Sorry.

[Michael] Phelps got consistently faster every year on a normal improvement curve. There has never been anything that you look at in any of Mr Phelps’ swims that you look at and say “well, that’s impossible, that can’t be done.”

[Sun Yang, 20,] has a perfectly normal improvement curve, he is a dramatically spectacular athlete in our sport and I’ve no question about him at all. But a woman does not out-swim the fastest man in the world in the back quarter of a 400m IM that is otherwise quite ordinary. It just doesn’t happen.

I am sure that Fina and the doping authorities have taken every sample they can take. The sample will be tested and available for testing for the next eight years. And over eight years, if there is something unusual going on in terms of genetic manipulation or something else, I would suspect over eight years’ science will move fast enough to catch it. I have every faith that eventually if there is something there to be caught it will be caught. Right now all we can say is Olympic champion, world record holder, and watch out for history.

The Guardian’s piece is still worth looking at though, if only for the measured response of Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission and a veteran anti-doping official.

Ye, for her part, has denied the accusations:

“There’s absolutely no problem with the doping,” Ye said on Monday, according to a translation provided by the official Olympic News Service. “The Chinese team has always had a firm policy about doping.”