“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.

Kobe Bryant is arguably the most popular basketball player in this country, playing for Chinese fans’ favorite team, but as a sign of the NBA’s global reach, there were plenty of Golden State supporters inside Wukesong. And why not? The Warriors were the darlings of last season’s playoffs, and Steph — health pending — is on the brink of superstardom. There’s not a better bandwagon to jump on.

Kobe, still recovering from an Achilles surgery, watched Tuesday’s game in a suit (he’ll do the same when these two teams play in Shanghai tomorrow). Curry, on the other hand, didn’t disappoint, dropping 24 points and adding seven assists — many of them nifty — and three steals.

The Warriors’ David Lee led all scorers with 31 points as Golden State won 100-95. Afterwards, players and coaches on both sides praised Beijing’s crowd (you can watch in the above video). No frisbees were thrown this time.

Bonus videos… Steph being Steph:

Lakers and Warriors arrive in China:

We’ve seen NBA players — namely, those on the Miami Heat — try to speak Chinese before, to bad results. We wish we could say this video, featuring Dwight Howard and John Wall, was better, but why would we say that?

Actually, a few reasons:

1. Yi Jianlian. The man wasn’t even on an NBA roster last year, and he’s still being called on as the league’s go-to ambassador for Chinese basketball. (Jeremy Lin: way too American.) Yi’s filled this role before — check out our post “Veritable NBA All-Stars Plus Yi Jianlian To Appear In A Chinese Movie” — but never this prominently.

Also, look at this:

2. Dwight Howard, only because it gives us the opportunity to link to Charles P. Pierce, writing in Grantland:

Is there a bigger fake in this league? Seriously, the guy came into the NBA with a smile on his face and Bible verses on his shoes, and there hasn’t been a player in my memory who’s dived for every nickel with the enthusiasm this guy has demonstrated. (Dwight? Rich man. Camel. Needle’s eye. Google these terms along with “New Testament” and get back to me.) He can’t help being injured. He can help being miserable, though, and this guy is simply never happy. He wasn’t happy in Orlando. He wasn’t happy in L.A., and he’s not going to be happy wherever he ends up next. This would be tolerable if he brought championship ball with him. (Shaquille O’Neal wasn’t always a field of buttercups, either.) But the guy doesn’t necessarily help you win. He looks great — not good. Great — in the uniform. At the baggage carousel, there’s nobody more formidable. On the court? Not so much. He couldn’t really mesh with Kobe Bryant and he never really got along with Mike D’Antoni, and now he’s back running the grift again. Please, Houston, sign this guy. Moses Malone will come back from retirement just to kick his ass.

3. This exchange:

Yi, in Chinese: “With Ricky Rubio joining you this might turn into your very own ‘Lost in Thailand.’”

Wall, in Chinese: “I see myself more as Jackie Chan.

Note to the subtitles guy: Yi is speaking in his native language. You don’t have to render it as Chinglish in the translation.

4. Pronunciation-wise, by far the best line uttered by either American was, “I fart.”

For the record, Howard’s Chinese was better than Wall’s.

(H/T Alicia)

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 the 2010 American science fiction film ‘Tron: Legacy.’”

That does sound amazing, actually. And then you watch the trailer…

Go ahead, I’ll wait. It’s above and below (on Youku for those in China after the jump). There’s something else you should see.

These are GIFs from Buzzfeed of the trailer. Are you able to handle this amazingness?

Dwight Howard doing inexplicable things:

Carmelo Anthony making what I am sure is the only face he makes the entire movie:

Scottie Pippen. I guess… something.

Li Anlan’s Shanghai Daily story has been linked to on Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie blog and Grantland, so, well done, Anlan, your bosses should give you a bonus.

Slated for release this summer, Amazing also stars American actor Eric Mabius and Chinese actors Huang Xiaoming, Huang Yi, Charles Chen and Amber Kuo. It looks utterly unwatchable to all people whose blood alcohol content does not exceed 0.25.

Just when you thought this saga couldn’t get crazier, Jeremy Lin leads the Knicks back from a double-digit deficit and hits the game-winning bucket near the buzzer. I’ve never seen an NBA crowd cheer its home team’s loss quite like this.

Tudou 56.com video for those in China after the jump.

(Tudou deleted the original video, claiming “copyright” issues.)