Beijing is again king of Chinese basketball. The Ducks beat the Xinjiang Flying Tigers 98-88 tonight in Urumqi, clinching the CBA championship 4 games to 2. Stephon Marbury and Randolph Morris, who played so shockingly poorly in Game 5 in Beijing that I heard more than one person say they threw the game (14 points each, combined 7 for 38 from the field), redeemed themselves by scoring 28 and 30 points, respectively. Morris was chosen series MVP (a recent rule change now lets foreigners win this award, traditionally reserved for Chinese players only).

Inside the locker room after the game, Marbury sat and sobbed into a towel while members of an overzealous media crowded around him. “Beijing is champs!” players shouted.

There were no demonstrable gestures on the court, unlike at the conclusion of Game 5, when Xinjiang’s Muhtar Xirelijiang did this.

The Ducks also won in 2011-12, their first basketball championship. (Marbury was clearly the MVP that year, though the award went to Lee Hsueh-lin.) They lost in the semis last year to the Shandong Lions.

Meanwhile, this marks the fourth time in six years that the Xinjiang Flying Tigers have lost in the CBA finals. The team finished second in the regular season this year, behind the Guangdong Southern Tigers (who Beijing beat in the semis). Xinjiang’s quest for its first CBA title will have to wait one more year.

We’ll have more coverage — pictures and videos — tomorrow. UPDATE: 3/31, 4:15 pm: here.

(Top image via Sina)

Allen Iverson and Jason “White Chocolate” Williams were among the more famous basketball players in Beijing on Saturday to take on the defending CBA champs in an exhibition at Beijing National Stadium. (No Dennis Rodman this time.) The Ducks beat the American “All-Stars” 132-103, but all anyone could talk about afterwards was the “juke” that Iverson put on the Ducks’ 22-year-old guard, Fang Shuo, just before the end of the first half. Also getting a lot of chatter was Jason Williams dribbling the ball through defender Ji Zhe’s legs.

First, the AI play:

GIF via Buzzfeed

Fang’s teammates had a great time with this one. “I feel like that move really was too pretty. Really,” says Yin Tianren with a nearly straight face. “He really truly jukes him to the ground. There weren’t any extracurricular moves, I feel. Pure juke.”

Uh-huh. What really happened?

“I just want to ask you one question,” a Tiantian Sports journalist says to Fang.

Laughing, Fang replies: “I don’t want to answer.”

Alas, leave it to grizzled Ducks veteran Stephon Marbury to set the record straight: “He didn’t fall. Not tonight. [Iverson] stepped on his foot, that’s why it was an accident.”

“His move really was very strong,” Fang says. “And him being so old — when he was young, I suspect I would’ve been shaken even if he didn’t step on my foot.”

Fang wasn’t the only one getting an earful from teammates. In one of the best locker room scenes you’ll see (Chinese sports media have unprecedented access to locker rooms, it turns out), after a journalist asks, “After you fell down, were all your teammates laughing at you?,” Fang retorts, “That’s alright, Ji Zhe was in the same boat!”

The camera swings left, where we see Ji Zhe, sitting two lockers down, giving Fang a droll smile.

The incident in question involved Jason Williams dribbling the ball through Ji’s — or “G Man,” as Randolph Morris calls him — legs.

“I’m a Jason Williams fan,” Ji would say.

As if you needed more proof that the Ducks might be the most likable team in China, this video puts all doubt to rest. They’re young (for the most part; Marbury is old), their coach isn’t a hothead, they truly seem to like one another, and they win. What else do you want? They begin their season at home against Shanghai late next month.

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.

While he didn’t get the greeting party that Stephen Marbury is sure to, Morris seemed genuinely happy to be back. In fact, “I’m the happiest guy on the planet right now,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for six long months and I’m just happy that Beijing wanted me to come back, I’m happy that the city is receptive, and I’m happy that I have a home here.”

He said his offseason training has made him even better.

“My summer’s basically all I did was just work out the whole time, just try to get better and better,” he said. “It was just dedicated to being better than last year at basketball. That’s all I thought about all summer, was trying to get another championship.”

Morris will need to be better, since Marbury turns 36 in February and is coming off ankle surgery. For his sake and its own, the team can’t rely on him so much this season.

The Ducks snuck up on everyone last year, winning their first 13 games before hitting a lull mid-season that saw them lose eight of nine. Then they regrouped to take second place in the league, snuck by Shanxi in the maximum five games before beating the Guangdong Southern Tigers 4 games to 1 in their best-of-seven CBA finals.

Needless to say, the Ducks will sneak up on absolutely no one this year, especially after acquiring Li Gen from Qingdao, the CBA’s leading Chinese scorer last season. In fact, everyone is reloading. Shanxi has brought back both of its imports, Marcus Williams and Charles Gaines (the best one-two foreign punch in the league). Four-time runner-up Xinjiang has regrouped with ex-NBA’er Von Wafer. And the Guangdong Southern Tigers, looking to reclaim the crown, inked Yi Jianlian, who will, undoubtedly, be the best Chinese player in the league — and just possibly the best player, period.

About Yi’s signing, Morris doesn’t seem troubled. “I think it’s good news for everybody. The better the players are, the better the competition is, the better it is for the fans. I’m happy that he’s back.”

Spoken like a champ. Soon we’ll see if he and the rest of the Ducks have gotten better, too. The season begins next month, and we can’t wait.