Six months ago, seven-time NBA all-star Tracy McGrady shocked the basketball world when he signed a one-year contract with the Qingdao Double Star Eagles of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). With Stephon Marbury already setting the standard as the ultimate CBA success story, McGrady was expected to further raise the profile of the top league in the world's largest basketball market. He was already a ...

I'm not sure how, but Tracy McGrady has a way of attracting refereeing debacles. (As a Beijing fan, I'm not just talking about Wednesday night's avian contest between the Ducks and Double Star Eagles in Qingdao, though that was massively craptacular too, with the home team benefitting from so many calls that I wondered aloud whether the CBA was publicly making amends with T-Mac for suspending him.) The wors ...

We daresay things are looking up for Tracy McGrady. His team, the Qingdao Double Star Eagles, has won three games in a row, and none more dramatically than Wednesday on the road against Liaoning. You'll remember that in the season opener, McGrady had the ball in his hands with time winding down but turned it over, costing Qingdao the win; he made no such mistake this week. With a second remaining, T-Mac nai ...

Tracy McGrady and the Qingdao Double Star Eagles have seemingly found a groove on the court, winning four straight, but as we've known all along, T-Mac's season would be one that makes headlines on and off the court. Here's another example of the latter, via Jon Pastuszek of NiuBBall: Considering that the iconic McGrady’s every move has been and will continue to be the lead story this season, perhaps a feat ...

Tracy McGrady's wild, wacky, probably frustrating inaugural season in the CBA continues. On Wednesday, after his team was absolutely robbed of a chance to capture a signature road win at Bayi, T-Mac took to his official Sina Weibo account to vent his frustration. At 11:32 pm, he wrote: CBA has to do a better job with these officials. My team plays hard every night and the 3 blind mice take it away from us! ...

Late in the game on Wednesday in Ningbo, Bayi was clinging to a three-point lead and had the ball against Qingdao in a hard-fought, physical game in which the teams combined to take 81 free throws (43 for Bayi, 38 for Qingdao). Then, in the final minute, the refs botched a call so horribly that no one who was watching could have avoided the obvious question: "Is the fix on?" ...

Tracy McGrady's first season in the CBA has been pretty rough, but has it really come to this, T-Mac? Watching the Lakers play from an airport McDonald's? The above comes from Sina Weibo via Adam Minter, and it's sadly funny on many levels. ...

On Tuesday, Gilbert Arenas played his first game since November 24 -- when he pulled up lame after just six minutes in Beijing -- and it was apparent he wasn't completely healthy. He limped to the bench in the first half, fueling the same questions that reporters asked last month: is he physically fit to compete? Arenas would come back in the second half, but his skills, sadly, remained conspicuously absent ...

This weekend has not been good to Tracy McGrady. On Friday he suffered the indignity of having to run off the court because of diarrhea -- to say nothing of the indignity of a 10-point performance in a 30-point home loss. Yesterday in Beijing, against the defending champs, he was involved in what could have been an even dirtier play, when he intentionally elbowed Beijing's Ji Zhe early in the fourth quarter ...

Perhaps it's safe to say the excitement surrounding Tracy McGrady's arrival to Qingdao and the CBA's Double Star Eagles has worn off. In his debut, T-Mac got stripped clean with 10 seconds to go in a tie game, then watched Sundiata Gaines drill a buzzer-beater on the other end. Less than a week later, his team entered the fourth quarter with an 11-point lead against Bayi, only to lose it and then watch Chin ...

The script couldn't have been more perfect. Making his Chinese Basketball Association debut on national television, Tracy McGrady had the ball in his hands with only a three-second difference between the game and shot clock. His visiting Qingdao Double Star Eagles had erased a double-digit deficit and were all knotted at 92 with the Fujian Sturgeons. The home crowd roared, just as they had every time T-Mac ...

Qingdao had its final preseason tune-up on Tuesday away from its home court in Binzhou, Shandong province in a contest that probably wouldn't have filled half the arena if Tracy McGrady weren't in the house. McGrady scored five points in 2 minutes against a team of foreigners -- 98 seconds, to be exact -- then took a seat on the bench. He sat for the next 46 minutes, until the final buzzer. As Jon Pastuszek ...

As you know, former NBA superstar Tracy McGrady is in China and will be playing with the CBA's Qingdao Double Star Eagles this year. He's kind of a big deal. While this clip from practice (and the ones after the jump) probably won't tell you everything -- for instance, whether he'll stay healthy, which was a problem for him Stateside -- it's still fun to watch. After all, it's just him tooling on his teamma ...

China's love of basketball most wondrously expresses itself in the way fans welcome aging former stars from the NBA. You, basketball aficionado, might call Tracy McGrady an oft-injured and washed-up bench player, but here, they call him a megawatt superstar, Yao Ming's former teammate, and now Qingdao's most famous resident. He will be playing with the CBA's Double Star Eagles this season, and there is hope ...

Shaq is a spokesman for Harbin Beer while Tracy McGrady shills for Sedrin. Who's better in their respective ads, shown back-to-back in the above? I think I've had Sedrin before, but it obviously was not very memorable. Also, the name reminds me of sleep medicine. Harbin, meanwhile, is absolutely non-notable in every way. I'd call it "insipid," but that's much too fancy a description for such a bland, bland ...