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 China's resident old-timer, Wang Zhizhi, hit a game-winning five-footer (controversy notwithstanding, as the game clock started late and probably gave Wang the extra half-second he needed to get the shot off).
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... Read more »
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 of NiuBBall -- a site that, even in preseason, never takes a seat -- reports:
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 teammates and dunking. Yeah, he'll be the offense.
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... Read more »
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 thing.
