The Shanxi Flame claimed the WCBA championship yesterday, winning on the Zhejiang Golden Bulls' "home" court 97-87 to clinch the series 3-1. The game was played in Hangzhou, not Zhejiang's usual home city of Yiwu, due to the fans' assault on the refs following Zhejiang's Game 1 loss. What really did the Golden Bulls in, however, was an injury to Liz Cambage, who took the court at less than 100 percent. (She ...

What are the repercussions for a home crowd in which dozens of men jump from the stands to assault the referees after a basketball game? We suspected the punishment would be severe, and now we know exactly how much so. The WCBA has ruled that Zhejiang's professional women's basketball team, the Golden Bull, will not be allowed to play in its home city of Yiwu for a full year. ...

Maya Moore scored 53 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in Game 1 of the WBCA finals yesterday. Whatever superlatives you want to append to that statement, feel free to do so, but I'll just write this again: 53 points, 13 rebounds. This is where the focus should be: a remarkable individual effort from the world's best female basketball player on Chinese professional basketball's biggest stage. Imagine if LeBron ...

Last Friday, before all-world basketball phenom Maya Moore's first game in China, I wrote: Let’s play a game: how many points will Maya Moore score in her WCBA debut tomorrow for Shanxi Xingrui Flame vs. Bayi? I’m going to set the over/under at 59.5. She did not score 60 that game, topping out at 37. The next game, she only scored 34. But last night, against Yunnan, she decided it was time: ...

We were hoping for 60 points out of Maya Moore in her China basketball debut on Saturday. Instead, she merely filled up the stat sheet while leading her team, previously winless Shanxi, over previously unbeaten Bayi, 72-59. Moore, wearing Michael Jordan's No. 23 (she's the first woman signed with Jordan Brand), scored 37 points and collected 17 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 steals. The effort was enough to wow ...

Let's play a game: how many points will Maya Moore score in her WCBA debut tomorrow for Shanxi Xingrui Flame vs. Bayi? I'm going to set the over/under at 59.5 (take the poll after the jump). Shanxi has no other scorer (currently 0-2), and while Bayi is 2-0, we're going to go out on a limb and say the team has absolutely no one who will be able to stop her. Remember, JR Smith scored 60 playing in a CBA game ...

They kept trying to jinx it, I swear to God they did. Before tonight's game, the club gave away t-shirts (white, per Stephon Marbury's suggestion) that read, "March 30, 2012: Beijing Ducks are champions." With 21.9 seconds left, Beijing up two and Guangdong set to inbound, the crowd chanted, "Championship! Championship!" ...

I'm going to be frank with you here: I don't know that Beijing's 89-84 win over Zhejiang -- clinching the series 3 games to 0 -- was "trending" news, as the kids say. But that shouldn't excuse my negligence. Beijing won its first WCBA title in its 31-year history (for comparison, the WNBA has only been around 14 years), led by its star center, Nicky Anosike, who you might remember as a star at Tennessee. In ...