Nine seasons after Yao Ming walked onto a basketball court in Texas and inspired a generation of young Chinese to learn to dribble — or at least to watch until the final buzzer — his looming exit from professional basketball is triggering nostalgia for the man who became a national hero and frustration over why no one in China, which has tens of millions of basketball players, appears capable of replacing him as an NBA star.
For nearly a decade, China has been enthralled by the cult of Yao spun by Communist Party propagandists and corporate sponsors: the winner, the gentle giant, the favorite son. His image was ubiquitous in China and the public basked in his glow even as other Chinese players in the NBA sputtered.
Yet his retirement is forcing many Chinese to acknowledge that their country has relied on Yao alone for victory and national pride, ignoring shortcomings in the state sport system that leaves China facing a future bereft of NBA and Olympic basketball glory.
Photo: AFP
“We can either choose to blame the gods and whine about our misfortune or we can step up to the plate and train the next generation of basketball talent,” Zhang Weiping, a basketball commentator and former national team member, wrote in an editorial last week.
Yi Jianlian, whom Time magazine once predicted would be the next Yao, is now an unrestricted free agent after being dropped by the Washington Wizards. Sun Yue, the only Chinese national to play point guard in the NBA, was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, but played 10 games, averaging a mere 0.6 points, before his demotion to the Development League after one season. He has since -returned to the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA).
China, Zhang wrote in Basketball Pioneers magazine, must hone smaller, faster and more skilled players like those who thrive in the West.
“China has no shortage of this kind of talent,” he said. “We simply have coaching and systemic problems that prevent us from discovering and developing these players.”
While the US develops players through an almost Darwinian process of natural selection in youth leagues, high school teams and colleges, China has a rigid Soviet-inspired state network of athletic schools, coaches and bureaucrats that selects players as early as age four.
Yao, the son of exceptionally tall basketball players, was a 1.7m third grader when he was picked by a local sports school for a life of endless drills geared entirely toward molding him into Olympic material. Every professional Chinese player has a similar body and biography, and yet, before and during the 30-year-old Yao’s reign, China has managed to reach the Olympic quarter-finals only four times.
The state recruiting strategy is rife with problems. Officials choose children from across the country based solely on how tall they are.
“If height were the determining factor, we would be the best team in the world,” said Li Nan, 32, who works for a Beijing advertising agency and plays basketball in his free time, noting that every member of the national team is 2.1m or taller.
However, youth and height, as any NBA fan knows, do not alone predict victory on the court.
“At age 10, you can’t identify the next Allen Iverson,” Bob Donewald, the American coach of China’s national team, said in a telephone interview.
Nor the next Derrick Rose, the NBA’s most valuable player last season, who stands 1.9m.
As the coach of the national team and before that the Shanghai Sharks, Yao’s former team, Donewald sees the structural problems plaguing Chinese basketball up close. The system’s failures, he says, directly affect the quality of his players.
“What’s amazing is that in a country of 1.3 billion, I can’t find a point guard,” he said.
A case in point is Shanghai, population 22 million, which picks a maximum of 30 people for its club team.
“If you’re not selected, there is no coaching, no practices and no training,” Donewald said. “China is filtering through guys and cutting them off so early there’s no way for them to get better.”
Therein lies the biggest obstacle for Chinese basketball. Despite a generation of men who grew up with Yao and the NBA, and that plays informally in cities and towns across the country, they are never fully developed. Furthermore, the disconnect between China’s state-run athletic schools and its general educational institutions prevents older children who haven’t been recruited into the system from getting the opportunity to play.
Those who do play on public courts are in their 20s or older, Donewald said, reflecting society’s traditionally single-minded focus on education. That means most children spend their days and nights studying for tests, not playing pick-up games in the park or practicing in after-school programs.
While Donewald has seen some incremental change, he says the government squandered Yao’s popularity by not creating the type of grassroots opportunities for Chinese amateurs to improve — a formula that seemingly works in the US.
“When you work in Chinese basketball, you realize that the CBA, the clubs and the national team don’t care and don’t want to hear about the process,” Donewald said. “They just want results, but it’s by building the infrastructure that you win more medals and make more stars.”
No matter how Chinese sports officials address the dearth of basketball talent, resting on Yao’s laurels is no longer an option. His departure, some fans said, has stirred a surprising emotion: relief.
“Yao’s presence was like a massive shadow that no one could escape,” Li Nan said. “Everybody thought if they wanted to make it to the NBA, they would have to be like Yao — a seven foot six [2.3m] Chinese ambassador.”
According to a recent report in the Chinese news media, Yao no longer wants to carry the national team on the court or the country’s pride on his shoulders.
“Chinese basketball should no longer hope for anything from me,” he said.
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