Basketball stands tall in modern China

The Rocky

Published August 5, 2008 at 7:51 p.m.

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Video Video: Michael Jordan logos and Houston Rockets jersey are a common sight as American basketball culture infiltrates China Watch »

Photo by Filippo Monteforte © Getty Images

A Chinese youngster takes aim on an outdoor court in Beijing. The Chinese government plans to build regulation-size concrete courts in 100,000 villages by 2010.

Photo by Filippo Monteforte © Getty Images

A ball flies in Beijing’s new Olympic Basketball Gymnasium.

Photo by Andy Wong © Associated Press

Shoppers flock to the newly opened NBA Store in China’s capital city. The nation’s basketball junkies wear team jerseys and Nike shoes — just like their U.S. counterparts.

Catering to China

It’s tucked away in the middle of an Oregon forest, 8,000 miles from Beijing.

But all roads lead to China from the United States Basketball Academy, a 47-acre training center for young players and coaches from the Chinese Basketball Association and China’s national teams.

“Our school caters to the young superstars,” said founder Bruce O’Neil, who has assisted Chinese coaches in developing NBA players Yao Ming, Wang Zhizhi and Mengke Bateer. “Every year, we bring in the top 30 to 50 players.

A lot of these kids are going to be in the next wave. They need several things. They need to get better defensively, they need to get stronger. So we do a lot of conditioning, nutrition and just the subtleties of the game.

“The whole goal in China is to make the national team better.”

O’Neil opened the school in 1993, never imagining the majority of his business would come from China. But during more than 70 trips to China, the former University of Hawaii coach worked out deals with officials to expose players to the American game and coaches.

Players work on defensive techniques, shooting drills and conditioning exercises and stay in cabin-style dormitories. The USBA also recruits American pro players for the CBA.

A few Chinese players have made the leap to Division I colleges, including Ji Xiang, a 6-foot-10 forward who was recruited by Hawaii.

“There aren’t many who’ve been in the system who have the educational background to qualify for college in America,” O’Neil said. “Many pro teams don’t allow kids to go to school — they have just a cursory education. Plus, there’s the English barrier.”

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BEIJING - For more than five centuries, only Chinese royalty and their minions could enter the Forbidden City, a 178-acre sprawl of exotic palaces and gardens in the heart of Beijing.

Now anyone willing to plunk down $7 can pass through the timeless walls. But instead of priceless treasures, visitors are greeted by a puzzling sight - two basketball courts smack in an ancient courtyard, where guards play two-on-two games during breaks.

A half-mile away, a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong looks down over Tiananmen Square, the place where hundreds of students were massacred in 1989 during an uprising that shook Beijing and sent shock waves around the world.

But times have changed. Only a mile away, hundreds of basketball junkies in NBA jerseys and $100 Nikes glide and bump their way through pickup games at Dong Dan Park, where hourlong waits to play are routine.

After the game's over, the kids stroll to McDonald's and Starbucks, passing under giant billboards and posters of Yao Ming, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson and other global hoops icons, many of whom will go five-on-five in the Beijing Olympics.

Welcome to 21st-century China, where the passion for basketball - the quintessential American game - parallels the explosive growth of the economy and an obsessive craving for Western products and individuality.

"The interest is phenomenal. There are courts all over the nation, busy almost 2 4/7," said Bruce O'Neil, founder of the United States Basketball Academy, which trains Chinese players and coaches. "I've been there 70 times. The first time, in 1997, I saw just how hungry the people were to touch Western culture, how many people are actively involved in the sport. It was shocking.

"We'd go into a remote city for a game, and there'd be thousands of people waiting out in front to see you, to touch you."

Explosive growth

Today, some 300 million Chinese play basketball, and NBA gear is sold in 50,000 retail outlets.

An NBA showdown last season between 7-foot-6 Yao and 7-foot Yi Jianlian attracted about 200 million Chinese viewers - more than twice the number of Americans who watched the last Super Bowl.

In the mid-1980s, there were only 50 courts in Beijing, most of them inside military compounds.

Now it's nearly impossible to find a schoolyard in China without a backboard and rim - arenas are sprouting in gargantuan urban centers and far-flung provinces, and the government plans to build regulation-size concrete courts in 100,000 villages by 2010.

High school and college programs are also on the rise and, eventually, could rival state-run academies.

Despite several false starts and uneven support, the Chinese Basketball Association has 16 teams in 15 cities, some in distant provinces.

"They like action," said Del Harris, China's 2004 Olympic coach. "They like pingpong and badminton. Those games are a lot different than we know them. They like those action games. Street ball is becoming very popular there. They like three-on-three games."

Planting the seed

Basketball arrived in China in the 1890s with the Christian missionaries, soon after James Naismith nailed up the first hoop in Springfield, Mass. In 1935, it was declared a national pastime.

Mao embraced the sport when his guerillas, who liked to shoot hoops, marched into Beijing in 1949. Even during the Cultural Revolution of the late '60s - when Mao attempted to rid the country of foreign influences - factories and farms continued to field teams.

"It was actually pretty unique," said Andrew Morris, associate history professor at California Polytechnic State University, who has written extensively on Chinese sports. "A lot of other sports were shot down and a lot of athletes roughed up, but basketball really kept going."

Yet basketball lagged far behind pingpong and soccer in popularity until the early '90s, when the rise of globalization and the Internet, the fall of traditional communist economies - which opened markets - and NBA commissioner David Stern's global ambitions created a new consciousness in the country.

Land of the giants

Basketball's place in the cultural vanguard will be underscored at the Beijing Games, when Yao and Yi's contrasting styles converge.

Yao is a traditional post-up center, a product of a staid, state-run system that prizes stability, uniformity and loyalty.

Yi comes from Shenzhen, a city of reform and Westernization, and from the post-Tiananmen Square generation, which embraces late leader Deng Xiaoping's revolutionary proclamation that "to get rich is glorious."

Yi learned the game in the streets, moving and shooting the outside jumper like American players he idolized.

China has long focused on developing big men, assigning secondary status to point guards, who lacked the freedom to call their own plays or improvise on the run.

But now, NBA stars such as Iverson have struck a chord with the younger Chinese with their bold play - and bolder personalities.

"Iverson's just so fast and his shooting ability is extraordinary," said Yi, who now plays for New Jersey.

"Kids who're similar in height look at him and see such explosive play and want to be like him. We study the American game."

Added Morris: "The NBA is kind of rebellious. I think they pick up on African-American style and want to be rebellious. The kids walk with the same kind of swagger. They can turn on the TV just like the kids in Milwaukee."

But the prospect of finding a basketball behemoth continues to fascinate Chinese and American coaches.

During a visit near the Mongolian border, Detroit Pistons international scout Tony Ronzone counted 16 7-footers - all of them 18 and under - setting off alarms throughout the NBA.

Seven years ago, 7-footer Wang Zhizhi was granted permission to join the Dallas Mavericks for the 2001-02 season, making him the first Chinese star to play in the NBA.

But at season's end, he refused to return to play for the national team - a humiliating moment. Even more embarrassing for many Chinese was the fact that he rode the pine in America, which is why many felt uneasy when Yao joined the Houston Rockets.

"I think that inferiority complex is there," Morris said.

National ambition

According to reports, about 300 million viewers turned in for Yao's NBA debut, the start of a dreamlike season in which he was named rookie of the year, quelling Chinese fears. The real basketball boom began then.

But, in China, basketball isn't a business or a form of entertainment - it's a vessel of national ambition, one of the few business activities still under state control.

As recently as 1994, the Chinese Basketball Association didn't keep individual statistics, fearing "the unhealthy American imperialist sports style."

It's the Olympics that matter, which is why a nation of 1.3 billion people will be following Yao and Yi and the Big Red Machine, including Mao Xinyu, the grandson of Chairman Mao. "I wish the old man could see the development and changes in China today," he said in a recent interview. "He'd be happy."

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