04.14.06
Big Basketball Stories
One of my students tells me the operative motto in China this week is this: “大郅，你好!”…”Da Zhi, Ni hao!”…or “Hello, Big Zhi!”
Big Zhi, of course, is NBA star Wang Zhizhi, the first Chinese to play in the NBA, who returned to China this week for the first time since his refusal to play for the Chinese national team after going to America to play NBA basketball. I asked my students this morning whether they thought he’d be playing on the 2008 Olympic team for China, and they all nodded their heads. “He won’t be the key player,” one said (that honor will almost certainly belong to Yao Ming), “but he will be very important.”
Chinese readers can check out this story about Wang Zhizhi’s return on the website for the People’s Daily. We’ll translate the piece into English and post it soon here.
The other big basketball story in China this week is of course the state of Houston center Yao Ming’s broken fifth metatarsal bone in his left foot, and the collective heave of anxiety in China over the country’s basketball chances in this summer’s World Championships in Tokyo if Yao does not recover in time. The Rockets’ season wasn’t at risk; they weren’t in contention for the playoffs and had just four games left in the season. But the NBA off-season is China’s “on-season,” the time when Yao comes home to play for the national team and to play the onshore role of China’s greatest crossover sports star. It will be a long, hot summer without Yao as he recovers.
The angst in China has been colorfully covered by the Western news media this week. Check out this article from Reuters in the Washington Post about the skepticism Chinese fans are throwing towards the Western doctors who claimed Yao would be out for six months. Other coverage includes articles from the China Daily and the People’s Daily. A wrapup of the entire season’s worth of Rockets injuries can be found at the Houston Chronicle website.