Zijie Shen, 16 year old 7 footer, another big kid out of china

Zijie Shen played for Team China during the Nike World Global Challenge 2014.(http://www.nikeglobalchallenge.com/schedule/)

The games were streamed and recorded here (http://www.d1circuit.com/page/show/790853-d1-circuit-covering-the-nike-elite-youth-basketball-league)

I watched a few of his games and He did "ok" but wasn't anything great.

 

if he really is 16, I think he deserves some slack.

 

There are over a billion people in china. I read an article a few years back that said that there were only something like 300 of them that were 7 feet tall or taller. So obviously the streets of China aren't just loaded with giants.

Honestly, how frequently do you see people over the height of 6'6 in the US when you're just out and about? I'm guessing not too frequently. I certainly don't.

 

what I want to know is how with so many people in China they can't even get one NBA worth guard prospect

 

Because point guards are hard to come by?

 

Nearly everyone in China plays guard

They can't even develop a single role player that can be considered to be drafted. It's actually ridiculosu given how popular basketball is in that country

 

Probably the same reason why out of 300M Americans, none of them are in the top 10 soccer players in the world. The country is just in its infancy stages when it comes to this sport.

 

Again because point guards are hard to come by and their skill set just aren't that great? How hard is that to comprehend sir?

 

But, but.... what about Jeremy Lin!

 

It's their developmental system. I think Yao has spoke about it as well, but there hasn't been any major changes. Here's a article about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/s...china-to-rethink-basketball-system.html?_r=1&

 

They all look Lin to me

 

No, I think you are the one that doesn't get it. Probably because you've never seen Asian basketball. In any type of pick up game involving Chinese people you will see more guards then forwards this is just normal. For a country of 1.3 billion to not even identify one NBA prospect guard and more specifically point guards is ridiculous. PG skills can be trained (dribbling, ball control, shooting) with the vision part being the natural talent. China has taken the height idea to the extreme without devloping fundamental skills.

Nearly EVERYONE is at point guard or shooting guard height. But they can't even draft a decent one in their own National team. China should have really good caliber guards (given the popularity of the sport and the average height of the population). I just don't think the chinese system identifies or develops guards. As someone else has linked the whole system is obsessed with height and anyone outside that box is NOT trained.

Still blows my mind that at 1.3 billion people they can't identify a decent point guard to run their team.

 

One issue is that if a boy is athletically gifted but not projected to be very tall, he probably gets shuffled to a state training program for some other sport-- gymnastics, track, boxing, whatever. The basketball programs just get the prospects who are projected to be tall at a young age.

 

Your dads all look the same to me.

 

"In August 2006, Rubio led the rising junior Spanish national team to the FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship. During the tournament Rubio achieved two triple-doubles and a quadruple-double. In the 110–106 double overtime finale victory over Russia, Rubio scored 51 points, the first player to do so in FIBA tournaments since Luol Deng (in 2001), grabbed 24 rebounds, made 12 assists, and stole the ball 7 times—a performance unprecedented in the tournament's history."

If a guy like Rubio, who is a point guard, can grab 24 rebounds in the finals of this type of tournament, that isn't saying a whole lot about the quality of big men in this type of event.

You can't really judge Zhou Qi by his FIBA performances. From what I've read about him on draftexpress, he really reminds me of Andrea Bargnani - a guy who was also ridiculously skilled but didn't really have that desire to become a star. Just take a look what they have to say about Zhou Qi:

-Struggles to establish deep post position.
-Shies away from contact
-Has a difficult time finishing when an opponent puts a body on him
-Rarely boxes out on defensive glass.
-Doesn't go out of his area for loose balls
-Very passive offensively.
-Doesn't call for the ball or show any real emotion
-Activity/effort level is average.
-Doesn't run the floor willingly.
-Looks a bit lazy/apathetic at times