This is wrong. Only basketball fans will watch NBA championship. But for Olympics, even non-basketball fans will watch it for patriotic reasons. So it is even more important.
stat line on tmac-1 does look good 28.31 PPD (posts per day) 8.78 boards (message boards visited/day) 7.46 assists (other posts quoted) a threat for a triple double every time out, indeed impressive
uh...first, yao doesn't want to play as much as the NT wants him to. the chinese NT originally wanted him to play every summer but they backed off the demand due to pressure. second, wang zhizhi NEVER refused to play for the NT at all. what exactly happened in 2002 was that he asked to be allowed to join the team late in the training camp or he wouldn't play, which btw is Bogut's point here. but then the cba declared he refused to play. it's true that wang zhizhi or yao ming has an agreement with the cba to play for the national nt. but you gotta consider the cba basically held their joining nba hostage, therefore it's hard to say they were truly willing to accept all the conditions of the agreement, they didn't have any other option but to sign it if they want to go to the nba.
Good post. Just to add one more point, please stop making it a "PRC evil empire" fuss. As Bogut said, "a lot of European teams don't understand that", so this is not limited to China. In fact, this national vs sports club/franchise conflict is an even more commonly seen issue in soccer, and is fairly universal. Media/fans here has blown up the whole issue as if it's unique to mainland China. It's not. As NBA becomes more international I bet this type of conflicts will only get more and more frequent. PS. Seriously, US government/media/people just need a public enemy to feel comfortable, first USSR, then Iraq, now PRC. Well, I don't want to elaborate to get too OT.
The problem with the Country vs National team thing is the NBA season is a ridiculously intensive game. I would say that star players like Yao and T-mac average ridiculous minutes over the course of a season when most high level intensive sports have max 1 -2 games a week. Three games a week in Football is ALOT. If you look at where Bogut comes from, the NBL here in Australia doesn't play anywhere near the length or amount of games the NBA plays. So the offseason where the players play for their national team is magnified cause they get little or no rest from a sport that is probably the most draining in the world.
Seriously, some people dont' even read the original post, as long as they see the words 'Yao', 'China', 'CNT', their brains automatically start spewing out the 'evil empire' stuff. and bronx should really read this article, to understand why international players value international championships over NBA championships.
Yeah, and Bogut has started playing better on the court - in the game they played against Spurs yesterday, he had 17 points/15 rbs while Duncan had 9/7. It seems that the trouble he gave Yao a few weeks ago wasn't an one-off fluke. I don't think Yao will miss the Olympics though, probably just not as productive...
I wonder which is more unrealistic, Australia winning the gold medal or the Bucks winning the NBA championship. I wouldn't bet my money on either
I feel the way the international competition is structured. As long as we get a point guard the Aussies could go a long way. I mean as we've seen with USA as long as the other team has a reliable shooter your in with a chance.
rofl, thats very clever. Nice If only the real Tmac could average all this in real life-that would be ironic
Well you never know. Bogut powered Australia to win the 2003 junior world championship. Australia demolished the Deron Williams led USA team in the quarter finals, 106 - 85.
First,don't speak for Yao as how many games/what type of games he wants to play for China. Second,there was an agreement between Rockets and CNT before Yao came to Houston. CNT never demands anything beyond the agreement. Instead, CNT has tried its best not play Yao,like the last Asian Championship. Here is the thing: well Rockest try to play Yao as much as possible, CNT has been doing the opposit. If Yao ming is indeed over used, who is the one to be blamed? As for Wang Zhizhi, you obviously take his word for the truth. Most of us know at least he was not being totally honest. For example, at one time he played stupid sympathy card and told Dallas media that he was worried he would not be allowed coming back if he went back to China. While many American beileve what he said and condemn China, many Chinese here including myself felt rediculous and actually upset with this kind of lie because it is just so low to mislead public and try to damage your country's image for your own interest. Of course it was not entirely his fault. His agent, a guy from Taiwan, played very bad role there and the outcome was very bad for them too. It will take too long to talk the whole thing and I do not thing many here are interested in it anyway. Bottomline is, Wang did a lot of things wrong and very unclassy. Despite all these, he is still forgiven and play for the national team.(BTW,Wang is probably in the US at this moment for personal issue)
well, in my opinion, it has to be yao himself. rocktes have the right to make him play. cnt have the right to make him play as well. it's yao who agreed to all these knowing or not knowing he can't handle it. but then again it's cba that kinda forced him into this situation. is cba the only state bball governing body that requires its players sign an agreement to play for the nt before they would release them to join the nba? i think so.
How do you know? What 'agreement' has been signed? What are the exact terms of the 'agreement'? Has it been confirmed or not? I remember there were a lot of rumors reported by the media during the negotiation process in 2002. Most of them had been proved that they were just baseless speculations. So what is your source? We want to know.
bogut's been playing well this year. he was killing it in jan, has tapered a little since then, but still had a pretty strong feb, overall. when he gets the shot attempts he puts it in the hole and does a good job of filling the sheet. otherwise redd just takes the ball and shoots, shoots, shoots.
