The tournament begins today. This is the official web page http://www.china2009.fiba.com/ Philippines is killing Sri Lanka in their opening game now, 1 minute to go in 3rd quarter, the score is 80 - 26! 2 recommended games later today: Iran vs Taipei 1600 BeiJing time (5 hrs to go) Hamed Ehadadi is the guy to watch. I think he is the 2nd best center in Asia now (after Yao). India vs China 1900 (8 hrs to go) Yi JianLian is the guy to watch. He trained very hard this summer and he has a lot to prove this season starting from taking Yao's baton as the go to guy in CNT. fibatv will broadcast the games but it is not free. I will post the cctv5 links as soon as I found them from the net. GO CHINA!!!
Okay, atdhe.net is showing the PHI vs SRI game now. 111 - 31! [Edit] Final score is 115 - 31. Will post the box score as soon as I found one.
Boxscore. IT IS REAL LOL- http://china2009.fiba.com/pages/eng/fe/09/fascm/p/gid/1/grid/A/rid/7118/game.html
Nothing interesting in the group stage. The seeded teams are just too good for the rest. There is a quote from Habbadi thou. "China is a great team with Yao. Without Yao, we can beat the China team." Got this from my newspaper.
^Thanks BleedRocketsRed. If I am not mistaken, their best player, James Yap, didn't even play in this game. Guess the coach is giving him some rest since he's just rushed to TianJin from Phillipines after attending his mother-in-law funeral. And yes, his mother-in-law is Corazon Aquino.
I think he means Ehadi (or Haddadi or however it is spelt) who plays for the Grizzlies and Iran. I was flipping through the rosters, saw Jackson Vroman (white guy born in California) playing for Lebanon. WTF lol.
Guys, the game against Qatar would be interesting. Chinese media has called this Qatar team the Africa All-Stars since unlike Jordan and Lebanon, who actively recruiting foreign players from the States, they quietly recruited players from Africa!
what's with all these recruiting? i understand if one or two moved for some reason, but why are they even actively recruiting folks who don't even represent their people?
It's pretty much due to FIBA Asia's incompetency. Despite of the complaints from teams like Iran, Korea and Japan, they never seriously checked the validity of those naturalized players. They just checked their passports and as long as the passports are genuine, they would ask no more. One Jordon player was kicked out of the camp so far. Jamal Abu-Shamala Courtesy hoopchina.com http://bbs.hoopchina.com/0908/795049.html According to the Chinese media, Lebanon has 6 - 7 mercenaries while Jordan has 5.
They could be but they have to improve on their 3pt shooting and their defense on the kick out. Teams like Japan, Korea and Iran loves the penetrate the lane and kick out to its shooters. The team lacks outside shooters. This might be the caused of their failure later.
Teams are allowed at most one naturalized player. They can get any player anywhere and have him play for the National team of that country as long as they can make hi basically a citizen of that country.
If someone wears your flag when they win, isn't that enough? Maybe countries like Japan should re-think about it's (almost non existent) immigration policies?
Japan had a naturalized player last FIBA Asia Tourney. JR Henderson, he played for the Vancouver Grizzlies. After naturalization, he changed his name to JR Sakuragi. I dont know why he is not playing this year.
Lol a 70 plus point blow out. But I was very disappointed in the game. The indian point guards penetrated at will and also most of their shots were actually good shots, not really forced. They were just not good enough to hit open shots (I guess this being their first proper game...lol...they did not even have a coach, they got someone who FIBA sent). The CNT tried to run fast break all the time. I felt against such a weak opponent, either u run good organised fast breaks or u run ur offence. It felt like a pick up game. Waste of time. CNT should off just viewed this game as a practice instead of trying to blow them out. No point, it was a sure win anyway.
tournament prediction: China Iran Korea with the Philippines, Japan and perhaps one of the former soviet republics as darkhorses btw......I don't think James Yap is the best player of the Philippines, greAT scorer though
Cyrus Baguio is better then James Yap. Watch out for Aguilar. With his training in the US, He seems to have polished some low post moves however he still has to bulk up.
hmmmm I am impressed wit Aguilar's defensive skills and athleticism, but I am not sold on his offensive game, seems to be too raw... I hope that the Philippines had put on their roster their pure shooters (Ritualo, Hontiveros and Alapag to name a few) instead on settling for ISO players (Helterbrand, Yap, Baguio) I would have put Cardona in their just for fun, to taunt the Iranians...... Apparently were both Filipinos.right? (refering to rocket86)
