Posted on 02/08/2016 9:50:14 PM PST by Zhang Fei
Now in its 19th season, the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) season will tip off next week with its most prized class of Americans. Many have played in the NBA and are still young and talented enough to return to the world's top hoops league.
The groundwork for the popularity of today's CBA was laid in the mid-1990s, under sometimes difficult conditions. Since then, everything from the league's rising salaries to Stephon Marbury to the 2011 NBA lockout to the struggling European economy to the NBA's new collective bargaining agreement have made China the top overseas option for American players.
In the beginning, John Spencer vividly remembers how rough it was in 1996 and '97. He was living in China and playing hoops in the second season of the CBA--the first one to allow foreigners. During training camp in the fall of 1996, the 6'8" Spencer, who was a top international player at the time, recalls having to walk outside in the freezing cold to go to the bathroom and "squatting in the nastiest hell hole you could ever imagine."
Then there was the time he caught the flu and had black soot coming out of his nose--due to the local pollution. The hospital room where he got an X-ray for the problem housed a random Harley-Davidson motorcycle. In his apartment in Chengdu, he couldn't have the heat and washing machine on simultaneously because the building's power would go out.
(Excerpt) Read more at bleacherreport.com ...
If all the magic went there, nobody’d miss ‘em.
The NBA is exremely popular there. The teams made the nightly Chinese language news.
Beats the decor of most hospital rooms in the US.
Talk about extreme takeout.....
-random Harley-Davidson motorcycle-
This sounds like a physics problem involving a drunkard-s walk and Shcrodinger-s cat.
I know a guy who played college ball, and then was offered a pro contract to play in Turkey.
It was substantial money. But he turned it down because....well, it was Turkey.
I think the Stephon Marbury quotes explain it all. He can go play in China for a few years and get a large following that would in turn probably purchase his product (Starbury shoes).
"Achmed goes for 3-pointer - IT SHATTERS THE BACKBOARD! And the crowd goes wild! Then panics and runs to the exits."
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