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The search is on to fill Yao Ming's
shoes
The search is on to fill
Yao Ming’s size-18 sneakers after China’s biggest sports luminary announced his
retirement, and Chinese scouts are combing city courts and pre-schools for a
future star.
But there are growing doubts that another Yao can be produced by China’s
Soviet-style sports development program, which drafts toddlers as young as 4,
sometimes just because their parents are tall.
One of the leading skeptics is Li Qiuping, who as coach of the Shanghai Sharks
of the Chinese Basketball Association – a team that Yao now owns – helped
prepare Yao to become the first overall pick in the 2002 NBA draft.
Li echoes the concerns of many over a state basketball player factory seen as
rushing promising youths into rigorous training while ignoring the importance of
being a well-rounded player – and student.
“Our children are trained professionally too early. Everyone wants them to play
basketball from a very young age, but no one cares about studying,” Li said.
The retirement of Yao, who is 2.29m tall, has kicked off a debate among Chinese
fans over whether the country’s player-development strategy needs to be amended.
In particular, many say China should not focus so much on height but on athletic
ability and that it needs a well-rounded crop of ball-handlers and shooters to
go along with the big men.
Rockets general manager Daryl Morey jokingly asked Yao at his retirement news
conference last week if he could recommend any Chinese prospects he could sign.
Yao quipped that they would have to negotiate his finder’s fee first.
Li said China’s current system is incapable of producing another Yao unless it
reforms in a way to put more joy into the game. “They are very relaxed in the
USA. There is no pressure on winning there. They play happy basketball and they
learn a lot of different sports – not just basketball. The system is very
different,” Li added.
Li – often mentioned as a candidate to coach China’s national team – has set up
a summer basketball camp as an alternative to a state sports system that
requires 15-year-olds to train two to three hours on school nights.
The camp offers ordinary kids who love the game a rare opportunity to develop
their basketball skills with professional coaches.
“Our [state] sports schools choose youngsters from primary-school age. They want
to find young kids and their criteria are much higher than at my summer camp,”
he said.
“They choose these kids on the basis of their height and if their parents are
tall, and what their parents do.”
China’s national team coach, American Bob Donewald Jr., told the New York Times
that no one can identify future MVPs in primary school and Chinese basketball’s
structural problems were affecting the quality of players.
“What’s amazing is that in a country of 1.3 billion I can’t find a point guard,”
he told the newspaper this month.
Yao’s legacy is clear at Li’s camp, which is based in a Shanghai high school.
The young players do not hold back when asked who inspired them to play
basketball. “Yao Ming! Yao Ming! Yao Ming!” 9-year-olds Shen Zhoujun, Guo Mingze
and Liu Zhihe all shouted in unison.
The former Houston Rockets center helped make China the NBA’s biggest market
outside the U.S., with an estimated 300 million fans. So from a market
perspective, both the NBA and Chinese league would love to find another star in
China as big as Yao.
But Li Zhangming, who coached the Shanghai-reared Yao when he was at sports
school, dismisses the doubts about the state system and says the “next Yao” has
already been found.
“He is now in primary school. He was born in 1999 and is already 1.86 meters
tall,” said Li, of Shanghai’s Nanyang Model High School. |
