A game Chinese hoopsters are bound to lose

Bureaucracy criticized

Fans keep asking: Will the Chinese Basketball Association join its soccer counterpart to be the most reviled sport governing body in the country?

It seems so.

China's Liu Xiaoyu, center, moves the ball during their preliminary round match of the FIBA Asia Championship in Pasay city, Metro Manila, Philippines, Aug 3, 2013. [Photo/icpress.cn]

The CBA's bureaucracy and alleged infighting for power has drawn massive criticism from the public.

The latest drama happened on Friday night when national squad coach Panagiotis Giannakis refused to shake hands with CBA Vice-President Hu Jiashi, who brought gifts to see him off before holidays in front of the media.

Hu, in charge of national team affairs, was left embarrassed, which sharply contrasted with his previous public statement that "Giannakis has been working together with the managing staff really well".

A China Youth Daily report on Friday opened fire on Hu, saying he had always interfered in Giannakis' tactics instruction and roster recruitment by urging players to ignore the coach's orders during games. Hu also "installed veterans in the final 12-man lineup without consulting Giannakis".

However, some media reported that Giannakis' furious encounter with Hu was set up.

"Somebody definitely directed the whole thing," Jia Lei, a basketball reporter with sina.com who was at the scene, said on Sunday.

Veteran hoop writer Zhou He with Beijing Youth Daily, who followed the team in Manila, suggested that Xin Lancheng, the CBA chief, was the man pulling the strings. "Xin wanted to pass the buck to Hu while removing the focus of public criticism off himself," Zhou said in his blog.

Retired Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming said he hopes that playing sports will be simply for fun someday. "Sports now means too much beyond itself. What we badly need is participation from grassroots sports-lovers", said the 33-year-old charity ambassador and businessman on Wednesday during an exclusive interview with China Daily on the sidelines of a charity tour in Anhui province.

Yao Ming asks people to pay more attention to sport's original aim of bringing joy to children. [Photo/Agencies] One-on-one interview: Yao's towering charity Retired Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming said he hopes that playing sports will be simply for fun someday. More about Yao's Lu'an charity tour Yao launches his three-day charity tour at Hope Primary School Basketball Season in West Anhui University in Lu'an city, Anhui province, Aug 13.

Neither Xin nor Hu has made further comments on the debate and the national team has been dismissed after a three-day self-assessment meeting, which wasn't open to the media.

Whether the team will retain Giannakis or fire him is yet to be decided, but the 54-year-old said he will be back soon.

"To be able to coach Team China was a big pleasure for me. We had many problems during the games. But the most important is to see how we could work to make the things more positive," he said.

CBA reform urged

Meanwhile, the league's prosperity in recent years failed to trickle through to the national team, which lost all five of its group matches to finish at the bottom at the London Olympics.

Despite decent TV ratings and sponsorship deals lured by high-profile NBA stars, the CBA remains a half-professional league with decision-making power centralized at the association.

In terms of reform, the CBA actually lags behind its soccer counterpart, the Chinese Super League, which established a body of 17 shareholders in 2005 to run the league, said Li Shengxin, a sports management expert at Beijing Sport University.

"The CBA is actually one of the most conservative governing bodies, and the process of making it professional has almost stopped since the end of the 2008 Beijing Olympics," Li said.

Contact the writers at sunxiaochen@chinadaily.com.cn and leilei@chinadaily.com.cn