NBA’s Chinese Basketball Players 

Chinese Basketball players aren’t really a heavy talking point in the NBA these days, but they should be. Somewhere down the line, the NBA is hoping to create an NBA branded league in China. Basketball has already become the most popular sport among young Chinese male, so analysts predict that with such huge interest, the country will be able to develop good enough players to stand toe to toe against international competition. 

However as we all know, out of the 300 million or so basketball fans that the country is presumed to have, only 5 China born basketball players have ever made it into the NBA. Perhaps if we look closer at these 5 Chinese NBA players in question, we can pick up clues on how and where the Chinese NBA players of the futures will come from:

Chinese Basketball Players Profile

The first thing that can be noticed is the average player size is above 7 foot long. This is understandable, in basketball height is always an advantage and finding skilled big men is one of the toughest problems facing teams each year. China’s average height is way below that of Western countries, yet with a population of 1.3 billion the country is able to rely on extremes rather than averages.

Looking at the birthplaces of the players in question reveals what we would expect:  players are naturally spread out among the east coast of China – known to be the most developed parts of China due to its proximity to ports and the large investments it has consequently received from local and foreign entities.

In this light, the Chinese government’s plans  to build  800,000 basketball courts – one in each of China’s 800,000 villages – could be a huge step forward for the development of basketball in China. If the East coast can produce a Yao Ming, why can’t the Western parts of China down the line?

Chinese Basketball Players Stats

Here we get down to the meat of it all. No player except for Yao or Yi was able to secure any meaningful playing time whilst in the NBA. Rebounding figures over a 48 minute period are decent, but steals and especially blocks are far from acceptable when the length of these players are considered. The Chinese Basketball Association recently has tried to make its league more tough, and hopefully this will lead the players to challenge more on the defensive end. All players averaged more turnovers than they did assists – not unheard of for big players, but still exposes an inherent flaw in their floor perspective. It could be the stress, it could be the NBA’s different rules and play styles – but ultimately it’s probably the lack of confidence that holds these players back the most.

Chinese Basketball Players Shooting

Not all things are bad for China’s hopes of developing NBA caliber players. If you look at the 3 point and free-throw percentages, you can see clearly one of the main strengths of Chinese basketball: shooting the basketball. 7 footers in the NBA are known to be poor freethrow shooters, and even worse from beyond the 3 point line – but in China this doesn’t really apply. Even the FG% are acceptable once you consider that most of the shots come from mid range jumpers instead of the usual dunks that players of those size heavily rely on. If you think about it, China is possibly developing the next generation of basketball players where size and shooting ability, can come tightly wrapped in one package. But that package still needs a couple of other elements to truely be viable yet alone competitive.

Reality

The reality of Chinese basketball on a global stage today can be summed up with the above numbers. Besides Yao Ming, who could  very well be a statistical anomaly even under China’s unexpected nature, there have only been 111 games started by Chinese players in the NBA. This shows that the days of the Shanghai Sharks challenging the Boston Celtics for a global NBA title are still in the distant future. But with the explosion of interest since 2002 (Yao’s draft year), the near million basketball courts being built across the country, a youth hungry and motivated to succeed, the NBA’s marketing stronghold in the country, and a population of 1.3 billion used to hardship to get anything in life  – I certainly wouldn’t bet against a future of Chinese basketball domination and Chinese NBA superstars.