China’s under-19 basketball coach has been banned after his downtrodden players reported him for repeated verbal and physical abuse, Chinese media reported yesterday.
The Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) said that Fan Bin had been suspended indefinitely after it received a letter from several players calling for him to be booted off the team.
The document, signed and finger-printed in scarlet ink by 13 players, accused the head coach of “repeated abuse, insults and beatings,” according to the China Daily newspaper.
The players claimed they were abused constantly at practice during Fan’s three years in charge of the under-19 squad.
The CBA said they had found Fan guilty of the offenses following a probe and issued a severe warning for him to mend his ways.
“Fan should take the prime responsibility and fully understand his fault at this time,” CBA vice president Li Jinsheng told the newspaper. “We won’t dismiss him immediately, but have strictly urged him to correct his actions.”
Fan’s team is currently in the US to train for June’s under-19 world championships and he has been ordered to meet the players and apologize when they return, Li said.
“We will keep an eye on him in the future and see how he bonds with the team,” Li said. “If he cannot regulate the way he works in future, we will look for a coaching change.”
Relations between the coach and players soured after Fan exploded at the team with a torrent of “dirty words” following a loss in January, according to the Guangzhou Daily.
Further outbursts provoked the players to write their protest letter to the CBA, who praised the players for coming forward.
“The players ... are part of a new generation with great self-awareness,” said Xu Lan, director of the general department of the CBA. “That’s part of the reason why they directly wrote the letter to us, rather than reporting this to their team leader.”
“The old strict and rough way cannot be used to guide them and we need to develop a new model that is more flexible and humanized to fit these young guys,” Xu said.
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