Chinese basketball icon Yao Ming has been taken aback by Jeremy Lin’s rise at the New York Knicks and thinks his style and size could make China’s state sports system rethink how it selects and grooms its athletes.
Yao, who opened up the world’s most populous country to the NBA, retired from the game last year. In 2002, the 2.3m former Houston Rockets center was the first international player to be top pick in the NBA draft and was an eight-time All Star.
Taiwanese-American Lin has taken the NBA by storm with a series of dynamic displays at point guard for the Knicks. His fast-paced, high-scoring, playmaking performances could hardly be more different from the towering Yao’s plodding, robust style.
Shanghai native Yao said Lin, who stands 1.91m, could change the way China selects and trains its basketball players.
“This is something else that Jeremy Lin has brought to us. It has given us something to reflect on, whether there are imperfections over the development and selection process for our basketball players over the past 10 or 20 years,” he said in an interview.
The soft-spoken 23-year-old from Harvard went undrafted and was cut by Golden State and Houston before finding a place at the end of the Knicks bench in December.
Given his chance, Lin seized the NBA spotlight with both hands, and has inspired the Knicks with a string of stunning performances.
Yao said he had known Lin was a good player, but was stunned that he was able to reproduce the sensational form night after night.
“I am very surprised, but also very happy,” he said. “When he played well in his first game, I thought this was a great start and perhaps he would soon have more stable game time, but I never thought he would perform up to such levels as he had today.”
Lin has said he communicates often with Yao, who he regards as a role model. Yao said he did not have much advice to give because of their different backgrounds, but had always encouraged him.
“First, New York and Houston are different. Also, the cultures of the two basketball teams are different, the cities are different, the teammates he faces are different, so I don’t wish to tell him too much,” he said. “If I do so, perhaps I will give him too much pressure.”
Since retiring last year after a succession of foot and ankle injuries, Yao has embarked on a new journey in life.
In addition to taking on the role of a Chinese basketball team owner, Yao has become involved in animal conservation projects, launched his own wine label and has returned to his studies at university.
Despite the numerous projects, Yao feels like life has become more of a marathon than a sprint.
“Perhaps in the past, it felt like I was doing the 100m sprint, but now I feel I am more of a long distance runner,” he said. “For the 100m, you need to just spend a short time doing the sprint, and for the rest of the time you can choose to walk, jog or even lie on the ground and not move. For now, my working hours are getting stretched every day, but in terms of individual units, you don’t have to be moving as fast as sprinting.”
Yao was China’s flag-bearer at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and said he had promised to do some commentary work for the basketball competition at the London Games.
China reached the quarter-finals in 2008 and while they had to undergo a tricky transition period, the national basketball team is adjusting to life without the retired Yao.
China regained the Asian Championship title in Wuhan in September and qualified for London, and Yao said the team should grasp their opportunity to shine at the Games.
“Being in the Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not many people can have the chance to participate in the Olympics three or four times,” he added. “So once you are in the Olympics, you have to try your best and try to fulfill the team’s biggest potential to get the best results.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier