A player on the Athletes in Action team — an evangelical organization representing the US — in this year’s Jones Cup basketball tournament was recently quoted as saying that his team was playing for an “Audience of One,” a reference to the Christian God. It is possible, however, to take this reference more literally, because the dreadful crowd turnout at the Jones Cup this time around has not been much higher.
It is not difficult to establish why the crowds have stayed away. It is an invitational competition and does not necessarily attract the strongest or most celebrated national sides — some of which are not genuine national line-ups anyway. It also receives live coverage on cable TV, which keeps away potential spectators who balk at traveling to Sinjhuang in Taipei County.
But most of all, it would appear, local crowds are not interested in watching a competition in which the local team struggles to be competitive and wins one out of nine games.
Taiwanese are notoriously fickle sports fans, suggesting that “fans” might be the wrong word. All too frequently, a lack of genuine passion for sports and teams manifests itself in abandoning struggling national sides that would otherwise play much better with a sizeable home crowd.
The frustrating thing in the case of basketball is that it is supposed to be a sport in which Taiwan excels. It has a professional league, garners large amounts of print space and broadcast coverage and is reasonably adept at promoting senior players to the level of celebrity.
The reality, however, is that allowing for all of the resources being thrown at the sport and all of the self-congratulation at the domestic level, the standard of basketball here is diabolical.
The first problem is that so few attached to the sport seem to recognize this, despite contest after contest of listless international performances.
The second problem is that even if basketball authorities did acknowledge their sport’s pallid appearance, the attitude of smugness and elevated sense of achievement that defines too many of the players may well defeat any chance of reform.
“Attitude” is an appropriate word to use here, because it is also the name of a documentary produced to trumpet the Taiwan Beer basketball team that opened in three — count them, three — theaters in Taipei on Friday and a smattering of screens in other cities.
As the Taipei Times review of the film said yesterday, the film — and the team, for that matter — is hard to take seriously if you take into account the Beermen’s petulant withdrawal from a competition last year because of an isolated violent incident suffered against a Chinese side.
There is tremendous enthusiasm for basketball at the grassroots level, but the system is falling apart in the transition from domestic celebrity to international duty.
We have discussed at length the reasons for Taiwanese sporting teams’ difficulties in performing well internationally — a lack of credible patriotic symbols, Chinese meddling and so on — but for once it can be said in regard to this sport that Taiwanese audiences, players and administrators only have themselves to blame.
The next generation of players deserves better.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
Gogoro Inc was once a rising star and a would-be unicorn in the years prior to its debut on the NASDAQ in 2022, as its environmentally friendly technology and stylish design attracted local young people. The electric scooter and battery swapping services provider is bracing for a major personnel shakeup following the abrupt resignation on Friday of founding chairman Horace Luke (陸學森) as chief executive officer. Luke’s departure indicates that Gogoro is sinking into the trough of unicorn disillusionment, with the company grappling with poor financial performance amid a slowdown in demand at home and setbacks in overseas expansions. About 95
RSS