Sports / China
Yi Jianlian poised to challenge Yao as China's top export
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-06-28 08:19
Before flying to the United States to pursue his NBA dream in April, Yi
Jianlian said he wanted to step out from the shadow of Yao Ming and carve
out a career in the world's top league in his own way.
With some pundits tipping Yi as the first pick after stand-outs Greg Oden
and Kevin Durant at Thursday's NBA draft in New York, the former
Guangdong Tigers power forward appears set to challenge Yao's reign as
China's hottest basketball export.
"Yi will end up being the best player in the NBA from China, and I know
that is saying a lot," Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell told USA Today this
week.
"He has much more body control than Yao, and he's a much better jumper.
I'm real high on him, and I think I'm right."
While the rangy 7-footer's entry into the NBA seems assured, the birth
date on his resume -- October 27, 1987 -- remains a matter of debate.
Chinese Web sites, replete with class photos, have Yi's birth date as
falling in 1984 and the year of his university entrance exam as 2003,
making Yi's "official" age of 19 hard to swallow for many of his
compatriots.
China's tradition of age-fudging to allow older players a spot in
national and international youth championships, has not helped Yi, who,
despite attending film premieres in Los Angeles and speaking English
during media interviews in recent weeks, remains somewhat of an enigma.
Although rated a certainty to become China's fourth NBA export after
Houston Rockets centre Yao, Wang Zhizhi and Menk Bateer, draft pundits
place him anywhere from number three to well outside the top 10.
Yi's handlers have kept him under wraps, inviting only select teams to
appraise him in private training sessions.
Coaches have been excited by Yi's pace, his natural leap and soft hands,
but less convinced about his upper body strength and toughness against
hardened NBA competitors.
Yi shot an average 24.9 points against lumbering Chinese Basketball
League defenders in his final season with Guangdong, but has largely
failed to impress in national team appearances.
Born the son of two professional handball players in Heshan, a light
industrial town in southern Guangdong province's booming Pearl River
delta, Yi idolised Michael Jordan as a boy and made his first slam dunk
as a 6ft 5in "13 or 14-year-old".
In years since, the hip-hop loving Yi has helped Guangdong to three
domestic league championships and was a member of China's Olympic team at
Athens in 2004.
He will join forces with Yao again next year to go for national glory in
the 2008 Olympic basketball competition, which is already proving one of
the hottest tickets of the Beijing Games.
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