NEWCASTLE (Paul Nilsen's Women's Basketball Worldwide) - While Schio fans celebrate the return of Isabelle Yacoubou, my jaw is still hanging in astonishment at the back story.

The return of this truly wonderful women's basketball star (her fine game in the paint, her brilliant personality and warmth, her impressive track record etc...) to EuroLeague Women is terrific. 

However, the circumstances which have thrust her back into such familiar surroundings are both extraordinary and range anywhere on the scale from bizarre to sinister - depending where you stand in terms of understanding a culture which differs so much from the rest of the globe.

Writing on her outstanding (French) Huffington Post blog, Yacoubou has lifted the lid on the shenanigans that took place in the WCBA and which resulted in her team being expelled from the competition. Essentially for disputing a last second basket which was impossible due to insufficient time remaining on the clock and then refusing to continue in protest.

It was something which effectively left her without employment in China and in receipt of a ticket back to Europe.

However, the expulsion to the second division of Heilongjiang and Yacoubou having to leave the country was only the tip of an ugly iceberg. It was absolutely nothing compared to what was imposed on her Chinese team-mates. They were sent to a military camp as a punishment and will apparently remain there for some time. Yacoubou describes them as being neither imprisoned, nor free.

It seems a somewhat draconian and unfathomable collective punishment for athletes who protested in a game that they believed to have been unfairly administered against Bayi (one of the army clubs).

France national team star and Olympian Yacoubou made it clear she was never threatened or felt in danger, but has felt compelled to tell the world about her experience. She even claims that she would go back to China, but this story will be music to the ears of those involved in the WNBA and EuroLeague Women.

While the financial rewards are mostly unparalleled in the WCBA (as are the cultural experiences), there will surely now be players who will think twice now before heading to Chinese clubs after this unsavoury episode.

And, with EuroLeague Women and the WNBA threatened by the rise of the cash-rich Chinese clubs, this is a major 'PR grenade' for the WCBA.

It doesn't make it a bad league, a dangerous destination, a no-go zone or any of those things. Indeed from a publicity point of view and in terms of curiosity, it has cranked up my interest even more - as perverse as that is, considering I think it is a ludicrously way to punish basketball players.

I do suspect however that this kind of story will also pump up the number of digits in dollars needed to attract the very best players.

It re-ignites my previous concerns about the influence of the army clubs and how Chinese basketball will ever truly progress while they still seek to skew results in favour of army teams by restricting foreigner rules and so forth. 

With punishments like this also now in the public domain, it has probably become even harder for people to go up against them.

Plus, what is the impact in terms of pressure on game officials moving forward when they have seen an entire WCBA team treated this way? That remains the elephant in the room.

I suspect there is more to come and thanks to Isabelle for telling us about this situation. I just hope her Heilongjiang basketball team-mates aren't running through mud in cold temperatures for much longer alongside the many soldiers present.

It should certainly stop players elsewhere complaining when they are told to run 'basketball suicides' up and down nice warm gyms as punishments by their respective coaches.

Paul Nilsen

FIBA

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