CHN - Donewald: "We have to go for it in Wuhan"

LONDON (Olympic Test Event/FIBA Asia Championship) - Times are tough these days for China's men's basketball team, but regardless of how bad it gets, head coach Bob Donewald Jr keeps looking on the bright side.

In July, national icon Yao Ming announced his retirement after being plagued by foot and ankle problems for the past two years. While he had not played for China since 2008 Beijing Olympics, the impact of this decision is likely to be felt for a while yet.

If that wasn't enough, the injury bug then hit China very hard with no less than eight players from their 2010 FIBA World Championship team going down with an assortment of ailments.

The absence of their best players was a huge reason why the Chinese lost seven consecutive games at the Stankovic Cup earlier this month.

Donewald and his charges arrived in London for this week's Olympic Test Event hoping to get some chemistry going among the players he has at his disposal, while avoiding the list of casualties getting any longer.

The latter did not last long as veteran guard Wang Shipeng broke his right wrist in the first half of China's 71-43 loss to Australia, in the first game ever played at the Olympic Basketball Arena.

Donewald talked to fiba.com about Yao's retirement, dealing with the injuries and sticking with the target of qualifying for next year's Olympic Games outright by winning the FIBA Asia Championship.

FIBA: With Yao having officially retired, how does that impact the way you set out to play?
Donewald: For this team now, since we started preparing last year for the World Championship, we didn't have Yao in any practices. We've been preparing without him and so it's not something that's on our mind as we get ready for Wuhan.

(Without Yao), we go to Yi Jianlian down there a little bit and we mix it up some. You saw us in Turkey we spread the floor a bit more than we did in the Asia Games last year. When we won that tournament, we went down there a bit more because the size of the athlete in the Asia competition versus the World Championship it's a bit different. So we mix and match Yi Jianlian from inside to outside depending on who we're playing and depending on what we're up against.

FIBA: You're going through a tough stretch right now. Can you see the light at the end of the tunnel?
Donewald: Right now we're just so injured as you saw against Australia. We're playing a lot of young boys. We had an eight games in nine days stretch two days before we came here and we slowly broke down. We've got eight of our main guys out unfortunately so you're not getting a true taste of what we can do. But hopefully we'll be mostly hopeful by the time we get to Wuhan. We like our chances. We'll be confident and we'll be ready.

FIBA: What China team can we expect to see in Wuhan?
Donewald: What you saw at the (2010 FIBA) World Championship is our main guys. We have eight of those guys missing. Unfortunately in the Australia game on Tuesday, Wang Shipeng, our second leading scorer, broke his wrist and is highly doubtful. They're saying four to six weeks. But other than that, if we can get healthy, you'll see our main group.

FIBA: What are your thoughts on the Olympic Test Event?
Donewald: You look at the competition alone and it really is an unbelievable tournament. When we arrived, we went through the facilities, the Olympic village and you see the apartments are being built. You see the wonderful facilities and all our guys had their cameras out and were taking pictures and filming it. When we were on the bus I said 'look guys we're injured right now and we're losing a lot of games but once we get healthy we want to be back here in one year so look out the window, look around, let's make sure this is home one year from now.'

FIBA: What do you expect of yourself and what will be expected of you at the FIBA Asia Championship?
Donewald: China is a powerful country with passionate fans and they love their basketball and we've got to get them to the Olympics. The tournament is in China, so there's no ifs or buts about it - we've got to go for it. I think that there are six teams that can win it. We're one of those six but we're going to be at home and we've got to deliver for our fans.

FIBA