Churning begins in China, surely only good can come out!

KUALA LUMPUR (Mageshwaran's AsiaScope) - The past weekend in China basketball was one of inspection, introspection and intense intent to change - for the better that is! And there can't be a better time than now for China basketball to look within and sort out the issues that led to the national team's disastrous exit before the medal round for only the second time in their history at the FIBA Asia Championship.

It has been a fortnight of emotional outage and outrage among the Chinese fans and in the Chinese media. And the discerning might even say the angry outbursts from either section were not completely out of place.

We certainly won't look back at what went wrong with China's attitude, approach and eventually performance at the 27th FIBA Asia Championship in Manila, Philippines about three weeks ago. Something definitely was wrong with China, but the past weekend showed that the top brass in the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) - who took a lot of flak during the two weeks - have begun to address the issue.

The world of basketball needs China. There's a certain inevitable imminence in this statement. And the outlook of the CBA - to introspect - is just the right way to go about China taking its deserving place in international basketball.

I am certainly not going to go into the specifics of which player was wrongly fielded in Manila and which player should have been, but I couldn't ignore noticing those players who did not contribute the way they were expected to. It may well be that the CBA reads the riot act right now and execute a serious weeding out process.

There are surely signs of the same to happen, thankfully.

"We (CBA) should work on building young talent by offering young players more opportunities on the world stage without caring too much about the results," read a statement from the CBA last Friday.

The most encouraging fact of the statement was that it came capping long meetings that also involved consultation with China's vibrant and dynamic basketball media.

"We should face the reality that we are no longer the dominating force in Asia," an official report said. Very often such acceptances of reality are what lead to change for the better.

"We didn't pay enough attention to the overall development of Asian basketball and didn't position ourselves properly. We should face our shortages directly and try to make necessary improvements."

Gunning for the coach's head - blaming him for the entire debacle - would have been the normal reaction in many parts of the world, but there seems some pragmatism here too.

"We can’t say that the coach has nothing to do with the loss and his communication with the players wasn't as smooth as expected. We will talk with him later before deciding whether to keep him," CBA chief Xin Lancheng, also FIBA Asia Chairman, said during the media briefing addressing the issue of Greek legend Panagiotis Giannakis' continuance in the hot seat.

The confessional attitude has clearly percolated down even to the players.

"We have to clearly realise the fact that Chinese basketball's pace of improvement has been slower than our opponents," said China's currently most accomplished player Yi Jianlian.

"We are no longer the dominating force in Asia, and we have to make a greater effort to regain the top position. Chinese basketball is struggling, but I remain confident about the future," said the 25-year-old who struggled with a thigh injury through his 17.4 points per game average at Manila.

The first step to the solution seems to come from Yi's predecessor and the more famous Yao Ming.

"School basketball and professional basketball are two parallel lines in our country," Yao said.

"Relying only on resources in the closed State-run system, we can’t produce enough talented players at the bottom," the former NBA All-Star said.

The churning - at least at the thought level for now - has surely begun in China basketball. It can only bring better tidings!

So long…

S Mageshwaran

FIBA Asia

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