Word: cba
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...year-old pro basketball player out of Golden West High in Visalia, California, and the University of Northern Arizona, a former Denver Nugget who lasted only six games in the NBA. He has been hired this season by the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) to do nothing less than replace the irreplaceable Yao Ming at center. That makes McClintock the man in the middle of the biggest sports story in the most populated place on earth...
...While "Young Giant Yao," as the Chinese lovingly call their paramount sports hero, contributes a stunning rookie season to the Houston Rockets, McClintock is expected to reciprocate. Last season, with Yao at center, the Sharks won 23 of 24 league games, earning their first CBA championship. Anything less than commensurate dominance will be considered a failure and a loss of face for McClintock. At the market everybody seems to know his name, perhaps because every Sharks home game is aired on television. So are most of Yao's games in Houston, beamed live at 9 a.m. Shanghai time from...
...Meanwhile, team owners say under the current system they feel more like sharecroppers than entrepreneurs. They want a bigger piece of the action. "The reason we have so many conflicts is because the CBA doesn't treat us as partners, they treat us as something they own," explains Li Yaomin, general manager of the Shanghai Sharks. "We should be like the NBA with truly independent franchises...
...Cast as The Heavy in the courtside drama is CBA chief Xin Lancheng, a fortysomething Communist Party apparatchik who "wouldn't go to a basketball game unless it was his job," according to one industry insider. Xin, who missed the first half of the season to attend Communist Party school, admits to no great passion for hoops. "If I had things my way, I would be a full-time painter of traditional Chinese landscapes," he says. But he defends the system with the ardor of a Red Guard. "The CBA should earn the money and distribute it equally...
...While it's unlikely the government will be passing the ball to the private sector anytime soon, even Xin acknowledges that the CBA can improve. "We are desperately studying the NBA," says Xin, who attended the U.S. league's annual All-Star game this month in Philadelphia. If he closely studied the hoopla surrounding one of the sport's biggest hype-fests, Chinese basketball just might learn some dazzling new moves...