Chinese Basketball Association Statistics, 2010

March 7th, 2010

The Chinese Basketball Association and its compelling protagonists have a particular level of focus on this website, for the simple reason that they’re awesome. Any league that saw Olumide Oyedeji average nearly 20/20 can peak the interest of any of us. Fringe NBA players like playing in China; the exposure isn’t huge and the standard isn’t great, but the CBA pays very well, and it is unashamed in copying the NBA model of basketball not much imitated around the globe. They’ve changed their style to match up to the NBA game; games are 48 minutes long (like the NBA, and unlike basically every other league in the world), and there’s about three of them a week (unlike most other domestic leagues, which have one). This playing of lots of games with less emphasis on practice is a lure to players; after all, as that great philosopher of our time Nate Dogg once said, “playas play on, play on, keep playing on.” Words to live by. Furthermore, aside from the imports, the standard of play is kind of weak, which leads to amusingly lopsided statistics that they could put on their CV. For example, Tim Pickett will now always be able to boast that he was a 39.4 ppg scorer at one point in his career, something which paid dividends when he received a workout with the Memphis Grizzlies back in May. It’s nice to know they’re checking out China. So do I. Each CBA team is allowed to play two import players at any one time. “Import players” are defined as anyone that isn’t Chinese, or otherwise Asian. In practice, however, these players are almost always American. Better still, these players are also almost always players that you’ve heard of. And that makes it even more fun. There follows a […]