I have returned from learning from China - Thoughts after watching the 2015 Asian Championships
The smoke and fog dissipated, and the dust settled. With the strong reaching of the host Chinese men's basketball team, the 2015 Asian Men's Basketball Championship finally came to an end. Once again, the Chinese men's basketball team stood at the top of Asia and looked down on all the mountains.
China's "Dragon Team" maintained a complete victory in this championship, defeating teams such as South Korea, Jordan, Qatar and Lebanon for many years. Before defeating the Philippines team in the final, the various doubts piled up on head coach Gong Luming were also defeated one by one as the "Gong Family Army" defeated the defending champion Iran in the semi-finals.
Looking at the fierce competition that lasted for nine days, there should be many lessons learned, and these are exactly what I want to explain in detail here.
Naturalized players cannot guarantee victory
By observing the past few Asian Championships, we can find that more and more national teams are beginning to have naturalized players. This situation is undoubtedly mainly because many countries have achieved certain success in the past with naturalized players. Such players can usually make up for the lineup, including players on the front line (such as Joe Vogel, Marcus Douthit and Quincy Davis) and candidates on the back line (such as Rasheim Wright, Jerry Johnson and Trey Johnson).
But this year there was an interesting situation: among the teams that finally reached the semi-finals of the Asian Championships in Changsha, Hunan Province, China, three teams did not have naturalized players. The Chinese, Iran and Japan have all sent out a lineup of pure domestic players, while the Philippines is the only team with naturalized players to help.
looked back and saw that there was no naturalized player in the other team that reached the quarterfinals. The teams with naturalized players, except for the Philippines, such as South Korea, Qatar and Lebanon, all failed to reach the quarter-finals. As for Jordan, Kazakhstan and Chinese Taipei, they didn't even find the edge of the quarter-finals. The fact revealed by such a result is that although naturalized players will achieve immediate results for a team's combat effectiveness, these "mercenaries" cannot guarantee a ranking or final victory for the team. In fact, since the Philippines relied on naturalized players Jeff Moore and Dennis Still to win the championship in 1986, no team has been able to top Asia with this move.
Long-term preparation is effective
If people have completely observed the training camps of the Chinese men's basketball team in the past six months, no one would be surprised that they won the 2015 Asian Championships championship and directly won the 2016 Rio Olympics. Chinese team head coach Gong Luming convened the national training team in March this year. Then they continued to conduct closed training and participated in various warm-up matches until the start of the game in Changsha, Hunan.
Many observers of Asian basketball are very surprised because veterans like Zhu Fangyu, Sun Yue and Wang Shipeng have not become part of this national team, but the Chinese team's plan is to bring young players they have silently trained and prepared for over the past few years to the forefront. This group of young talents include Zhou Qi, Zhai Xiaochuan, Zhao Jiwei and Ding Yanyuhang. These people have been training in the second team of the Chinese Men's Basketball Team since 2012.
In the long-term plan of the Chinese team, they are going to cultivate these budding stars and then rely on them to compete for the only ticket to the 2016 Rio Olympics. This is also why the Chinese team has been calling their second team the "Chinese National Olympic Team" in the past few years. Everything is prepared for this championship in Changsha, Hunan, and this group of players also showed amazing maturity and skillful chemistry when facing aggressive opponents. The achievements made by the Chinese team have strongly proved that the idea of long-term training is feasible.
The era when heroes emerged
Looking at the last four Asian Men's Basketball Championships, a total of eight different national teams have entered the final four circles.The Iranian team, China, Jordan and Lebanon teams were the top four teams in the 2009 Tianjin Asian Championships; the top four teams in the 2011 Wuhan Asian Championships were won by the Chinese team, South Korea, Jordan and Philippines; in the Manila Championships two years ago, the teams that reached the top four were Iran, South Korea, Philippines and Chinese Taipei. By this year, the top four teams are China, Philippines, Iran and Japan.
What this result can tell me is that the monarchy of the Asian overlord is open to competition. The championship favorites and strong contenders are certain, there is no doubt, but no team can guarantee that they will reach the final four in each of the past four Asian Championships. The strongest teams of Iran and China also experienced failures in 2011 and 2013 respectively.
Considering that many countries can feel that they have similar opportunities when participating in the Cup, this situation will only promote the Asian basketball world. Obviously, a more balanced situation has been achieved.
The future is bright
The last lesson or last revelation I learned from the 2015 Asian Men's Basketball Championship is that the future of Asian basketball is bright. Zhou Qi (19 years old) and Guo Ailun (21 years old) of the Chinese men's basketball team have been selected for the best five-man team in this Asian Championships, and young stars in other national teams, such as Terrence Romeo (23 years old), Makoto Hiejima (25 years old), Wael Arakji (21 years old) of the Lebanese team and Amjyot Singh (23 years old) of the Indian team have also attracted a lot of attention.
All of these players listed in this Asian Championship have their own classic moments, and there is no doubt that they will all play a very important role in the plans of their respective national teams in the next few years. Remember their names, everyone, because they will become the "next superstar" in Asian basketball.
