A new city...and McDonald's

Wow that was a lot of travel. The sleeping pills had me knocked out for most of the first bus ride. The flight to Guangzhou was fairly short and as much as I enjoyed seeing rural China, I was hoping and praying that our next destination was much more modern. During a breakfast of noodles and Chinese grape juice, Robert informed us that we would be playing a game that night. This was news to me and I swear our itinerary has taken a few turns that have blindsided me a bit. I was already thinking of a way to get the guys to look past that fact that we had a game after a nights sleep on a bus, a flight, and another bus ride. As we gathered our bags from baggage claim I could see what looked to be a legitimate highway outside, which was a good sign. As soon as we hopped on the bus there were a few gentlemen from the sports committee of Zhongshan on board, and they had bags of McDonald’s and Cokes waiting for all us. This immediately lifted the team spirit and gave us hope that this city would be a nice change of pace from what we had come from.

The ride to Zhongshan was an interesting one. There were a lot of bridges that took us over wide rivers and there were lots of big buildings scattered throughout the city. Some of the buildings began to line the highway that we were on, and as they became more visible I could tell that a lot of them were apartment buildings. Each building had stories and stories of apartment units packed on top of each other. I was overwhelmed with just how many there were. The nice paved roads were a welcome change and as we arrived in Zhongshan it was obvious that this would be the biggest city that we settled down in since our arrival in China.

Seasons View Executive Hotel, I love you, (man.) Excuse the pun, but it’s a great movie. We pulled into the Seasons View Executive Hotel and this would definitely be the nicest hotel that we’ve stayed in to date. I went to the bathroom and knew by the clean smell (and actual toilets) that we were going to be just fine. Robert explained that we were going to rest our heads at the Seasons for the next four nights. Catherine, Robert’s wife, gave me the room keys to pass out to the guys and we all made way to the third floor to drop our bags off and back down to the adjacent restaurant for a late lunch. The rooms were superb. My AC was nice and cold and the bathroom was plush, and I had a nice balcony to boot. The guys were all in suit style rooms, equipped with a kitchen, a living room, and washer machine. As we all sat down for lunch, and saw a great spread set up for us, and along with the recent news of the plush hotel rooms, you would have thought we all died and had gone to a Buddhist heaven. To make matters even better, the Celtics/Magic game was on TV; the first NBA game I’ve seen since we left the States.

After watching the C’s knock off Superman and the Magic, I took a nap in my cold, well ventilated, five-star hotel room and prepared for a game with another team from the Chinese Basketball Association. The Tianjin Lions (I think they are called the Lions) were our opponent for the next three games. We headed over to the arena and pulled up to a nice big arena. It was quite the contrast from being dropped off in an alleyway back at the Vietnam Events Center in Songtao. The gym was nice and there were huge digital screens on both ends of the court that had replay on them. Now we could see just how terrible some of the calls/no calls were. Robert said that the game would be televised on local TV. I tried to get him to have the station give us a copy of the telecast but he said they wouldn’t release the footage to anyone. Weird.

Tianjin was a lot less athletic and strong then our previous counterpart and we had our way with them on the glass. Joe Darger caught fire in the first half, hitting three straight 3’s at one point. Andres Sandoval had his best showing yet, using his speed and strength to get into the paint at will. He struggles with his decision-making at times, but when he is locked in, he is a tough cover. Our big guys, Mike McCowan, Robert Kennedy, and Justin Billingslea refuse to stay out of foul trouble so I our bigs are a revolving door of hackers. Quin Humphrey, and Mike Sloan hit a few 3’s of their own in the second half and our overall dominance continued. It was nice to have a twenty-point lead for most of the fourth quarter and we eventually took it close to thirty by the time the final buzzer sounded.

I was a bit surprised at the mobbing the fans, arena staff, and cheerleaders gave us after the game. Being that we were in a bigger city where foreigners aren’t such a rarity, I thought it would be a bit mellower as far as the fanfare was concerned. We all played the roles of superstars once again, posing, smiling, and autographing for all. Robert and Boss Man usually have no time for the post game shenanigans. It takes about five minutes before Boss Man starts barking at Robert to rally the troops to leave. A small army of Chinese soldiers (literally) escorted us to the bus for our ride back to the Seasons. I have to clear something up about all the massages. It costs about $5 for an hour long, full body massage over here. How can anyone pass that up? With that being said, Joe D, Big Mike, Drew Gibson, Terry Martin, and I all made way to the first floor to take advantage of the cheap euphoria. An hour later I headed to my room to call it a night. We play again tomorrow. Until then…