First Game

Game 1. We woke up and had breakfast before we headed over to the arena for a light shoot around. Corn on the cob, chicken burgers, eggs, bacon, watermelon, rice, an egg/green onion dish of some sort, and Coke was on the menu for breakfast. I went with the egg/green onion dish and bacon. I was pretty satisfied and ready to go for our first trip to the arena in Yixing. The ride over was interesting as we were able to see a lot more of the city that we weren’t able to see when we scoured the city the night before. We crossed over a really cool looking bridge and made way to the arena that was set close to the bank of the river. It made for good scenery, especially with the modern architecture of the arena.

Once we got inside, the staff greeted us with smiles from ear to ear. I was immediately impressed with the massive screens that were behind each basket, and the inside of the 8,000 seat arena as a whole. We wasted little time and got right to business, as we had a lot of things to go over. Trying to get an offensive and defensive system installed in the matter of three practices and a shoot around isn’t easy. Once we covered all the essentials, I let the guys shoot around for a while before we headed back to the Yixing Electric Power Hotel (I just like saying that name) for lunch. One of the workers at the arena came up to me and kept saying “Uta Jazz, Uta Jazz.” I tried to have Robert explained that whole D-League concept to him, but his only response was, “Uta Jazz, Uta Jazz.” He asked for a picture; we both threw up peace signs and smiled for the camera.

After lunch, a few of us ventured back out through the city. Our crew consisted of Big Mike, Jamal Johnson. Joe Darger, a young Chinese guy that worked for the local Yixing sports committee, and myself. The stares of the local people continued from the night before, with many of them asking the young Chinese guy who was with is, I’m pretty sure his name was Wang, who we all were. Wang was a great guy, and he spoke just enough English to have somewhat of a conversation. We found an open-air market that had ALL kinds of stuff. First it was the produce. The biggest cucumber I’ve seen was in there. This thing was massive! Check out the pic. I couldn’t help but take a lot of pictures once we got back to the meat area. There was every part of every animal back there. Hearts, feet, lungs, throats, kidneys, stomachs, ribs, breasts, thighs, legs, pretty sure there was some penis’s back there too. It was crazy. Then there were all theses tubs of water that had different species in them. Fish, snakes, frogs, eel, and a bunch of other stuff that I couldn’t exactly make out. Another thing that I thought was cool, was bamboo ladders. There were tons of bamboo ladders every. I wanted to buy one. I settled for a picture with one of them.

Next up was an electronic store. Big Mike is obsessed with buying DVDs. I can’t blame him, they are a $1 a piece. I had to cop a few of them myself. Jamal and Joe used Big Mike’s negotiating skills to score two nice computer speaker systems for 200 Yuan (about $30.) We all grabbed a taxi and headed back to the Yixing Electric Power Hotel and got ourselves ready for the game.

About ten minutes before dinner, Robert pulled me into Boss Man’s room and Boss Man (with Robert translating) explained that the Jiangsu Dragons, the team we were about to play, wants to sign a big man for next season and that they wanted me to assign one of our bigs to play with them for our game. It came as a bit of a surprise, but what a great opportunity for the guys. The Chinese Basketball Association is known to pay import players a healthy stipend of about 30K a month, the main reason the guys came on this tour, and they were getting a tryout on the spot.

Before the game started the mayor of Yixing spoke to the near 5,000 fans, for what seemed forever, and whatever he said got them all pumped up for game time. The game itself was ugly, plain and simple. Lots of unforced turnovers, missed lay ups, and missed free throws, and some terrible officiating (which I was prepared for.) Speaking of bad officiating, the language barrier makes it pretty much impossible to talk to the refs. With all that said, we took a six point lead into halftime. After I tried to settle the guys down in the locker room at halftime, both teams did a three-point shootout and a dunk contest for the fans. It was a little awkward to do that at half time of a game, but it was fun and the guys that competing were presented with gifts and a little cash to boot.

The third quarter we settled down and were able to execute our offense pretty well, and took a 61-49 lead to the fourth quarter. We traded baskets for the first part of the fourth, and then we reverted back to our first half ways. Fast break after fast break we blew scoring opportunities and let them creep back into the game with some timely threes. Drew Gibson, one of our point guards, made some big plays down the stretch and knocked down few big free throws to help us seal a three point win, 78-75.

I was impressed with the Jiangsu Dragons as a whole. They had a good young point guard, and some athletic wing players with good size, and were well coached. There starting point guard is a veteran of the CBA, and played on the 2008 Chinese National Team that competed in the Bejing Olympics. He didn’t play too many minutes, but I except to see him a lot more in the next four games because we play them the next four games!

After the game we headed back to the hotel and had dinner. Each time we eat there is quit a spread to choose from. All the food is set up on a lazy-susan and you can just pick and choose what you want. The hot item on the night was ribs, not real sure what type of animal the ribs were from, because they were tiny little ribs but they were good though. Once I finished up at dinner, my boy Wang, took me to a legitimate massage parlor and this little Chinese young lady had her way with my back for an hour. Wang insisted on paying for it and then gave me a ride back for my last night in the Yixing Electric Power Hotel.

Until tomorrow…