The Strange Story of Bonzi Wells

Two other sites have picked up the story of Shanxi Zhongyuan releasing Bonzi Wells, who returned to the US during the CBA's Spring Festival break. This move is a bit shocking considering Wells has been incredibly helpful to his Shanxi team, instantly dominating the league and breathing life in an otherwise mediocre team. Wells was near the top in points, rebounds, and steals per game, but only was able to help his team to a .500 record during his time in Taiyuan.

So why was he let go? Very little information has come out on the release, but that's not surprising as so few people care about the CBA. Despite Wells being a force for Shanxi, the team was 8-7 before he arrived and 7-7 while he was in China. Was the release inspired by the fact that despite the large sum of money they were paying him, Wells couldn't improve the supporting cast around him? Or, a more cynical (or sinister) thought, is it because of Wells' immediate impact on the league, exposing it for the joke that it is? The CBA is already dominated by foreigners, you'd have to go almost 20 names down to find the first Chinese players name on the points per game list, and the sudden appearance of an aging and out of shape mediocre NBA player suddenly becoming Michael Jordan might have been a little too much for league heads to take.

There's sure to be an interesting story behind Wells' release and I wouldn't expect his team to be very forthcoming, we'll just have to wait for someone to get a comment from him.

UPDATE: The story is simple, seems Wells just didn't want to return to China, less than 2 months was more than enough, and if you want to know why that might be the case, check out this interesting post by Gabe Muoneke, the CBA's leading scorer.

Shanghai Boys Behaving Badly

We recently recapped an incident in a latenight incident in Shanghai involving nominal national team soccer player Mao Jianqing, who got involved in a late night early morning dustup at a Shanghai restaurant. Now its thug behavior entering the realm of Chinese basketball, as Chinese national team member (captain?) and Shanghai Shark, Liu Wei, got into a post game scuffle with a foreign player on Yunnan and has been handed the heaviest punishment in CBA history. Liu (currently averaging just over 14 points per game) will be suspended for 10 games and fined RMB50,000 and his teammate Cai Liang (who Liu Wei was attempting to "defend") will also receive the same punishment. No word yet on what, if anything, the Yunnan player, Gabe Muoneke, will receive. Muoneke is currently leading the CBA in scoring with 36.7 points per game and had just dropped 38 on Shanghai in a 107-97 home win. Perhaps its more results related frustration, as Liu's Sharks have yet to win a game this year.

Here's a (crappy) video of what happened and a news report showing a little more of what started the tension, Liu Wei wrote a blog entry about his "most unhappy game", which can be found here (in Chinese).

For more on the CBA, check out this post from another blogger who recently attended a game. In other player news, while it isn't the Glove, one of Payton's former Seattle teammates, Vin Baker, is currently in China trying out for Shanghai. There's also this interesting story about some CBA players ages changing from last year's media guide to this year's guide, some by as much as 3 or 4 years. But before you start yelling conspiracy, this story was originally broke by Chinese media and has received wide coverage in China, the main reason for the changes is due to an updated registration system that is far more accurate.

Hopefully this will be the last incident of this kind for the CBA, which could run the risk of becoming like the farce that is Chinese soccer. Though, US athletes sure aren't doing well either, recently, with guys shooting themselves in the leg and getting suspended before the game even begins (what's so wrong about "sloppy seconds"?). Enjoy the game!