Brave Dragons

by Jim Yardley

  By the time the Brave Dragons arrived for the game in Shanghai, Zhou had decided to quietly abandon his sponsorship at the end of the season. On the afternoon I visited Shanghai’s training center, Yu Xiaomiao knew the team would soon face a crisis. He thought Chinese basketball needed to truly embrace the market and that the NBA’s popularity made it inevitable that the Americans would play a bigger role. The CBA had to be severed from the National Games, so that the league could truly become commercial. He saw the Sharks at the precipice of extinction, which he considered a potentially good thing.

  “I am optimistic,” he told me as we walked through a training center that embodied the old system. “I believe there will be a turning point and the team will enter the market. In China, there is a popular phrase: Put someone in a dark alley and then you can learn to survive. So either we die or survive.”

  One lesson of Shanghai was simple. If you lose the country’s greatest player, your team is going to get worse. Another was that China’s old basketball system was failing, even as it remained too entrenched to be discarded. But Shanghai also was a reminder of the perils of assuming that what is logical in one country is also logical in another. In Shanghai, the greatest commercial basketball market in Asia, the only fans who mattered were the bureaucrats of the Communist Party.

  The Sharks played in a small gym at the edge of the French concession. It had fewer than 4,000 seats, and maybe half were sold for the game against the Brave Dragons. By comparison, the stadium in Taiyuan seemed like Madison Square Garden. I sat in the mezzanine with my friend David; we had been deputized as team videographers because Weiss couldn’t find anyone else. A few fans dressed in Sharks jerseys waved banners from the seats above the baskets as the Shanghai cheerleaders danced to music from the hit American movie High School Musical. David was a former basketball player who still followed the game and had lived in Shanghai for more than three years, yet the thought of attending a Sharks game had never occurred to him. This was his first CBA game.

  The ref tossed up the opening tip and any drama soon disappeared. The Brave Dragons led 31–19 at the end of the first quarter. David was appalled at what he was seeing. “They are really not very good, are they?” he asked me. I put my finger to my lips. We were taping the action and the audio was on; it was probably best for team morale to keep the commentary to a minimum.

  Many of the fans were cheering for the great Bonzi Wells. “Bonzi—Yao Miss You” read one placard in English. Other fans wore Rockets jerseys and started chanting “Bonzi Go Home! Bonzi Go Home!” By the fourth quarter, the fans chanted “All-Star, All-Star!” Bonzi was playing his most controlled game and finished with a modest 22 points and a load of rebounds and assists. The final score was 105–92.

  The highlight of the game was the postgame press conference. Television crews crowded into the basement of the stadium, eager for footage of Bonzi. But when Weiss arrived, he brought Wei Mingliang, who had finished with 16 points. The Chinese reporters immediately complained, but Weiss explained that Bonzi was getting “treatment” from the team trainer.

  The most telling comment came when a Sharks team official introduced Weiss to the reporters and praised the Brave Dragons. “Thanks to the Shanxi team for importing a very famous player,” the official said. “It helped us sell tickets.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CORNER POCKETS

  On the court, the home team was enduring an old-fashioned whipping so convincing and absolute that not even the Wave could resuscitate the Taiyuan fans. The game had been advertised as a marquee matchup, if also a morality play: Bonzi Wells and the Brave Dragons versus Michael Harris and the Dongguan New Century Leopards, a contest between the two former Houston Rockets now laying waste to the Chinese league, between the Good American (Harris) and the Bad (Wells). Good won easily. The final score was 127–112. Harris finished with 43 points and scored so effortlessly that at times he was laughing on the court.

  All the buoyancy after the easy win against the Shanghai Sharks was now punctured. Only a week had passed but the season was collapsing, the elements of the Bonzi experiment now proving unstable. Losing badly to Dongguan followed achingly close losses against two league powerhouses, Jiangsu and Guangdong, and meant the Brave Dragons now had 14 wins and 14 losses. Losing three straight games against three of the league’s best teams was not altogether unexpected, but Bonzi’s arrival had altered expectations, none more than those of Boss Wang, even if the same problems of chemistry and blending the players together had not been solved.

  What made the situation more excruciating was that sometimes Bonzi could almost beat teams by himself. He dominated the Jiangsu Dragons, which had one of the league’s best point guards and best foreign players. Had the refs called an obvious foul in the final seconds when Bonzi was hacked while driving for the winning basket, the Brave Dragons might have won. Against Guangdong, Bonzi scored 17 points in the first quarter and kept the Brave Dragons ahead until the final minutes, when, exhausted, he began turning the ball over and his shots stopped falling. His body literally ran out of fuel; his entire intake of food and drink on game day had been one can of Red Bull.

  “One-man basketball defeated by team basketball,” triumphantly declared Xinhua, the government’s official news agency, after Guangdong’s win.

  The loss to Dongguan could not be so easily rationalized. Michael Harris was not particularly well known in the United States. He had played at Rice University, a school known for academics more than sports, and in the pros had played only briefly with the Rockets. Yet he was a talented, disciplined player, never forcing his shots and blending nicely with his Chinese teammates, among them one of the country’s most promising young point guards and a 7′1″ forward, Zhang Kai. Bonzi played like a man who hadn’t eaten in two weeks. Harris played like Michael Jordan. Which might help explain, at least indirectly, the punch.

  It came during the second quarter, with the Leopards leading by 11 points. From press row, I only saw the burst of commotion that came an instant after the punch. Players on the Brave Dragons bench seemed stunned. From a distance, it appeared that Weiss had placed himself in front of Boss Wang, who was stomping his foot and barking at the team, his head shaking like a yapping dog. Fans behind the bench had jumped up, shouting and pointing at him.

  Boss Wang had hit a player, Kobe.

  That Zhang Xuewen was the most American Chinese player on the team went beyond his nickname. He played the way Americans played, or at least he could move the way Americans moved. Kobe was almost the only Chinese player to dunk in a game. At times, he was the only Chinese player to consistently dunk during warm-ups. Against Beijing, he had made a reverse dunk so breathtaking that even he seemed stunned. It wasn’t simply that he had made it, but that he had even attempted it, that the machismo that boiled inside the best dunkers, the best players, also boiled inside him. He still played as if his mind could not keep pace with his body, yet what separated him from most of his Chinese teammates were the flashes of potential, which is what made him a rare point of agreement between Bonzi and Boss Wang. They both saw something in him.

  Where they differed was how to get at it. The punch was part of Boss Wang’s method. It was an act of discipline, like paddling a disobedient child. Never mind that it happened during a nationally televised game in what is supposed to be a professional basketball league. Kobe had grown up in Taiyuan, the son of a volleyball player, and his interest in basketball blossomed when as a ninth grader his team won a championship. What he remembered from that championship was one play, his dunk in the finals, and that dunk changed the way he regarded the game and himself. When the Brave Dragons recruited Kobe, his father wanted him to stay in school and go to college, but Kobe was more interested in basketball than studying and joined the junior team. He was sixteen, and virtually a ward of Boss Wang.

  Now he was twenty-two and having his breakout season. He started most games and played without fear on defense. It was offense that presented the challe
nge, where he sometimes seemed to play out of control, hurtling toward the basket like some misfired missile. Weiss would stare dumbfounded. Yet this was what Boss Wang wanted. If Weiss was no longer a figurehead coach, neither had he managed to completely curb the owner. Boss Wang remained on the bench, occasionally making substitutions. At the practice facility, Boss Wang met privately with the Chinese players to lecture them on how he wanted them to play, or what he had seen on television. “He changes his mind all the time,” said one player. “He watches the NBA in the morning and he changes his mind in the afternoon. We learn from the Lakers one day and San Antonio the next.”

  He wanted Kobe to attack the basket: attack, attack, attack. He chided players for cowardice, for being intimidated by Bonzi, especially the guards, who seemed too afraid to take charge of the team. For a while, Boss Wang ordered the point guards to prevent Bonzi from bringing the ball up the court since doing so wasn’t his job. In one game, an obedient backup point guard literally tried to wrestle the ball from Bonzi, who angrily swatted him away, bewildered again by the strange way the Chinese played basketball.

  Against Dongguan, Kobe slashed to the basket whenever he had a chance to score until his defender finally eased off and conceded the 3-point shot. When Kobe got the ball, suddenly finding himself wide open, he took the shot. He missed. What happened next I only reconstructed later, after talking to players and coaches. Boss Wang called a timeout, or he ordered Weiss to call one. As the players walked off the court toward the bench, Boss Wang confronted Kobe, screaming and swinging at him.

  “What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?” the owner shouted. “I told you not to shoot the three.”

  At which point something unexpected happened: Kobe shouted back, “I only shot one.”

  There were actually two punches, possibly a third, landing squarely on Kobe’s back and shoulder. Weiss quickly intervened, sliding between owner and player, and Kobe seemed at the edge of tears, if more from shame than pain.

  At halftime, Boss Wang barked at Kobe in the locker room. “If you don’t want to listen to me, go home,” he shouted. “Everybody can go home.”

  By now even the foreigners understood that listening to Boss Wang rant was an occupational hazard of playing for the Brave Dragons. The Chinese players accepted it and even were willing to argue that the lectures were meant to be constructive. “We understand that he has good intentions and he does it out of love for us,” one player told me. “But it’s still like your mother nagging you every day.” The foreigners felt doubly penalized; they listened to him screech in Chinese, not understanding a word, and then listened to Garrison’s edited interpretation. Donta Smith had tried to let the words bounce off him. Weiss stared at the clock. But Bonzi was not willing to play along. At postgame meetings, he wore his headphones and bobbed to music as the boss screamed. During one halftime meeting, Bonzi stormed into the locker room and shouted at Garrison to relay a message to Boss Wang: “Tell that motherfucker he’s got to get his ass in the stands.”

  Garrison hesitated and slowly began translating. Boss Wang listened, nodded, and the team returned to the court. Afterward, Weiss asked Garrison about his translations. “I told him that Bonzi thought we needed to play better defense,” Garrison said.

  Now, though, Bonzi stood up and confronted the owner in front of the team. “You cannot do that shit in the game,” he said. “All the fans saw you hit Kobe.”

  “I paid you to come here,” Boss Wang answered, “and I wanted you to help us to win games. But you are not the boss. I am. I pay for everything.”

  This time Garrison said nothing. Bonzi stomped out of the locker room.

  The Chinese players watched in amazement. Most of them hated Bonzi, even as his talent awed them. He demeaned them by how little he respected them on the court. Playing with him did not make them better; it made them realize how powerless they were. Yet they also saw that Bonzi, unlike anyone else, was not afraid of the owner. If anything, it was the other way around.

  Halftime ended and as the players returned to the court, Boss Wang and Bonzi approached one another in the hallway, angrily, and Bonzi hurled a half-filled bottle of water toward the owner. The bottle landed harmlessly, but the Chinese players watched in astonished silence.

  “The owner was afraid of Bonzi,” Little Sun told me later in his simple English. “Everybody think: Who dared to fight with the owner? Who dared to throw a bottle at the owner? Only Bonzi. Bonzi, he is a man.”

  Usually, when the general manager, Zhang Beihai, came to the World Trade after a loss, his job was to soothe the foreign egos rankled by another outburst by Boss Wang. But sometimes he came to deliver a message, and the morning after the punch he was carrying a message for Weiss. First, he opened with praise. Weiss had done a fine job. Could he return next year? Could he work with the Chinese players if they toured America this summer?

  Weiss thanked the general manager and said the summer sounded like a good idea.

  “But let’s wait and see on next year,” Weiss said.

  In a few hours the team was departing for the airport, so now Zhang Beihai got to his real business. Bonzi throwing the plastic bottle was a physical challenge and, as the owner saw it, a physical attack. More than that, it was mutiny. The owner’s authority had been challenged in front of the other players, and now Boss Wang worried that discipline would unravel. The general manager now agreed that bringing in Bonzi had been a mistake, yet losing him would cripple the team. The team was returning to Liaoning Province to play the Pan Pan Dinosaurs and then the league would take a ten-day break to celebrate the Lunar New Year, China’s most important national holiday. Typically, this was when struggling teams cut highly paid foreigners or when foreign players, frustrated with China, went home to visit family and never came back. Bonzi had already bought his ticket to Muncie.

  Was there anyone else Weiss could bring over, another faded NBA star, in case Bonzi did not return, or if the team decided it did not want him back—Gary Payton, Steve Francis, Dikembe Mutombo? Weiss respected Zhang Beihai, but this was like humoring a child who thought that simply by asking, a former NBA All-Star would show up in Taiyuan for the holidays.

  “It would be more of the same,” Weiss answered.

  The general manager returned to the question of discipline. The owner thought the players needed a firmer hand and he wanted Liu Tie to resume coaching in practice and during the games.

  Weiss had been rehired and fired during the same cup of coffee.

  “Well, you’ll lose both of them,” Weiss answered. “Olumide and Bonzi. I’ll do what you want. But I’m telling you what I think.”

  The day before, Olumide had threatened to boycott the game against Dongguan. He was frustrated by the owner’s postgame shouting and by the way his role had diminished since Bonzi had arrived, and the front office had responded by dispatching Garrison to Little Nigeria as an envoy. The big man listened as Garrison pleaded. He relayed sympathetic Internet chatter from fans who thought Olumide should get the ball more. He talked about how Olumide could get endorsement deals if he stuck around. He even brought an offer from the general manager: the team would fly the entire Nigerian delegation to the resort city of Sanya on the Chinese island of Hainan for Lunar New Year. Olumide was unimpressed until Garrison finally stood up from the brown sofa to leave.

  “You believe in God,” he had declared. “Ask him.”

  The thought of God Almighty interjecting Himself into the player personnel decisions of the Brave Dragons seemed to please Olumide. Garrison was an atheist, but he picked up the Bible on the coffee table and started looking for a passage he had once read, something about faith and love, and Olumide disappeared into a rear bedroom. He returned with another Bible in one hand and tiny Ana in another.

  “First Corinthians,” he answered, finding the passage. “First. 13.13. ‘And now these three things remain: faith, hope [pronounced ohpe] and love. But the greatest is love.’ ”

  He then handed t
he Bible to Garrison.

  “Okay, so what about the tickets?” Garrison asked.

  God had given Garrison his opening. If Olumide agreed, Garrison would also go to Sanya, along with his new girlfriend.

  “To Sanya?” he asked, pleading.

  For a moment, tiny daughter in hand, the Warrior was silent. And then slowly a big, regal smile filled his face.

  “Tell them that it must be a seven-star resort, on the beach,” he said.

  “Seven-star?” Garrison asked. “Are there seven-star hotels?”

  “And tell them I want a flying boat,” Olumide added without explanation, as if one were possible.

  Weiss’s coffee with Zhang Beihai had ended amicably. Weiss defended his tenure, arguing that the team had done well, considering Joy’s injury, the transition to Bonzi, and the toughness of the schedule. But he actually felt some relief. He genuinely liked Zhang Beihai and offered what he called a piece of “personal advice”: If another opportunity arose in Chinese basketball, Zhang Beihai might be well served to take it. The general manager laughed.

  “This is my chance,” he answered, “and I know that chance brings obligations.”

  Later, when the team gathered at the airport, Weiss approached Liu Tie and presented the Chinese coach with the black marker he used for diagramming plays. He started laughing, and Liu Tie laughed, too, and rolled his eyes.

  At the hotel in Bayuquan, Weiss broke the news to Bonzi and Olumide. Bonzi did not deliberate for long. He had dislocated his pinky against Dongguan. Suddenly, the pinky was bothering him.

  “Tell them I can’t play,” he said. “I need two weeks to recover.”

  Weiss relayed the news and then went to sleep in the team hotel. The next morning Wingtips told him that the team had reconsidered. This was a bad time for a change, right before such an important game.

  “Bad news,” Weiss told me when I arrived a few hours before the game. “I’m back in.”