Spurning Soccer For Basketball: An American Sports Epidemic

Jinan is subject to what meteorologists call “temperature inversions.” I can’t claim to completely understand what temperature inversions are, but from what I have gathered, a temperature inversion is an anomalous layer of air in the atmosphere that acts like a cap or lid, preventing normal weather meteorological occurrences from occurring. Hot air under the inversion can’t escape upward (which it usually does), and cooler air from above can’t trickle down to the ground (which it usually does).

The best image I can conjure is the door of a sauna. Regardless of what may be going on in the area outside a sauna, the door acts as a barrier, thwarting any cool, dry air that may otherwise seep into the room. 

I’m quickly learning that, during the summer, Jinan is that sauna. The inversion to which Jinan is subject keeps the city’s bountiful heat, humidity and smog on the ground, allowing it to accumulate into a dizzying tonic that you can almost reach out and grab. Now, I’m from Kansas City, so I grew up with heat and humidity. But there is something different about the heat and humidity in Jinan, probably because it is infused with such a healthy dose of pollution and airborne crud. It’s hard to describe without having actually walked around in it. Just trust me that it’s gross, oppressive. 

Still, where there are basketball courts and free-time, I can’t help but want to hoop. So my buddy Jonathan, who you may remember from the swindle post, and I decide to head over to Li Ball’s court at about 4:30. Maybe there will be people playing, and if not, oh well; we’ll play each other. The heat is a little less oppressive than it was a few hours earlier, but not much. After all, the inversion in the atmosphere does to ground-level heat what a tourniquet does to blood: it prevents it from going anywhere. 

We are sweating by the time I stop at a little shop to buy water three minutes into the walk there. I spurn the refrigerator and its cold water and instead buy four bottles of water that are the same tepid temperature of the little shop in which they were sitting. Jonathan, who seems to be almost annoyed by my affinity for warm and hot water, informs me that he has three bottles that, for the past three hours, have been cooling in his freezer. I shudder at the thought of feeling the sharp, prickly feeling of ice-cold water shocking my insides; I forgo my usual public health announcement that cold water causes cancer, while hot water prevents cancer (and even relieves stress!). 

After a lazy 10-minute walk we round the corner into the apartment complex which houses Li Ball’s court. As we make the turn, we realize that, like a pair of high schoolers didn’t bring No. 2s to the SATs, we didn’t bring a ball to the basketball court. And there is no one else playing, which means no balls anywhere. This is a distressing revelation, for it means that one (or both) of us will have to retrace our steps back to the apartment, and then once again back to the court. It’s annoying on a practical level, and downright aggravating in light of the fact that sweat has already seeped through our shirts. 

At this moment I hear someone call my name from behind. It is no doubt a Chinese person, for the V is David is not pronounced like a V, but instead a W. There is no real V sound in Chinese, which insures that there is no real way for a Chinese person who didn’t major in English to ever say my name right. Take a moment to try to say David without even touching your top set of teeth to your lips; that’s how David sounds when a Chinese person says it. (This no V thing also seriously complicates teaching the number “5.” Invariably, it comes out sounding like “fi” with a W and three vowels tagged onto the end: fiwaue. At least when my kids try it.)

The person who said my name is a regular at Li Ball’s court, someone, if memory serves, who has been there every single time I have. He is a totally normal looking man, probably about 40. Average height, decent looking, a full head of hair that is combed to the side. I have a rapport with this guy, so we exchange pleasantries the best we can for sharing a combined 48 words. 

I tell him that we do not have a ball: Women meiyou qiu. I learned each of these words on Jinan’s basketball courts: women, or we, I learned from people saying, “Our ball”; meiyou, or don’t have, I learned because people shout it when someone takes a stupid shot; qui I learned because…well, that’s a no-brainer. The man nods understandingly and tells me that that is no problem. He either does not understand the quandary or knows where a ball is at the apartment complex. 

The latter is true. When we step foot on the court he points to the near baseline and seems to tell us to stay put. He then walks slowly to the other end of the court, the way you walk when it’s a million degrees outside. He mosies past the other baseline and opens what appears to be a closet on the ground floor of the apartment. Sure enough, he emerges with a ball and rolls it from about 50 feet away. It’s a strike, beelining to my feet as though guided by some invisible force. He waves and walks off; he’s not playing today.

Jonathan and I play a few games of one-on-one before the heat-induced fatigue/laziness reduces us to just shooting around. Our unspoken conclusion seems to be that, with the weather the way it is, there really is no point to turning this into a rigorous exercise session; that could do more harm than good. So we just shoot around, sweat and chat. 

We spend a good bit of time talking about basketball, about his Celtics, about whether or not Tom Izzo would make a good NBA coach, about how Derrick Rose is going to be better than Dwyane Wade over the next five years but no pundits want to say it. Eventually, though, our conversation turns to soccer. We are in the throes of the world’s greatest sporting event, the World Cup, and soccer is on our minds.

After a few minutes, I say something about soccer that is without a doubt true: I could have been better at soccer than any other sport, including basketball. Jonathan quickly and earnestly responds, “Yeah, me too.” 

To me, this is pretty incredible: Two guys who embraced basketball over soccer, though they both acknowledge that they could have been better at soccer.

My body is much more built for soccer than basketball, the sport which stole my heart and ultimately prevented me from ever cultivating my potential soccer talent. I am a hair under 5-11, which is hardly an ideal height for basketball, a sport which, more than any other, discriminates in the favor of vertical giants. What’s more, I am not a great jumper. I have the hops to shoot jump shots, but not to really soar the way that would be required if I were ever to become a truly formidable athlete on the basketball court. I’m also thick through the legs – mom used to call me “Thunder Thighs” – which seems to be a common denominator among some of the world’s best footballers. 

Body aside, my ability to play soccer belied how much I cared about it. That is, I was always good in little league even though I never played or cared about the sport. Had I cared, who knows? The skills that are required of basketball – limitless energy, ability to understand passing angles, knowing how to play physically but not recklessly – made me a good soccer player when I played on rec teams all through grade school. But once middle school hit, and once I started devoting my weekends to basketball tournaments and trips to inner-city gyms in Kansas City, Mo., soccer was nixed from the mix. 

Jonathan’s story is not dissimilar. He played soccer all through grade school, but he never really devoted himself to the sport the way he did basketball. He is tall and strong and coordinated, and like me his build is more suited for the pitch than the court. (Importantly, he is tall only on a normal-person scale, not a basketball-player scale. He’s probably 6-3, which is the height of many quality guards. That is not, however, the height of quality forwards, which is what Jonathan always played growing up.) 

So, here we have two fairly athletic 24-year-olds, each of whom played soccer, and played soccer pretty well, even though we never really cared about it. Alas, each of us spurned soccer in lieu of basketball, a sport that, per the physical abnormalities required to play it at an elite level, we couldn’t really thrive at. 

That’s not to say we wasted our time with basketball, or that we harbor regrets about our sport of choice, or that we aren’t good at basketball. I was, after all, invited to walk-on at my Div. II university on the strength of my buttery shooting touch, and I will always be good enough to get picked up when I played at random gyms because the ability to rain jump shots is a skill that even the tallest and springiest of basketball players don’t often possess. And while my basketball experiences with Jonathan are confined to the courts of China, I’m sure that he, too, will never have trouble playing pick-up ball because, even though he’s short by NBA standards, he’s no midget. An athletic six-foot-three guy, like a guy who can rain jump shots, will always be a commodity in non-competitive hoops.

But the fact that we never devoted ourselves to soccer is a telling (and damning) testament to the sport’s place among American youth. Just think: The United States hosted the World Cup in 1994, when we were both impressionable eight-year-olds. We both watched that Cup (and all ensuing Cups) zealously, for while we ultimately didn’t choose soccer, we nonetheless appreciate and enjoy the game. Still, we couldn’t be bothered to dedicate ourselves to soccer: Despite the fact that so-so white athletes are the minute minority in the upper-reaches of the basketball world, we made the conscious choice of basketball over soccer. That is, we chose a sport (basketball) in which we were resigned to relative mediocrity over a sport (soccer) in which we had the physical tools to compete at a higher (if not elite) level. 

And this is what has always happened in America, and likely what will continue to happen, even with the endearing 2010 U.S. squad’s jaunt to the knockout round in this year’s World Cup. Kids rarely choose soccer, even if it makes sense for them to do so.

As I watched the States’ final game again Ghana, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would have been like had, say, LeBron James opted for soccer. Every time Landon Donovan lofted a searching ball into the box – balls which invariably skirted across the tops of the U.S. players’ heads – I fantasized about LeBron soaring in to head one home. And while guys who, like LeBron, are 6-foot-8 don’t oft succeed at the highest levels of international soccer, you can’t convince me that he wouldn’t be a kick ass soccer player. He is a true physical anomaly, a never-before-seen mix of power, athleticism and coordination. Remember, had a scholarship offer to play wide receiver at Ohio State, even though he was the nation’s best high school basketball player. Someone who could have played at one of the top football universities in the nation but instead opted to become the first overall pick in the NBA Draft surely could have learned to play soccer, right? 

It’s easy to envision a number of top-flight American athletes playing soccer. What if you put Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson out on the wing? Or the majestically coordinated Chris Paul in midfield? Had these guys been born in any other country in the world, they would have likely been trying to cultivate their immense physical attributes into soccer skills. Instead, they’re playing American sports. Which is exactly what Jonathan and I did.

Look, I’m not saying that Jonathan and I would have been anything special at soccer. Could we have played in high school? Yes. Could we have played at a small-time university? Maybe. Could we have played in the World Cup? Certainly not. But even if we aren’t world-class caliber athletes, our story rings true across the country: Kids who knew full well that they were better suited for soccer still chose to devote themselves to basketball. And are still devoting themselves to basketball.

Kobe Bryant is China's Michael Jordan

Born in 1985, I was a little bit too young, and a little bit too immature, to really appreciate Michael Jordan during his heyday. In fact, as Jordan was barreling toward his second three-peat, I specifically remember rooting against him for no other reason than I was sick of him. I was sick of him winning every year, of monopolizing the proceedings. I equated Jordan to a bully.

I would later develop a regret complex over this unenlightened attitude.

It’s not like Jordan was universally revered back then and I comprised the entire contingent of the Anti-Jordan Coalition. Indeed, he was regarded by many as a prick (he once punched a teammate in practice); he had a well-documented gambling streak (Google it); he reportedly cheated on his wife. Not all of his qualities were endearing, and not everyone liked him.

But once I grew to really understand the kind of things that Jordan did on a basketball court, and the way in which he did them, I became, after the fact, a huge Jordan fan. Once I realized, for instance, that Jordan netted 37.1 points per game as a third-year pro – when he was 23 years-old – I became a Jordan fan. Once I realized that, two years later, Jordan averaged 32.5 points, 8.0 rebounds, 8.0 assists and 2.9 steals and shot nearly 54 percent from the floor, I became a Jordan fan. Once I realized that, en route to his first tile, Jordan’s Bulls didn’t just beat, but mercilessly swept their long-time nemesis Detroit Pistons – pounding them by 21 points on the road in the deciding Game 4 (Jordan had 29 points on 17 attempts) and prompting the Pistons to famously mope off the court without shaking the Bulls’ hands – I became a Jordan fan. Once I realized that, prior to the 1992 NBA Finals, the media were concocting a “Who is better – Jordan or Clyde Drexler?” storyline, and then Jordan went out and scored more than 35 points per game (including the shoulder-shrugging three-point exhibition in Game 1), I became a Jordan fan. Once I realized that Jordan scored 55 points at Madison Square Garden within five games of returning from his 21-month baseball hiatus, I became a Jordan fan. Once I wrapped my head around the absurdity of the Flu Game, or understood that, during the final two years of the second three-peat, the Bulls didn’t really have the best team in the league (or even the Eastern Conference), yet still won championships, I became a Jordan fan.

If you’re a basketball fan, it’s hard not to be a Jordan fan. I’ve always been the former; it was a matter of time before I became the latter, too.

(David Halberstam’s bio on Jordan called Playing For Keeps, which I read over here, turned my affinity for Jordan into a downright reverence. It’s an insanely detailed book, and worth a read if you care at all about Jordan. Web sites like IsoHunt and BTJunkie also helped my Jordan love flourish. Those sites house downloadable files of some epic Jordan games. I don’t know if they’re available in America, seeing as they epitomize copyright infringement. But they have been immensely fun for me in China. I’ve been able to relive Jordan’s 63 points as a second-year pro in Boston, the Flu Game, the 45-point clincher in the second finals win over the Jazz…it’s all online.)

It took a while, but I came around on Jordan. It’s just a shame that I was too young when it was happening live to really appreciate the phenomenon unfolding was going on. That this good-looking guy had become a basketball god and marketing gold mine in a way that has never been done before. It was unreal. I was just too young to realize it. And so was China.

That’s why I’m convinced that Kobe Bryant is China’s Michael Jordan. Now, I refuse to get into the “Is Kobe Bryant the next Michael Jordan?” debate. To ask if anyone is the next Michael Jordan is a silly, fabricated question concocted by ESPN to give Michael Wilbon something to talk about. It’s just a stupid thing to ask, for no other reason than the environment in which Jordan played was so vastly different than the environment in which Kobe plays. Indeed, Jordan helped create the environment in which Kobe plays, what with the media frenzy and marketing opportunities and the expectation that a basketball player do much, much more than simply play basketball. Asking “Is so-and-so the next Jordan?” is like asking “Is so-and-so the next Seinfeld?” There will never be a next Seinfeld – just like there will never be a next Jordan – because Seinfeld changed the medium in which existed for every ensuing show in the history; it forever changed what it means to be a television comedy. Just like Jordan changed what it means to be a star basketball player.

So, that’s not what I mean when I say Kobe Bryant is China’s Michael Jordan. What I mean is that, just as I was too young and immature to appreciate Jordan when he was Jordan, so, too, was China’s basketball community. Just think about the timelines of (a) Jordan and his insane career, (b) basketball’s burgeoning popularity in China, and (c) Kobe Bryant’s ascension into the upper stratosphere of basketball greats. (Just how high Bryant ascends of course depends on how this and the next three NBA Finals transpire. In Game 5 in Boston, Kobe was breathtaking, scoring 23 straight points for L.A. and hitting a different-area-code three-pointer that inspired the Celtics’ Paul Pierce to say, “I would say it was the toughest shot that I’ve ever seen somebody hit while I was on the court.” Of course, the Lakers still lost. Game 7 looms…)

When it comes to the evolution of China’s infatuation with the NBA, 2002 was a watershed year. Yao Ming was the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft in 2002, and it’s easy to argue that that’s really when basketball became huge in China. Sure, people were already playing basketball in China before that. In fact, as I noted in this blog’s infancy, China has been playing basketball as long as any nation outside of North America, and professional basketball in China dates back to 1956. Plus, it’s not like Yao Ming was just born an awesome basketball player; the basketball tools were in place in China to turn him into a talent worthy of being the No. 1 overall pick. After all, being a gigantic foreigner doesn’t automatically make you the No. 1 overall pick. Just ask Manute Bol, a 7-foot-7 Sudanese player who wasn’t drafted until the second round back in 1985. And his rather nondescript pro career – the highlight of which was a lone nomination to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team – is a testament to the fact that being a behemoth doesn’t mean everything. Indeed, Yao evolved into a quality player (and not just a giant), and that evolution took place in China (before 2002).

Still, 2002 was a landmark. Never before had China paid so much attention to basketball or the NBA, because never before had the nation produced such a superstar. The seeds were laid on China for the explosion of basketball’s popularity, and Yao represented the budding of that popularity.

Meanwhile, back in America, the seeds were being laid for Kobe’s popularity. Kobe averaged 25.2 points per game in 2001-02 to go along with 5.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 1.5 steals – and this was coming off of a season during which he averaged 28.5. Kobe could always jump through the roof; he did, after all, win the Slam Dunk contest as a 19-year-old rookie. But he also weighed about 120 pounds then. In 2002, however, he still had those youthful hops, which were now coupled with a grown man’s body. In other words, he had a lot of Jordan in him – long, lean, strong with extraterrestrial jumping ability. Indeed, 2002 is when Kobe’s star started to shine like never before. Jordan, on the other hand, was in the throes of his career, playing for the Washington Wizards in the awkward denouement of his career. His stats were still good – 22.5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.2 assists – but he was shooting 41.6 percent from the floor and averaging 22.1 shots per game to get those 22.5 points. And, more to the point, he wasn’t JORDAN anymore. He was a shot-a-lot guard who, while still productive, was but a shell of his former self. It’s hard to gripe about 22.5/5.7/5.2, but when you recall what Jordan was before he went to Washington, it just wasn’t the same.

It wasn’t just Kobe’s stats that were good in 2002. He also won his third straight title. So, a month before Yao Ming was drafted as the No. 1 overall pick, Kobe Bryant was the most accessible star in the league. He was a champion, he was fluid and graceful, he was good-looking, he did things that no one else was doing, he was a lot like Jordan was. That’s not to say he is the next Jordan, or that he’s as good as Jordan. But the dunking and shooting and leaping and looks: he had some Jordan in him, even as a 23-year-old.

That 2002 title would be the last championship that Kobe would win for several years, but it certainly wasn’t the climax of his career (or his off-court antics). And everything he did now that Yao was in the league would be heeded by the biggest basketball community on earth.

In 2002-03, Kobe averaged an even 30 points per game (to go with 6.9 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 2.2 steals) before losing to San Antonio in the playoffs. After that season, Kobe was charged with sexual assault for his, uh, encounter with a 19-year-old Colorado woman. While this tainted Kobe’s image in many people’s eyes, I for one* am sure that it turned Kobe into an even more iconic figure here than if it hadn’t happened. The Chinese, after all, have been known to have a mistress or two, so that Kobe was a superhuman basketball player and a lecher made him that much cooler.

* Really, that post and this one are sister posts. If you are at all interested in Kobe Bryant's popularity in China (and the impact that his infidelity had on his popularity in China), check out that post as well.

With his image as a bad boy now solidified, Kobe cruised along for the next couple seasons and then, in 2005-06, took it to a whole new level. That season he averaged 35.4 points per game, then most since Jordan average 37.1 back in 1987. It was also that season when Kobe had an astonishing 81 points in a single game. Kobe won the scoring title again the next season, averaging a cool 31.6 point to go with 5.7 rebounds and 5.4 assists. (Kobe sometimes takes flak for not being well-rounded, but the stats suggest an incredible all-around player. Since he turned 21, Kobe has averaged at least 5.2 rebounds and 4.9 assists in 10 of 11 seasons. I know he can be selfish, and I know that LeBron laughs at 5.2 rebounds and 4.9 assists – King James averaged 7.3 rebounds and 8.6 assists last season – but 5.2 and 4.9 are good peripheral stats.)

The next season, 2008, Kobe made it back to the Finals, where his team lost to the Boston Celtics. In 2009, the Lakers won it all – Kobe’s fourth ring – and now they’re battling to do it again.

Basically, since basketball became a true phenomenon in China – since, that is, Yao Ming became such a big deal 2002 – Kobe Bryant has been the best player for the longest period. Starting in 2002, Kobe has won two titles – maybe three, depending on how this Boston series transpires – and has been to three more finals. He has won the scoring title twice, scored 81 points, plus he had the most famous NBA-related affair of at least the last decade.

If Kobe had this exact same résumé, but started it 10 years earlier – say, in 1992 – then he would never have achieved such popularity here because his greatest exploits would have fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes in China. Which is what appears to have happened to Jordan. It’s impossible to quantify exactly what Jordan means to Chinese basketball fans. But I can tell you, based on jersey sales and rhetoric and so on, that he is no Kobe. Even though he’s better than Kobe.

Maybe someday the Chinese, like I, will realize that Jordan is actually the greatest. But it hasn’t happened yet.

Some Like It Hot -- Water, That Is

The first thing I see when I get to Shandong Normal University is a troop of students wearing black caps and gowns. They are snapping photos of one another with those glowing, We Just Graduated! smiles. It reminds me of my own graduation a couple years back. I reckon it’s a commonly held sentiment, but the weeks right before and right after graduation are unforgettable for all the right reasons. These students (or ex-students) are smack-dab in the middle of that two-week stretch, and it’s fun to see.

I roar past them on my embarrassingly loud bike, leaving a trail of pungent, almost sour white smoke in my stead. I would love to see the carbon footprint of my motor bike, which is as loud as a racecar but as weak as the 240 yuan piece of junk it is. It burns oil and gas like a Chevy Suburban, and I fear that I will eventually be treated to a dastardly karmic payback – retribution for the oodles of crap I pumped into the air during my year in China. At the very least, I am doing a number on my respiratory system, as well as the lungs of any poor sap who happens to be behind me on the road. 

The bike doesn’t have a key, so when I park it next to the courts, I don’t turn it off so much as it just kind of winds down, groans and eventually goes to sleep. It’s like a computer that hasn’t been used for a few minutes, seemingly programmed to recognize when its work it over and react accordingly. Miraculously, it usually starts again when its rest is over. 

I traverse the ten feet to the gate, surveying the sparse action on the courts. It’s dead. There is one four-on-four game going, one three-on-three contest and then a few people just sitting around. I make a note of this desolateness and approach a guy who is sitting by himself at the base of a goal. He is resting in the shade with his legs stretched out and his back parked against the green metal pole that loops from the backboard into the ground.

I ask him if I can use his ball by saying, “Keyi bu keyi?” which literally means, “Can no can?” I don’t know if this is proper way to make the inquiry, but he seems to understand and lofts the ball into my waiting hands. I shoot plant-footed 8-footers for a few minutes and then lace up my kicks to take some earnest jump shots. It’s annoying, but I can’t help but think about Kobe Bryant as I’m shooting. The jump-shooting display he put on in the Lakers’ Western Conference-clinching win in Phoenix the other day was otherworldly, stuck in my mind like a great line may get planted in a poet’s mind. I hate Kobe, but when it comes to shooters jumpers, he is probably the best person on the planet to emulate. He is the Hemingway of jump shots: Hemingway was a drunk and by all accounts not a very nice person; Kobe is a pompous, lecherous prick. But my god, they are both good.

Sneakers snugly tightened, I do my best Kobe impersonation, shooting awkward, twisting jump shots just like he does. It strikes me that I’m 24 years-old and still fantasizing that I am a real basketball player, but I keep on going. I shoot by myself for a while before a few other guys who are about 20 years-old join me. We shoot lazily, and I notice that I am instinctively giving them their change when they hit a shot. As I’ve written in the past, the concept of giving someone their change is lost on Chinese players, but, just like it’s ingrained in me to pretend that I’m a famous player when I shoot around, it’s ingrained in me to give dudes their change.

After a few minutes, Wang, the Refreshment Man, hits the scene. He rolls up in what can best be described as a flatbed bike. There is one wheel out in front, like a normal bike, and not one, but two wheels in back, supporting a four-by-four deck. You see these flatbed bikes all over China. Sometimes people load them with recyclable trash; sometimes they’re rolling around with mini-kegs being delivered to a restaurant; sometimes there are people chilling back there. Befitting of his title of Refreshment Man, Wang is hauling a few hundred water bottles, packaged up in cases of 24.

Since we’re not playing a game, and are instead still just shooting around, I grab a buck and waltz over. He spots me as he’s unloading the cases and says, “OK!” Wang is about 50, probably 5-foot-6, and appears to be kind of doughy, like you wouldn’t get much resistance if you gave him a little poke. He is generally wearing a smile, as he is today. I respond with an OK! of my own and ask him for a water. He snares a bottle from his limitless bounty and hands it to me. I thank him in Chinese, to which he replies, “OK!” I turn back to the court and take a hardy gulp, and into my mouth rushes a quenching dose of crisp, clean, hot water.

Back home I would have scoffed at the idea of drinking warm water, especially while playing ball. At the gym that my friends and I most frequented in Kansas City, we used to have a specific water fountain that we’d head to between games. We passed three different fountains on the way to this magic fountain because its supply of H2O seemed to be about 15 degrees cooler than everywhere else. It was one of two fountains set into a wall down the hall from the courts, and there were times when my friends and I would patiently wait in line for this fountain while its twin fountain four inches away sat unused. But again, the colder the better. (I have a theory that, when there are two water fountains side by side, the one that is lower is always colder. Just drink for thought…)

Here, though, there aren’t water fountains. Nor, for that matter, is there cold water. It is one of the things that struck me as odd when I first arrived. But the Chinese are convinced that it’s good for health to drink warm water, and I’ve wholeheartedly bought in. (The Chinese are convinced of other things, as well, that I don’t subscribe to, like that walking backwards is good for your brain. It’s not unusual to see people walking backwards on sidewalks in the early morning. The Chinese are also huge fans of open windows. Even in the dead of winter, I would often walk into my classrooms only to see that my students had thrown the window wide open. As it was explained to me, Chinese people think it’s really bad to have the air in a room stagnate, so they open windows to get things circulating – even if it’s like 25 degrees outside. It’s unclear to me whether or not they think it’s unhealthy to sit in a freezing room. I haven’t, and won’t, buy into that one, nor will you ever find me walking backward.)

But the warm water? I’m hooked, as are the other 1.3 billion people who live here. And whether or not you think they’re legitimate, there are reasons behind the warm water obsession. As a blogger for the Global Times put it:

The abundance of hot water in China is also connected to Chinese medicine. It is better, according to Eastern wisdom, to drink hot water for the sake of digestion, and overall health. Water with ice in it can take longer for the stomach to digest since the body first has to expend energy to heat the water up to body temperature.

Others take it even further:

Some evidence suggests that by drinking hot water, we remove built up deposits in our nervous system. These deposits are responsible for creating negative thoughts and emotions. By removing these build ups, we can help to purify our thoughts and put us in a better emotional state. Drinking hot water can also actually purify the toxins out of your body….

And others take it even further:

Cold water can also in extreme circumstances lead to heart attacks. As we have our meals enzymes and acid secretions start and this process sort of warms up the body. Drinking cold water is like attacking the body with an exactly opposite temperature. Not only does the whole procedure of digestion gets interrupted or slows down, the body can also react in the form of a heart attack. It does not always come after a pain in the right arm or pain in the chest…

That’s not all…

Drinking hot water after meals reduces cancer risk. Let me explain how. Drinking cold water will solidify the oil part of the food we have eaten. This will slow down the digestion process. And when this sludge reacts with the digestive enzymes and acids, it will break down and will start getting absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. This lines the intestine. The consequence is that this will turn into fats and lead to cancer. Therefore it is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.

Hot water has even been used as a legal alibi. A suspected thief died in February while being detained by authorities. The family was suspicious of the cause of death, but the police officers insisted that he “died suddenly while drinking hot water.”

I don’t necessarily buy in to these more far-flung reasons for drinking warm water – that it can reduce stress and help thwart cancer. But I do think there is credence to the suggestion that cold water is harder for your body to process because your body must warm it up in order to “use” it. It’s admittedly odd, but even on a day like today, the first day of June with the sun blaring, I don’t want cold water. If Wang had had a bucket filled with ice, and slipped bottles of water in there to make them cold, I would have grabbed one of the non-iced bottle that – like the one he gave me – had been baked by the sun. I’m done with cold water.

No South Paws in the Far East

There are any number of things that induce giggle-fits from the young’uns I teach. For instance, they invariably get a kick out of it when I stroll into class with coffee, which is a relatively recent addition to China’s beverage market (but a long-standing staple of my diet). And there is a virtual riot whenever we play a game and one of the teams’ point totals lands on 250, or “er bai wu.” In China, er bai wu is akin to an insult, derived (apparently) from ancient China when strings of currency were always lumped 500 at a time. Therefore, if you are er bai wu, you are essentially half a person. It’d be like calling someone an idiot.

Another teacher, who happens to be left-handed, told me that her left-handedness is nothing less than a point of amazement in her classrooms. When she wrote her name on the board on the first day of the term, the kids in each of her classes flipped. At first she didn’t understand what was so funny. Was it her handwriting? Was there something stuck to the back of her pants? But when she asked, she was told that it was simply the fact that she’s left-handed. Because in China, there aren’t lefties.

Well, that’s only partially true. Genetically speaking, there are indeed lefties. Roughly 11 percent of human beings are left-handed, whether they’re born in China or America or Cambodia or wherever. Thus, there are roughly 130 million people here who are technically left-handed. But if a child has a physical preference toward being left-handed, then they are trained from a young age to spurn that tendency and use their right hand, which, in China, is the right hand to use.

The blogger Ben Ross rehashed a conversation that he had with a Chinese-born gentleman who had moved to America.

…When the conversation turned to culture shock, I asked him what he thought was the strangest thing he saw when he first came to the US.

“Left handed people,” he replied without any hesitation.

“You don’t have left-handed people in China?” I inquired, making sure I hadn’t mistranslated his words.

“Nope, I had never seen anybody write with their left hand until I came to the US” he said.

“How is that possible?” I asked, “Isn’t that genetic?”

“Maybe so, but in China kids are all taught to write with their right hands. If they pick up a pencil with their left hand, the teacher will put it in their right. It’s really just a matter of practicality. In the US, you have left-handed desks, left-handed guitars, and all sorts of other left-handed devices, but in China we have none of the sort. It works out better that way I think, no need to manufacture two different kinds of something when only one is necessary.”

His story is corroborated by Wikipedia:

In ancient China, the left has been the “bad” side. The adjective "left" (Chinese character: 左, Mandarin: zuǒ) means “improper” or “out of accord”. For instance, the phrase “left path” (左道, Mandarin: zuǒdao) stands for illegal or immoral means. The character for “left”, 左 depicts a left hand attending to work. In contrast, the character for “right”, 右 (Mandarin: yòu) depicts a right hand in relation to the mouth, suggesting the act of eating.

One more anecdote, from the China Economics Blog:

One game that some colleagues and I play when undertaking 3 hour exam invigilations in the UK is to count the number of left handed students. When there are 100 students you usually end up with around 10%. This has been fairly consistent over the years.

Imagine my surprise therefore to hear that there are no left handed people in China.

Of course, there is nary a better manifestation of one’s preferred hand than the jump shot. After all, the jump shot – or at least the act of shooting, be it a free throw or set shot – is basketball’s intrinsic act. There is nothing like it in any other sport, and you can only do it with your strong hand. There are a lot of things in sports that you can do with either hand. In football, you can (and should) tote the ball with both hands, and on defense, tackling is a full-body endeavor. In baseball, many players can switch hit. And save moments when players wind up for slap shots, I can’t tell what’s going in hockey. Sure, you can do things with both hands in basketball, like dribbling and passing. But you can’t shoot a jumper with both hands. 

Like most of the Chinese, I play with my right hand. Unlike the Chinese, I sport Zack Greinke T-shirt jerseys and Florida State basketball shorts.

I’m thinking about handedness while I watch Game 4 of the Western Conference semis between the Lakers and Suns. Of the 10 starters, there is one lefty, Lakers point guard Derek Fisher, who has a ceiling-scraping jump shot that flies so high out of his left hand that it seems there is no way it could possibly find the net. (All too often, it does.) Thus, the starting lineups are reflective of the general population – exactly 10 percent are left-handed.

The percentage is exceeded, however, when the backups spell the starters. Off the Lakers bench comes Lamar Odom, a lefty, and the Suns send left-handed Yugoslavian Goran Dragic in for Steve Nash. All told, 19 players play in Game 4, and three of them – or about 16 percent – are left-handed. 

Nineteen is a pretty small sample size, though, so let’s look at the Eastern Conference Finals as well. In Game 4 of the dud series between Orlando and Boston, not one of the 20 players who took the court was left-handed – or, none of them played left-handed. One of them, though, Dwight Howard, was actually born left-handed. From his Web site:

A lot of people don’t know it, but when I was growing up I was totally left-handed. I wrote left-handed, held a fork left-handed and shot the ball left-handed.

But when I was in the eighth grade I tried to dunk on a guy and he undercut me and I landed on my left hand and broke my left wrist. After that, I taught myself to write with my right hand, eat right-handed and shoot the basketball with my right hand.

(Unfortunately for Orlando, he never figured out how to shoot a free throw with his right hand; he’s a 59.9 percent career free throw shooter. He missed five free throws in each of the first two games of the Boston series, and the Magic lost by three in each game.)

If you include Howard as a lefty, then four of the 39 players who played in each series’ respective Game 4s were left-handed. That’s 10.25 percent, or almost exactly the same percentage as the general population. I reckon that this percentage holds up on courts all over America. I can’t say for sure because I was never scrapping for things to blog about in America (and therefore never studying which hand people were using to loft shots at the goal). But I think one out of 10 seems about right. I know my intramural team in college had one lefty. I know that the gym I used to frequent in Kansas City boasted the occasional lefty, and I know that the Kansas Jayhawks had one lefty last season (Xavier Henry). I never kept tabs on this back in States, but I would say that, as is the case in the NBA playoffs, about 10 percent of U.S. ballers I played with were left-handed. 

This kid in Beijing shot right-handed, even if he shot on monkey bars and not a basket.

I want to keep tabs this afternoon, however, so I set out for a little anthropological study. I dart over to Shandong Normal at about 4:30, fighting rush hour traffic on my crummy little motor bike all the while. It takes little more than a single taxi ride in China to realize that drivers here are crazy, at least crazy in sense that they operate with inches the way drivers in the States operate with feet. If you planted an American driver behind the wheel in a Chinese city (myself included), they’d get in a wreck within minutes. Conversely, if you put a Chinese driver in American suburb, they might go crazy because there isn’t enough traffic. I knew that traffic here was bonkers the moment I left the Beijing airport. But until I got my motor bike, I didn’t realize exactly how crazy it was; now it is up-close. And because my bike doesn’t really have breaks – I keep an old pair of shoes in the basket and an angel on my shoulder – it’s all the more precarious. If this blog ever suddenly ceases, Chinese traffic may be the culprit.

The girls play right-handed, too.

Anyway, I make it to Shandong Normal easily enough. There is a huge gaggle of people watching a women’s basketball game being held on one of the courts nearest the front gate. I have never seen women play full-court games in China, let alone witnessed an all-girl duel with spectators lining the sidelines making all sorts of noise, so this is unusual. (There will likely be a post devoted to women’s basketball at a future date…) But I’m not worried about the sex of the players, just the hand they’re using to shoot. And which one was it? Right, right, right. There are a few of them who are savvy with their left-handed dribble, but no one is shooting left-handed.

I then move on to the other courts, occupied by guys, to take in some half-court four-on-four games. I mosey around for about 25 minutes – not trying to get into a game, not seeking out English speakers, just watching for those hands. Over the course of my nearly half-hour of watching jump shots, I see one guy shoot left-handed. One. I don’t know exactly many people I saw shoot, but I know that, between the ladies and the guys, I saw at least 50 or 60 people heave shots, and one was left-handed. Definitely not 10 or 11 percent. 

The one lefty!

After I do my highly unscientific research at Shandong Normal, I ride back home to play with a friend who recently got back from a jaunt to Qingdao. We walk to the courts that we share with our annoying co-habitants from the boarding school, passing a pair of four-on-four games. (There are no lefties.)

Within moments, a hoard of kids comes over and asks us to play. We begrudgingly comply, and proceed to play our own four-on-four games. This adds eight more people to the sample size, and no one is left-handed. That makes it close to 60 or 70 different people who I have seen launch shots today, and only one is left-handed. There must be more left-handed people than this one guy.

I’ll keep an eye out for more lefties in the future, but the early returns are that there aren’t a lot of lefties. But hey, that’s all right.

Up Fake: China’s Booming Fake NBA Market

Today I wake up at 6:45, drink some coffee that makes me yearn for Starbucks, write for a different Web site and sit down to watch the Suns and the Lakers play Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals.

The Suns fended off L.A. behind 17 points and 15 assists from Steve Nash, making the series 2-1 and, with Boston already up 3-0 on Orlando, sparing the NBA the ominous possibility of dual sweeps in the Eastern and Western Conference Finals (on the heels, no less, of sweeps in three of the four conference semis).

After that, I text Li Ball and ask if he and the gang are going to play any ball today. Five o’clock, he texts back. I write until five and bike over to the courts.

We shoot around for a bit and I hop in the first game. No one is keeping score, but after about 20 minutes the hoard of players waiting to play goes from zero to six, and scorekeeping is invoked to regulate playing time. There are a variety of players waiting – a young guy who couldn’t have been older than 20, a few old guys built like houses, a 30-something who, from the smell of things, had been drinking prior to his arrival. 

And then there was one dude wearing a Minnesota Timberwolves jersey. He caught my eye for a few reasons. First, you don’t often see Minnesota Timberwolves jerseys here. Cleveland and Boston and definitely the Lakers, but not Minnesota. They don’t have any transcendent stars (sorry, Kevin Love), it isn’t a major city (just ask Ricky Rubio), and they were horrible last season (15-67 horrible, lost-their-last-seven-games horrible).

The other reason I notice this guy’s Timberwolves jersey is because it doesn’t say Timberwolves. It says “Tim erwolves,” with a gap where the B should have been. That there is either a typo or the thing is falling apart suggests one thing: the jersey is, in Chinese parlance, jiade. Fake.

Jiade clothes in China are everywhere. At the end of my shopping expedition today I was toting a “Ralph Lauren” shirt and a pair of “adidas” soccer jerseys. Those quotation marks are necessary, because while the tag says one thing, you are no doubt buying another. The Polo shirt, for instance, ran me a total of 39 yuan (less than $6). You can’t buy Ralph Lauren shirts for $6. The jerseys were a steal too. Here is one of the ones I bought, the Spanish national team road kit.

It came equipped with adidas tags, and it has that bright yellow adidas emblem right below the neck. Heck, it even says “climacool” on it, signifying that it is part of adidas’ high-priced climacool line of technologically advanced sports gear. It looks and feels real. Trust me, though, it’s not adidas; it’s jiade. Proof? It cost me 60 yuan. In the real world, it costs $70 USD, or roughly eight times what I bought it for.

China’s fake-clothing (and fake-everything) industry has been reported ad nauseum. Reuters wrote this article about counterfeit items – including DVDs that hit the shelves before movies hit the theatres – well over a year ago. The Seattle Times wrote this two-parter in 2006, as George W. Bush was preparing to land in China to deliver a “stern message to Chinese officials about the need to crack down on knockoffs of U.S. products” and pound home the assertion that “90 percent of all intellectual property in China is pirated.” This photo gallery was posted in 2007, showing how a traveler to China can find authentic “Paradi” clothing, “PenesamiG” batteries, and even “Sccoby” shirts (if you like the timeless comic strip Peanuts). And one of my favorites: someone posted this query on Yahoo! Answers, asking, “Where can I find fake clothes in Shanghai?” One of the respondents simply answered, “everywhere”.

(On a personal note…a while back I bought every single episode of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, South Park and The West Wing from a jiade DVD market. The total cost ran me about 50 yuan, or less than $8. That bounty would have cost me close to a few thousand dollars in America. Just think: at the time, The Simpsons had 17 seasons, and if you went to Best Buy or some other outlet, it’d be $40 per season. The Simpsons alone, therefore, would have cost me right about $700. South Park had at least a dozen seasons; that’d be $450 worth of discs. Seinfeld had nine seasons, or about $350, and the West Wing had seven season, or about $300. Add it up, and we’re talking about a lot of money. And still I got it all for eight bucks. Sure, the Chinese versions of these DVDs don’t have director commentaries, and they aren’t as sharp visually. But we’re not talking about watching Avatar or the Super Bowl. We’re talking about The Simpsons and Seinfeld. Hi-def isn’t important. Plus the jiade discs come complete with funny attempts at English like PALY AL instead of PLAY ALL, or DIC NE instead of DISC ONE.)

So yeah, China’s counterfeit industries – from clothing to DVDs to electronic goods – is and has been booming. And that boom has been chronicled for years.

But the one sub-sect of the jiade industry that is especially interesting to me (and pertinent to this blog) is the NBA basketball merchandise: shoes, jerseys and T-shirts, not to mention the NBA itself and its most prized commodity, the players. You can find all sorts of basketball stuff in China that is egregiously counterfeit. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

This is a Kobe Bryant shirt that I saw in Yangshuo. It looks normal enough, right? Well, there’s one problem. Bryant and adidas, which supposedly produced the shirt, parted ways in 2002. This shirt, therefore, is an infringement on Kobe’s current contract with Nike. Or it would be an infringement if it were the least bit real. (The NBA logo is thrown in just to make sure the maximum number of entities are being had.)

Like that Bryant shirt, these socks look pretty legit. The packaging is adorned by the NBA’s best young player, LeBron James, and those Nike and adidas logos look pretty darn real. Therein lies the problem: Nike and adidas…sharing identical packaging…and sharing the same player. Not likely. As with Bryant, LeBron inked a bajillion dollar deal with Nike, a deal which prohibits his likeness from being used by adidas to sell products. Of course, this isn’t adidas’ doing. (Quick note on LeBron’s contract with Nike. It was a seven-year deal completed in May of 2003 when LeBron was 18 years-old, and it was worth $90 million. Not only was LeBron 18, but he was more than a month away from even being drafted. I still find that unthinkable. All of it. Especially the fact he was 18.)

Notice anything wrong here? Nike packaging for a pair of socks that aren’t Nike. The logo resembles that of Saucony, but I really can’t be sure. Whatever it is, it isn’t Nike.

Here’s Kobe Bryant’s mug being used to sell some unlicensed merchandise.

The NBA is getting ripped off in all of these pictures because both its logo and players are being strewn about products that aren’t legitimate. But this one is especially egregious. Notice that there are three different companies, side by side, whoring out the NBA logo. Jerry West would be ticked.

Not only does this guy bear a striking resemblance to Frederick Sykes, but he is wearing some jiade clothing as well. If you go here, you’ll see that all L.A. Lakers gear is manufactured by adidas, even lame T-shirts that say stuff like “Where The Black Mamba Strikes.” I say we put Dr. Richard Kimble on the case.

I just can’t believe that the NBA or the Chicago Bulls would sanction this abomination: a quasi-cowboy hat with a huge Bull on it. Everyone who won all those Bulls championships – Jordan and Pippen and Jackson and the crew – is still alive. But when one of them dies, he will roll over in his grave because of this.

Finally, the Mother Lode. An entire wall lined with fake jerseys. Here we have, from left to right, LeBron, Carmelo, KG, Kobe, Derrick Rose and, cut off because the cameraman is a hack, an old Allen Iverson 76ers jersey. Unlike that previous pic of the Lakers jersey that had no brand logo, these jiade jersey are adorned by adidas’ three stripes. 

Alas, they’re all fake. They sell for 150 yuan, or about $22. Online, adidas sells these for $79.99. And it’s not like adidas is philanthropic in China and simply hooks up the citizenry. I’ve bought two pairs of adidas shoes here – real shoes, from a real adidas outlet store – and the conversion is exactly one-to-one. For instance, the Derrick Rose basketball kicks I bought last November were about 700 yuan, or a hair over $100. That’s precisely what they would be back home.

I’m not interested in philosophizing about the morality of counterfeit NBA gear (or counterfeit anything). You can argue (quite successfully) whatever point you want. On the one hand, sure, it’s ripping people off. It’s screwing Kobe and LeBron and the NBA out of royalties that, legally, should be theirs. In that sense, it is immoral. But at the same time, it’s hard to feel too sorry for these multimillionaires missing out on a slice of their jersey sales, jerseys that are priced through the roof because these guys likely wouldn’t have signed their respective deals for anything less than the GDP-sized sums they did. 

Plus, these products are good for the Chinese economy. People have jobs making this bogus merchandise, and regular Chinese citizens – most of whom aren’t rich enough to pay $80 USD for a shirt – can rock their favorite gear. From that Seattle Times article:

Counterfeiting has become deeply entrenched in China's economy as a source of income for both small-time hawkers and powerful local tycoons. With millions of jobs dependent on the counterfeit trade, many in China think cracking down would mainly benefit foreign companies.

I’m in no position to pass judgment; I’m not an innocent bystander. Indeed, I own my own slice of China’s vast fake basketball clothing market: a Larry Bird 1992 All-Star Game jersey that my brother bought me two years ago. With a huge star adorning the chest and a hefty dose of early-90s font, it is the epitome of Old School, and I love it. 

I used to get such a kick out of seeing the look of dudes’ faces when I strolled into an all-black gym wearing this Larry Bird jersey. I’m not imposing physically (at all), so the perception was far more “dorky” than “savvy.” I usually played pretty well in it though, channeling my inner Bird and deriving the magical residue that was surely imbued into that jersey, even if it was jiade.

A Love Affair with Love Affairs: Kobe Bryant in China

And that’s why Kobe Bryant might be so popular here, because (a) He plays basketball really well, and (b) He has, like so many Chinese people, cheated on his spouse.

Commercial breaks are one of the (only) redeeming qualities about NBA broadcasts in China. When broadcasts back home cut to close-ups of the McDonald’s breakfast menu, or of a female bartender mocking a guy for not ordering a Miller Lite, broadcasts in China usually cut to highlight reels. I’ll take highlights any day over some floozy claiming that Miller Lite is an enlightened beer choice.

One of the would-be commercial breaks that was cooked up for the playoffs, and which plays sporadically during every Los Angeles Lakers game, is a lengthy homage to Kobe Bryant – two-plus minutes of nothing but Kobe. As if that weren’t ridiculous enough, Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” plays in the background. That’s right: Kobe Bryant is going to heal the world – or maybe he already has. It’s hard to tell.

The first time Jackson hits the chorus…Heal the world, make it a better place…there’s Kobe hitting game-winning shots against Miami, then Milwaukee, then Sacramento.

…For you and for me and the entire human race…

There’s Kobe raining on Denver in last season’s Western Conference semifinals, and Magic Johnson being so roused by Bryant’s brilliance that he gives him a standing ovation.

…There are people dying. If you care enough for the living, make a better place for you and for me…

The clip is utterly ridiculous if you have even the vaguest notion of what the lyrics to this song mean. The song is about, you know, saving the world, and Bryant is a basketball player – and not a particularly likeable or philanthropic basketball player at that.

Whatever the clip is supposed to insinuate about Bryant, it speaks to his popularity in China. And Brant’s popularity in China is undeniable. MSNBC.com writer Mike Celizic, who covered the 2008 Beijing Olympics, began an article about China’s obsession with Kobe thus: “It would be an insult to say that Chinese basketball fans treat Kobe Bryant like a god. And Kobe would be the insulted one.” And Denver Post writer Mark Kiszla, also covering the 2008 Games, wrote that “Kobe Bryant is bigger in China than the Great Wall.”

His Lakers jersey has for years been the most popular in the nation. And yesterday, during a mid-class break, one of my friends’ students literally wrote “Kobe Bryant” in huge letters on the board. In smaller letters, between Kobe and Bryant, he wrote, Heal the world. “You got to see this,” my friend, a Bostonian, told me. I walked into the glass, took one glance at the board and turned to the 17-year-old who penned it. “Heal the world?!” I said, exasperated. He nodded and pulled out his phone, which had as its background a picture of Kobe Bryant. It’s no surprise that the kid was wearing a purple Bryant jersey.

Why, though? Why is Bryant so outlandishly popular? Sure, he’s one of the best players out there, and he’s won championships, and girls think he’s a good-looking guy. These are surely all factors in Bryant’s popularity.

But I am intrigued with a different hypothesis, one posed by my Bostonian co-worker: Bryant’s history of having extramarital affairs may actually enhance his popularity in China. Because if you do a little research on infidelity in China, you realize that while Americans may have cringed at Bryant cheating on his wife, more than a few Chinese guys probably just nodded. And then went out to buy a Bryant jersey.

If you don’t remember, Kobe was accused of sexual assault in 2003 by a 19-year-old Colorado woman. The charges were ultimately dropped, but they nonetheless prompted a teary-eyed press conference at which Bryant admitted that he cheated on his wife. In 2004, a police report was leaked that contained further confessions from Bryant: he had slept with more women than just his 19-year-old accuser.

The Chinese can relate to extramarital affairs. A China Daily article published in October of 2008 – two months after Bryant became the de facto king of China during the Olympics – discussed the popularity of the Chinese movie “Painted Skin,” which has a plot revolving around a man, Wang Sheng, who must decide whether to stick with his loyal wife or leave for his lover. A Beijing newspaper posted an online survey asking their readers, “If you were Wang Sheng, who would be your choice?” According to the article, there were about 1,100 people who responded, and less than half said that they would choose the wife (the good-husband option). More than 30 percent said that they would like for have both women (the Kobe Bryant option). Forty-five percent of those surveyed said that affairs were “quite common” among couples they knew.

“The survey, by some degree, revealed people’s real attitudes toward extramarital affairs,” Zhou Xiaopeng, a consultant with the China Marriage Society, is quoted saying.

This article from Reuters asserts, “‘Second wives’ are common among government officials and businessmen in China.” And this article from the Los Angeles Times, about an official named Li who was busted for having four mistresses, says:

Li’s transgressions were minor compared with those of other public officials. A top prosecutor in Henan province, for example, was recently stripped of his post and Communist Party membership after investigators alleged that he embezzled $2 million to support his lavish lifestyle -- and seven mistresses….

So common is the practice [of having mistresses] that it has spawned an industry of private detectives snooping on cheating husbands and their paramours.

Tiger Woods poses another interesting facet of the affairs-in-China topic. This article from a Sydney-based newspaper discusses how, while companies are increasingly skeptical of Woods’ image and his ability to market their products, Tag Heuer, a luxury watch maker, has taken a nuanced, country-by-country approach to handling Woods. Guess which country hasn’t seen a decrease in Woods exposure?

“Very quickly we have taken sides,” [CEO Jean-Christophe] Babin said. “We stay with him but, as he wants more privacy and as he won't play for a while, in the countries where the issue is quite sensitive we won't use him much.”

Consequently, in the US, Woods's image has been removed from the company's advertising. However, it remains on the Tag Heuer website and, in China, use of it has been increased.

Peter Hessler succinctly discusses affairs in China in his book Oracle Bones. In this scene, he rehashes tales from one of his former students, Emily, who herself was courted by a married man.

During dinner, Emily regales me with stories about the factory owners. One of her boss’s colleagues was a Chinese-American who, after recently arriving from San Francisco on business, had gone to Emily’s office, faxed his wife a love letter, and then immediately gone out and hired a prostitute. Emily’s own boss was always leering at the young women in his factory, and most of his friends were the same. In a nearby plant, another Taiwanese owner had become so distracted by his two Sichuanese mistresses that his company had gone bankrupt.

This stuff happens a lot here. And while it isn’t necessarily accepted, it’s still common, and a basketball player who himself has (or at least had) a penchant for mistresses is something that Chinese men can relate to.

Like so many unattractive aspects of Chinese cultural – be it poverty or joblessness or the number of deaths in an earthquake – quality statistics on extramarital affairs are hard to come by. Sure, there are online surveys; Tag Heuer has upped its use of Tiger Woods in China when other companies have washed his lecherous face from their ads; Hessler’s student obviously experience China’s love affair with love affairs first hand. But there is at least anecdotal evidence to suggest that affairs in China are, if not more prevalent than in the States, then at least viewed differently, almost like it is an inherent part of society as opposed to a nary-discussed secret that people do their best to ignore.

And that’s why Kobe Bryant might be so popular here, because (a) He plays basketball really well, and (b) He has, like so many Chinese people, cheated on his spouse.

I’ll admit that this could very well be a specious claim; maybe Bryant is popular for more predictable reasons. Like that his string of three straight NBA titles culminated the same year that Yao Ming entered the league. Or that he plays in one of the biggest and most recognizable cities in America. Personally, though, I think that 19-year-old in Colorado helped solidify Kobe’s god-like status in China.

In his article on Bryant’s popularity in China, the Kiszla wrote, “Sure, the man can hoop. But he’s not exactly the finest example of American virtue. So why does China go absolutely gaga for Kobe?” Maybe Kiszla missed the point. Maybe Kobe’s not popular despite his marital transgressions, but because of them.

CBA: The Crazy and/or Banished Association

I feel a little guilty taking vacations. After all, when you work three days a week and get paid a comfortable (and largely undeserved) sum of money, what is a vacation actually a break from? Twenty-hour work weeks? Three days on, four days off? Eating out every night? In a lot of ways, when you teach English in China, your whole life is a vacation.

But as guilty as I sometimes feel about traveling, I’d likely feel a twinge of remorse for not traveling. I am in an exotic, foreign country, and trains and cheap flights make every corner of this monster accessible. And then there are holidays like the recent May Holiday, or Labor Day, when my school was closed and I had a full 11 days off.

I couldn’t pass on a chance to travel over the May Holiday. But in an attempt to justify it, I still had this blog in the back of my mind. That’s why, when I saw the CBA final on TV, I felt compulsed to watch it and, later, to write about it.

The best-of-seven series was between the Xinjiang Flying Tigers and the Guangdong Southern Tigers. It was Guangdong’s eighth consecutive trip to the finals, and, on the strength of a 4-1 series victory, the sixth title that the Southern Tigers have claimed in the past seven years. Not even the Chicago Bulls of yesteryear pulled off the six-out-of-seven titles feat, so the Southern Tigers are indeed a juggernaut.

(That this game was between the Tigers and the Tigers inspired a quick study of the different CBA team nicknames. Of the 17 total teams, three are named the Tigers; the third is from Jilin. Other nicknames include the Ducks, Leopards, Dragons, Dinosaurs, Lions, Sharks, Whirlwinds, DoubleStar and Rockets. For a moment these names struck me as utterly ridiculous, but then I thought about some NBA names: Magic, Thunder, Knicks, Heat, Suns, Jazz, Lakers [which, when written in Chinese characters, translates to “Lake People”]. So I’ll give a pass to the Dinosaurs and Ducks and Whirlwinds because, really, NBA names are pretty goofy too.)

But what was most interesting to me watching that decisive Game 5 were the foreign players on Guangdong’s championship team: Smush Parker and David Harrison. I remembered both of these players from the States, but until I did a little homework, I had no idea about the crazy routes that landed them in China.

David Harrison was a star at the University of Colorado from 2002-04. Kansas fans like myself will remember the seven-footer for exchanging words with former KU All-American Drew Gooden during a 2002 game in Boulder. Following the game, Harrison, then a freshman, said that the Jayhawks would “get theirs” when the teams played again in Lawrence; Colorado lost the rematch 103-73. (Harrison conceded that KU fans “really don’t like me.” We did, however, like playing his team.)

KU storylines aside, Harrison, a top 15 national recruit, was a heck of a player in college. As a freshman in 2002, he averaged 13.9 points, 7 rebounds, 1.3 blocks and shot 63.8 percent from the floor. His sophomore season he again averaged 13.9 points, but upped his rebounds to 8.3 and blocks to 3.3, and led the Buffaloes to a rare NCAA Tournament appearance. He blew up as a junior with 17.1 points, 8.8 rebounds, 63.1 percent field goal shooting and 2.9 blocks – he became the all-time leading shot blocker at CU. His efforts earned him All-Big 12 honors, and he opted to forego his senior season and enter the Draft. He was chosen No. 29 overall by the Indiana Pacers in 2004. That’s when things went terribly wrong for Harrison.

Now, Harrison was a bit of a hothead before he got to Indiana. Just look at what Denver Post writer Christ Dempsey wrote about Harrison:

Not only was the giant a top-notch recruit, he was intriguing. He was outspoken. He played with fury. But he also partied relentlessly, never quite reaching the promise predicted for him. Emotion was his calling card, and it often got him in trouble.

He argued with opposing fans, most notably with blue-clad Kansas supporters at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence.

He openly questioned CU coach Ricardo Patton's authority.

So yeah, Harrison had it in him to be brash and maybe ever a bit reckless. But it certainly didn’t help getting drafted by the Pacers in 2004. Think of the nuts on that squad: Ron Artest, Jamaal Tinsley, Stephen Jackson. There has been no team in recent history with as thuggish a persona as that 2004-05 Pacers team (not even the Jailblazers). And for a player like Harrison – who was teetering between ultra-talented big man and massive waste of talent – there couldn’t have been a worse fit.

People know about Ron Artest. He was at the epicenter of the famous Pistons-Pacers brawl after he charged into the stands to try to maim the guy who threw beer at him. Throwing beer at someone is lame, but so is retaliating against the wrong person – which Artest did. Other interesting Artest tidbits:

* Told the Sporting News that he used to drink Hennessy during halftime of games

* Applied for a job at Circuit City to get the employee discount

* Asked for a month off to start the 2004-05 season because he was exhausted from promoting an R&B album produced by his label

* Destroyed a television camera at Madison Square Garden

* Had his dog confiscated by authorities for lack of proper care

* Arrested for domestic abuse

* Served 10 days in jail for domestic abuse

This was the best player, the leader of that Pacers team.

Then there was Jamaal Tinsley, whose rap sheet is almost as ridiculous as Artest’s. I’ll let David Aldrich, writing for NBA.com, rehash Tinsley’s off-court career:

In October, 2006, just after the start of training camp, Tinsley and several teammates were at a strip club when an altercation occurred, which led to then-teammate Stephen Jackson being hit by a car outside the club – and firing a gun into the air several times. Tinsley wasn't disciplined by the team (the league suspended Jackson for seven games the following season).

In February, 2007, Tinsley and then-teammate Marquis Daniels were involved in a fight at a local bar that led to a felony charge of intimidation being filed against Tinsley, along with misdemeanor counts of battery, disorderly conduct and intimidation. The charges were dropped in March 2008, after an agreement was reached where Tinsley and Daniels agreed to perform 32 hours of community service and stay out of trouble for two years.

However, during that interim period, Tinsley was involved in another incident, this one even more serious.

In December, 2007, Tinsley and members of his entourage were shot at in a high-speed chase through the streets of Indianapolis in which Tinsley was the apparant [sic] target of a robbery. Cars followed Tinsley's party out of a local club and followed them for several blocks, into a gas station, and to a local hotel, where one of the passengers in one of the cars opened fire, striking the Pacers' equipment manager in both elbows. (He was treated and released at a local hospital.)

How sullied was Tinsley's reputation? Well, the Pacers had tried to trade him in 2008 but couldn’t find any takers. Thus, during the 2008-09 season, they ended up paying him millions upon millions of dollars – not to play, but to stay away from the team. He was still technically under contract, but was nonetheless such a cancer that the Pacers chose to swallow the money rather than let him be around the team. Must be a great guy.

And Stephen Jackson – who was just mentioned as having fired a gun outside of a club and being a key component in the Pistons brawl – rounds out the Pacers 2004-05 roster. Jackson is so hot-headed that he got himself ejected from playoff games (yes, plural) in 2007, but that is minuscule compared to the rest of his transgressions.

This is the mess into which Harrison was welcomed when he left Colorado.

“He had the craziest group of characters assembled on one team,” Harrison’s brother, D.J., who also played at CU, told the Denver Post. “There was nowhere to hide on that team.”

It goes without saying that Harrison didn’t flourish with the thuggery surrounding him. He was hit with a misdemeanor assault charge for his role in the brawl in Auburn Hills, and subsequently sentenced to one year of probation. Things weren’t going well on the court either. For three years, Harrison averaged fewer minutes each season than he had the last, from 17.7 minutes as a rookie in 2004-05, to 15.4 to 7.9. His point totals followed the same downward plunge.

According to Dempsey, it was after his third season – when Harrison averaged 7.9 minutes and 3.0 points – that Harrison fell into a habit of heavy marijuana use. “I didn’t really have friends anymore,” Harrison told Dempsey. “I stayed in my house, and I smoked pot. That's what I did. I didn’t want to leave the house. I literally feared for my life sometimes there [in Indianapolis].

“That’s what I created in my mind. I didn’t understand that those things may or may not happen to me. And if they do, I have no control over it anyway. So why am I sitting around worrying about it?”

In January, 2008, Harrison failed a random drug test and, as a result, was suspended for five games by the NBA. He was suspended again, by the Pacers, after a March tirade in the locker room. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t offered a contact extension by Indiana after the ’08 season. No NBA teams wanted him, so he headed to China to play for the Ducks. During the 2008-09 season, he averaged 42.2 minutes and 21 points. Then, he went back to the States to try to convince a team to pick him up. None did.

“Skill-wise, there’s no question David should be in this league,” Larry Bird is quoted saying in the Denver Post article. “It’s just the other little things that’s keeping him out. Your reputation is everything. . . . As a player, I know what he can do.

“It’s just that he’s got to prove to people that he's going to put all of that other stuff aside and take this job seriously.”

If it’s any consolation, he’s tearing it up in China. This season, with Guangdong, he averaged 16.7 points, 8.8 rebounds and shot 70.4 percent from the floor. And now he has a medal to show for it. (The players got medals, not rings, and during the award ceremony a 60-second snippet of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” played in a mind-numbing loop.)

Pretty bizarre career.

Then there’s Harrison’s teammate, Smush Parker. For me, Parker is synonymous with the Los Angeles Lakers, where he started for two seasons from 2005 to 2007. This was a down period for the Lakers but that wasn’t necessarily Parker’s fault. After all, Kobe Bryant was in “Trying to show the world how great I am” mode for each of these seasons. For instance, in the last month of the 2007 season, with the team hovering around .500, Bryant had point totals of: 65, 50, 60, 50, 43 (in five consecutive games!!!), 53, 50, 50. In a 17-game stretch, Kobe netted at least 43 points eight times – and 50 points seven times. It wasn’t, however, a winning formula; they didn’t make it past the first round of playoffs either season with Parker running the point.

In 2005-06, Parker had a totally serviceable two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio, plus he averaged 1.7 steals per game and hit nearly 37 percent of his three-points. In his two season, Parker averaged 11.7 and 11.1 points with almost identical assist numbers; he was a statistically competent point guard.

So why was Parker shown the door? Well, in 2007 the Lakers signed Derek Fisher, and with 2006 Draft pick Jordan Farmar revealing himself to be at least serviceable, there was no need for a third point guard in Parker. Thus released from LA, he signed a two-year, $4.6 million contract with the Miami Heat. 

Then things got pretty ugly. A 41-year-old female parking lot attendant said that Parker needed to pay a $12 valet charge to get his keys back. Parker said that he had already paid and, having “lost it,” grabbed the woman’s arm in order to get his keys. After news of the altercation broke, the Heat deactivated Parker.

Parker ended up playing a total of just nine games for the Heat – averaging 20 minutes, four points and 1.7 assists – before being waived and later singed by the Los Angeles Clippers toward the end of the season. During his second stint in L.A., he played 19 games with numbers similar to his numbers in Miami – that is, not good. The next season, 2008-09, he tried out for the Denver Nuggets but was cut before the season began. After playing in the NBDL for a few months, it was off to China.

Like Harrison, Parker was a stud this season in the CBA – and apparently didn’t get into any tiffs over valet fees. On the year, he averaged 18.7 points per game to go along with 6.2 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 3.1 steals. Pretty nasty numbers – good enough to be named to the Asia-Basket.com All-CBA team, along with four other foreigners (Charles Gaines, Stephon Marbury, Bateer Mengke and Stromile Swift).

I promise that this is almost over. But, before I sign off, a quick look at the two foreigners for Xinjiang, Guangdong’s opponent in the finals: Myron Allen and Charles Gaines. Allen played college ball at North Dakota but, after it was found that he played a few minutes in a quasi-professional league for the Fargo-Moorhead Beez, the NCAA said that he was forbidden from playing college hoops anymore; he’d lost his amateur status. That was in 2003. Afterward, he bounced around the NBDL for a bit and ended up here.

Gaines, who played ball at Southern Mississippi, has played professionally in Turkey, France, Israel and even briefly for the San Antonio Spurs. He was booted from his Israeli team after repeated violations of team policies; sounded like the guy liked to party. He was signed ever-so-briefly by the Spurs, who quickly released him. Sticking with the “American ballers in China are a little flaky” theme, Gaines slapped a Chinese player on Guangdong’s team during the finals, earning him a two-game suspension.

One wonders if things could have been different for Harrison and Parker. What if Harrison had gotten drafted by another team? What if Harrison ended up in, say, Utah or San Antonio? After all, Stephen Jackson kept it together in San Antonio. Maybe the combo of a veteran coach and a quieter city could have kept Harrison in line like it did Jackson. And what if the Lakers hadn’t drafted Farmar in 2006? Then, even if Derek Fisher came to town, Parker may have still had a spot on the team (and a even-tempered veteran to groom him). 

Then again, maybe these guys were doomed regardless of circumstances. Harrison proved to be a headcase before he was even drafted. Sure, it didn’t help that he was surrounded my misfits in Indianapolis, but there is pot and fighting to be had anywhere, not just in Indianapolis. And who knows about Parker. A millionaire who will quibble with a parking lot attendant over $12 probably doesn’t have the soundest psyche to begin with.

As circuitous as they were, these guys’ paths landed them in China. Those paths, of course, are lined with legal issues and drug problems and bad reputations. And now, a CBA title.