THERE was nothing political about it: Quite simply, China and Chinese-Taipei hit the Mall of Asia hardwood with two different basketball tales to tell in the Fiba Asia tournament.
China groped for form and was pushed around by the beefier, though less athletic, Iranians in their Group C battle last Saturday.
Gone was the grittiness that marked previous champion teams from mainland China. There were not too many prolific shooters except for blast-from-the-past Wang Zhizhi who had occasional forays at the basket.
Wang Shipeng tried to get going but could only muster 11 points.
The Chinese spent too much time banging bodies with 7-foot-2 Hamed Hadadi and couldn’t get any decent offense going. They also did not have an ace point guard in the mold of Adiljan who was a heady sentinel and could organize the many weapons China had.
Iran won, 70-51, and did so with a basic play of guard Mahdi Kamrani driving and dumping the ball to Hadadi. With his height and bulk, Hadadi simply tiptoes to score or follow up missed shots.
China is clearly a team in transition. Much has been said about the team’s adjustment attempts with the system of Greek coach Panagiotis Giannakis and there was clear evidence of this in its struggles against South Korea and Iran.
China was probably thinking of a more European approach to the game, a more deliberate offense that would match up against teams in the World Championships or Olympics.
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Chinese Taipei, on the other hand, gave basketball fans a lesson on how not to give up on your main offensive weapons even if the game is not going your way.
After a scorching start against the Philippines that gave them as much as an 11-point edge, Chinese Taipei lost its grip on the game and fell behind by 15. The Taiwanese began the game firing threes like it was the only shot in their arsenal and hit close to 40 percent of them in the first half.
But at the top of the fourth quarter and down by 13, Chinese Taipei again cranked up their rainbow-shooting machine and clawed back into the game.
Tseng Wen-ting and Lu Cheng-ju are big men who can fire treys and they connived with hotshot Lin Chih-chieh to spearhead the homestretch rally.
If the Filipino players were thinking Chinese-Taipei was going to miss all the heaves from outside, they were sadly mistaken. “Live and die by the three” seemed to be their motto and it bailed them out of a seemingly lost cause and won, 84-79.
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The three-point shot of opponents seems to be the dagger that frustrates Filipino teams in international competitions. We saw that in the Busan Asian Games in 2002 and in other recent games against South Korea.
Maybe it’s high time we put emphasis on shooting threes as early as the time when kids attend basketball camps during summer. Coaches don’t teach this during these stints because the emphasis is on the basics that match the ages and frames of the young players.
Maybe it’s time to rethink this outlook and start developing more players that can eventually trade treys with the rest of Asia so that they don’t break our hearts that often.