Iran makes Asian champ look ordinary

WITH its athletic forwards, gutsy guards and NBA center turning the Mall of Asia Arena into a playground of sorts, Iran roared to a third straight win, leaving traditional powerhouse China looking like a basketball program in disarray.

The record of the continent’s most successful basketball team says it all: 1-2.

The defending champions got pipped by South Korea and then bamboozled Malaysia. Against Iran, they cobbled a collection of errors and missed shots en route to a 51-70 defeat that left a lot of people stunned.

“Please give us time to get used to the situation and we’ll try to get better,” said China starting guard Wang Shipeng after the game.

Wang was a perfect snapshot of the Chinese team against Iran. He led the team with 11 points but had six of the team’s 19 turnovers.

“Today, we played really bad,” said China coach Panaglotis Giannakis. “We didn’t start well and we committed a lot of mistakes.”

It was indeed a strange sight to watch China fumble easy pickups and lose track of rebounds. But mostly, it was a shock to watch Iran attack the basket at will.

Iran scored 30 points in the paint, a patch of basketball real estate long dominated by China’s talented big men.

But with Yi Jianlian out—Giannakis said he had a little “problem” and listed him day-to-day for the tournament—and the aging Wang Zhizhi unable to impose himself against Haddadi, it was Iran that looked unstoppable.