Bill Simmons’ annual NBA Draft Diary on ESPN.com had this to say about Yi Jianlian going to the Bucks:
I’m starting to come around on Yi — the thought of him shoveling out his car in minus-10 degree weather in January while fighting back tears and screaming, “Why????? Why?????” in Chinese is delightful for some reason. Too bad they’ll trade him. If the Chinese government can torture Jack Bauer for two years, it can definitely break the Bucks.
Yi refused to travel to Milwaukee or meet with team representatives after the draft, instead he flew to Las Vegas to take part in exhibition games with the Chinese National Team. Word is that his people are desperately trying to force the Bucks into a trade. Nice. Fellow China-based hoops enthusiast Postive Solutions has a nice breakdown of Yi’s non-Milwaukee options.
4 responses so far ↓
1 無名 - wu ming // Jun 29, 2007 at 6:32 pm
hey j, off-topic, but do you know if that superimposed map is true to the latitude as well as size? just curious.
why is yi so determined not to go to milwaukee? it’s not like china isn’t miserable in the winter too.
2 JXie // Jun 30, 2007 at 12:09 am
CBA just wants playing time so Yi can develop and helps Yao in the Beijing Olympics, so it was the first one that came out and gave an OK to Milwaukee. His former team, his agent and Nike all have vested interest for him to play in a big market team. Milwaukee is a small market. Yi is a very marketable player, potential in the US, and definitely in East Asia.
Yi’s unofficial measurements were even more impressive than Oden’s, but per his agent’s request, he avoided the Orlando NBA combine altogether to make sure only the suited teams could draft him. Whatever the difference in rookie contract salaries is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. But lo and behold, the scouting department of the Bucks had seen enough of Yi outside of the US to make the call.
Jeremiah, remember the exchange we had about Simmons’ idea of sending a US under-22 team to the Olympics, well I found a blog named “The Painted Area” that put the whole thing in perspectives far better than I did:
http://tinyurl.com/2cunw7
The knocks on Yi from the typical American commentators seem to be, weak on rebounding and weak on post defense. Well, first Yi’s per minute rebounds in the recent international games were already higher than Yao’s, and ranked #12 in the 2006 World Championship (if my math is right). He is long, athletic and quick to the ball. For most of the last 18 months Yi weighed around 230 lbs (now he is about 250 lbs after the weight training in LA). When your opponent had 70 lbs (Ha), 55 lbs (Tang) and 35 lbs (Wang) on you, you would tend to gamble a lot and go for steal or deny post entry. They still scored on him but Yi created a lot of turnovers (fewer on Wang). Speaking of which, out of all lottery picks, other than _maybe_ Oden, all bigs would have had the similar problem.
Yi should be able to eventually pack another 15 to 20 lbs without losing much of his speed. He can potentially be a monster. Wouldn’t it be ironic in the future that despite losing out in the lottery ping-pong balls, the Celtics still would have had the franchise savior in that lanky Chinese kid the diehard but ill-informed Celtic fan Bill Simmons so loved to mock, and somehow passed him?
3 花崗齋之愚公 // Jun 30, 2007 at 4:05 am
JXie,
I agree for the most part with your take on Yi. As I wrote before, I am pretty high on Yi’s upside. I like Bill Simmons a lot–we share a pretty similar background–but he was dead wrong on Yao and I think he’s off on Yi as well.
I still don’t think that Boston would be a good fit for Yi, however. The sports media pressure-cooker in that town has chewed up and spit out a long list of players in all sports. I think Yi needs to be someplace where he can develop without being dogged in the local press after each and every bad game.
4 花崗齋之愚公 // Jul 1, 2007 at 12:49 am
Wu Ming,
Not 100% sure, but I believe that it is.
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