Yang Yikanqiu: Behind Zou Yang Chen Guohao, the CBA draft is collapsing at breakneck speed
Yesterday afternoon (July 13, Beijing time) at 5 p.m., with only 40 hours left before the 2023 CBA draft, the news came that the two clubs of Beikong men's basketball and Ningbo men's basketball team jointly announced that the Ningbo team traded the title sign in their hands to the other party, and the return was "two excellent players" according to the official statement. Behind the wording of the Yunshan fog cover, it is rumored that the two players sent by the Beikong team are Wang Junjie and Ma Yong - Ah Tijiang guided this to Quantai to recruit the old department, willing to give up valuable titles, and exchanged two Bayi veterans for the Ningbo team.
With such a deal, it finally adds a little more discussion to the upcoming draft. Otherwise, there are really not many highlights to select in this draft except for the fierce debate among fans in the battle between Zou Yang and Chen Guohao. It can even be said that after the grand events of 2020 and 2021, the situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse in the following two years.
The CBA draft is still a new thing, from the first draft in 2015 only one player Fang Junlei was selected, the CBA draft has experienced 8 years, once had a very good development trend.
After Fang Junlei's CBA career ended dismally, the second draft the following year ushered in the successful champion Guo Kai. Although plagued by injuries in recent years, this will not negate Guo Kai's success in Guangzhou in the past few seasons, from 2019 to 2022, he has made 76 appearances in three seasons, served as a team starter 72 times, and averaged double-doubles per game every year in a row. Therefore, not only did he personally get a top-salary D contract from Guangzhou Lions Club, but it also illuminated the way for people to enter the CBA through the draft.
From 2016 to 2020, the 5th consecutive CBA draft is becoming more and more vibrant, because CUBA players, NBL players, overseas students, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan players have many representatives to participate in the CBA draft wave, and for a time there is a trend of a hundred flowers.
Following Guo Kai's selection as a CUBA player in 2016, Guangzhou drafted another champion a year later, point guard Chen Yingjun from Baodao; In 2018, the NBL Henan team produced that year's champion Jiang Yuxing; In 2019, Wang Shaojie, who is very dominant in CUBA, was controlled by the north; In 2020, it was the turn of Au Junxuan, who graduated from the NCAA, to be removed by the Shanghai men's basketball team with the first pick.
In just 5 years, players of four different identities have been high school champions. And as these draft players play far beyond expectations in the CBA league year after year, and teams gradually pay attention to the draft, the scenes of frequent abstainions in the past begin to disappear, and the number of applicants and winners of the CBA draft every year almost shows a healthy trend of linear growth.
In the 2016 CBA draft, 8 people were selected, of which Guo Kai, Shi Yi and Wang Hong played in the league so far;
In 2017, 11 people were selected, and the top three players in this year's draft were Chen Yingjun, Zhou Yixiang and Hui Longer are all Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan players;
The number of players selected in 2018 further increased to 14, especially 5 teams also selected players in the second round, and nearly half of the players are still in the CBA this season;
In 2019, Guo Kai's fellow disciple Wang Shaojie was elected champion, and the draft that year took He Siyu and Wang Ruize two second-round gods in a row with the 23rd and 24th picks;
2020 is also known as the "first draft year in CBA history", although the future performance of Junxuan in the champion district is not satisfactory, but this rookie Zhu Mingzhen, Lin Tingqian, Zhang Ning, Liu Yi, including Zhu Songwei, who left the Bay Area Wing Dragon, all performed gratifyingly.
Through the preparation of these 5 years, the CBA league finally waited for the grand scene of the 2021 draft: 19 of the 20 teams in the first round of the draft chose to raise cards, only Liaoning abstained, in addition to the gradual recognition of the draft by each team, the new army Ningbo first entered the league to recruit new recruits, and also created a total of 30 players to join the CBA through the draft in this year.
At the time, not many people might have thought that it was an inflection point in the CBA draft. In the subsequent 2022 draft, the number of selected players fell back to 20, but what is more worrying is that the only player who can really occupy the main position in the CBA year is Wang Lanzheng.
In the face of the upcoming 2023 draft, the most optimistic estimate will not think that 20 players will be selected this year, which means that the number of draft players will fall for the second year in a row - what happened to the CBA draft? What about the future of Chinese basketball on campus?
While China's campus basketball exploded with unprecedented energy in 2023, the CBA draft collapsed rapidly behind Zou Yang Chen Guohao's championship battle, which was originally used as another important indicator to evaluate the success of campus basketball.
Even, compared to the status quo in 2023, which is already quite deserted, our worries about the future are stronger.
The first conundrum in the CBA draft is that teams are now facing the draft, not how to pick better players, but how to get the players I fancy skip the draft.
After the draft rules have been released, how to find loopholes and sign the player directly in a non-draft way has actually been a science for CBA teams to strengthen their strength for many years. For example, the Guangzhou team is not only a pioneer in the draft, they signed with Jia Mingru, the head of China's civil aviation in advance, and have also become a classic case in the battle for talent. Of course, CBA quickly plugged this loophole in the rule and prohibited college students from entering the CBA filing process in advance during school.
But the road is one foot high, the magic is one foot high, and the CBA team's poaching of college players has not stopped. Non-CUBA players can still be recorded, such as Li Yongwei, a graduate of Tsinghua High School, who joined the echelon of the Shanghai team during his study in the United States; Even players who have joined CUBA can't be registered as college students, so what if they choose to drop out? In this regard, the Liaoning team has become the representative team of the CBA, and in the past three years, many players have joined the Liaoning youth team in this way.
For example, Li Huyi dropped out of school early from Taiji Engineering; Zhang Chen Zhifeng actually gave up Tsinghua's graduation certificate; Zhang Junhao, who chose to quit the team before reporting to Xiamen University; The latest news also includes that Huang Qiushi of Shanghai Jiaotong University has also dropped out to join the Liaoning team after studying for just one year.
The four players mentioned above, except for Zhang Chen Zhifeng, are originally from Liaoning, trained by Shenyang No. 2 Middle School and Shenyang No. 31 Middle School, ace high schools in Liaoning Province, and it is indeed difficult for them to refuse in the face of the olive branch thrown by Liaoqing. On the other hand, Liaoning basketball's original reserve strength has been seriously lost, and after watching the players in the recent CBA Summer League with Liaoqing as the team suffering from the weak Fujian team, you can understand why the Liaoning team is so thirsty for new blood.
A large number of CUBA star players dropped out to join Liaoning, which is essentially the result of mutual consent. Because compared with the NBA, a major feature of the CBA league is that the gap between teams is very large, from the region, to the attention of fans, to the salary and treatment, 20 teams in the same league may live in completely different worlds: some teams can still pay huge winning bonuses, but there are also CBA teams that are facing the problem of unpaid wages for a long time.
So for these Liaoning kids, if they go to the draft, they may be selected by an unfamiliar, low-profile, financially disadvantaged team, so why not make sure I can play for Liaoning a few years in advance?
The Liaoning team is satisfied, the young players are excited, only the world of CUBA injury is reached...
But on the other hand, CUBA talent has left, and there are also its own systems that are debatable: the first point is that it makes sense to let those players who are talented and capable stay in college for 4 to 5 years before they can run?
The CBA draft system stipulates that other players can participate at least 18 years old, but CUBA players need to be at least 21 years old to register. At the same time, the two giants of Tsinghua Peking University require athletes to play in school for 5 seasons before they can switch to the draft, which is of course to keep the ecological integrity of campus basketball as much as possible, but compared with the NBA can participate in the last year of college, the flexibility of the rules is slightly lacking.
At the same time, CUBA also has the problem of excessive resource skew and extreme concentration of star players. Why is Guanggong's victory in 2023 cheerful, because they defeated Tsinghua University, which has already overwhelmed all opponents in admissions and is ahead of a large block in talent level. In the upcoming September 2023, the MVP Li Zirui and Dan Houran, who have been in the past two Necotrans National Finals, will enter Tsinghua at the same time, accompanied by two forwards over 2 meters tall from Beijing No. 4 Middle School and Tsinghua Affiliated High School, Xi Taicheng and Yang Kaiwen.
At that time, there will be 8 players in the Tsinghua team who are more than 2 meters tall, will Tanhouran sit on the bench here? Shi Kui, a defender at Tsinghua High School who once stood out in high school, has now lost the demeanor of being selected for the National Youth League and is struggling extremely in the world of involution.
The real test of the CUBA League is just coming: from 2024, the national college athlete enrollment policy will be greatly adjusted, especially the high-level athlete enrollment policy that major universities rely on the most, which has been directly cut by half.
Under the original rules, many CUBA famous schools can organize high-level athlete tests, and give various preferential policies to players with outstanding test results, such as single move, second line 65% score admission, second line admission, etc., after these high-level players enter the university, some can even choose the department at will.
But starting next year, in order to advocate the fairness of the college entrance examination and encourage athletes to take their studies more seriously, the enrollment of these CUBA elite schools will be affected to varying degrees. For example, Peking University, Xiamen University, etc., which do not have sports majors, and some players who want to enter their favorite majors will only have a 20-point discount on points, which almost means that these schools will close the door to sports special recruitment; Tsinghua University, which has just opened related majors, can be lowered to the second line to admit athletes, but the original single move and the 65% score policy of the second line have also been canceled, and the admitted athletes must also go to the sports major.
There is no doubt that for the Ministry of Education, the fairness of the college entrance examination is a real matter that far exceeds the importance of CUBA, and to avoid college admissions using relevant policies to recruit related households, it is necessary to first make changes in the rules and regulations. However, CUBA is in the vortex of policy reform, and this knife falls, which is a disaster for some schools, and many teams may withdraw from this highest-level game of college basketball.
So what would be the ripple effect on the CBA draft? More talented young players may directly abandon the campus route, turn back to the track of professional teams, and sign youth contracts with CBA teams in advance, which means that the talent reserve of the CBA draft is diverted in advance.
Even the resistance to the CBA draft doesn't stop there:
Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan players who were originally looking forward to joining the CBA league, especially the salary and treatment of Taiwanese players has been greatly improved, and young talents represented by Gao Guohao may not choose to register for the CBA draft again;
Within the CBA League, there are still some teams and coaches who are not interested in the draft, and the Ningbo team is willing to send away the valuable champion this time, partly because they are suspicious of Zou Yang and Chen Guohao. Don't forget that there was a championship signing trade in the CBA 5 years ago, when the Jilin team selected Jiang Yuxing's top sign from the Bayi team, and Chen Yingjun was able to become the champion in 2017, also thanks to the Bayi team holding the first pick to abstain.
Even, the most unexpected thing is that even CBA companies' enthusiasm for promoting all aspects of the draft has declined significantly year by year. If you don't believe it, we can take a look at the following pictures, first of all, every year on the day of the draft, CBA official social media will use the form of "admission notice" to announce the results, from 2020 to 2022, the design idea of the same picture, from the fineness of the details, to the visual effect presented, the naked eye can see that it is declining year by year.
As for the pre-draft publicity process, all popular candidates in 2020 have an official video profile, and the design of the flat poster can also be described as ingenious and informative; But in 2021, the individual video of each player has disappeared, and the poster has been retained, but whether it is content or design, its degree of care and texture can be described as a cliff-like decline compared with the previous year.
By the time clock goes on to 2022 and 2023, all the solo videos and posters have disappeared.
We all hope that the CBA will be good, and we hope that the CBA draft will continue to grow like a few years ago and slowly become the main source of talent in the entire league, but unfortunately, the reality is the opposite. But no matter how ups and downs the external factors, if the CBA company itself does not value the draft, I am afraid it will really not be better.