China Youth Daily: The attention of the Chinese Super League has dropped to the freezing point Chinese basketball and CBA should be extra vigilant

As of December 13, the CBA company's information on registered foreign aid shows that as many as 10 clubs still have no foreign aid, and there are only a dozen days before the start of the second phase of the league on December 25. After the restart of the CBA League, what kind of game will be presented has been drawn with a big question mark.

Affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the World Cup window, and hosting the Winter Olympics, the CBA League in the 2021-2022 season has been divided into three stages. In the first stage of the match that ended on November 15, there were too many strong and weak matches, Liaoning, Guangdong, Shenzhen and Guangsha only lost one or two games after the end of the first stage of the game, while the records of tongxi and Ningbo were dismal 1 wins and 12 losses, which greatly affected the attention of the league.

During the interval, some clubs are recruiting, the Qingdao men's basketball team, which performed poorly in the first stage, has registered two foreign aides in succession, and the potential signing object of the North Control men's basketball team, Landsberg, is currently isolated in China and is expected to participate in the second phase of the game, while the Beijing Shougang men's basketball team continues the frontier with Jeremy Lin.

But there are also many clubs that do not move, "now is to see the needs of the club," player agent Zhang Le told the China Youth Daily China Youth Network reporter, "this season is very special, because it is a tournament system, many foreign aid is not willing to come, if it comes, the intermittent foreign aid feels that there is no place to go, and the stop and stop is very affecting the state." ”

Therefore, what happened in the CBA league in the offseason is far less lively than the outside world expects, and the signing of contracts is very purposeful. Like qingdao and Beijing Control men's basketball team, their goal is to hope that the addition of foreign aid can help the team reach the playoffs, and the Beijing Shougang men's basketball team hopes that the signing of Jeremy Lin can help the team be more competitive in the playoffs.

But there is a phenomenon that is quite interesting: after the first stage of the league structure is relatively clear, the team that is likely to miss the playoffs is very cautious about signing foreign aid, "This is actually very understandable, the purpose is to reduce costs." Zhang Le said.

Indeed, before the start of the season, the CBA league had a heated discussion about whether to hire foreign aid for the new season, when most clubs believed that in the context of the pressure on the club's operation, the home and away game format without foreign aid was the best way. After 13 games in the first stage of the league, the playoff "goalkeeper" Jilin men's basketball team has a record of 5 wins and 8 losses, followed by Qingdao team to win one less game, while Jiangsu, Sichuan, Tianjin, Xinjiang 4 teams, the record is only 3 wins and 10 losses, so in this case, a small number of teams want to fight into the playoffs, most teams want to control costs, exercise the team, it is not surprising.

But for the CBA league, it's slightly embarrassing. It can be asserted now that the most competitive teams in this year's league are nothing more than Guangdong, Liaoning, Zhejiang, Guangsha, Shanghai, Beijing, of which Guangdong, Liaoning, and Shanghai are more optimistic, and the inactive foreign aid market makes it difficult to say that the second stage of the game may be wonderful, and there will still be many strong and weak competitions, even if there is a fan effect brought about by the return of Jeremy Lin, the overall attention of the league may not be much improved.

From the long-term perspective of the CBA League, the strength and weakness reflected in the first stage of this season have proved that the way the all-Chinese class plays, for a professional league, is bound to trigger a series of negative effects including game quality, attention, and decline in commercial income. Of course, the Chinese Super League, which has now started but its attention has fallen to the freezing point, because the bubble caused by super foreign aid in the past few seasons is also something that Chinese basketball and the CBA league need to be extra vigilant about.

In 2017, the CBA League, which has just achieved the separation of management and office, announced a five-year plan for future development. It should be said that in the first 3 and a half years of the plan, such as the reform of the format and the change of foreign aid policy, it has been effectively implemented, but the defeat of the 2019 Men's Basketball World Cup and the sudden epidemic have made the plan not move forward according to the originally set path, and then become struggling and even screwing. Now it seems that this season may not be a wonderful season, but it happens to be the last year of the CBA's first five-year plan, and how the second five-year plan should go is testing the wisdom of Chinese basketball managers.

(China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Yang Tun Source: China Youth Daily)