Shougang ski jump, Gu Ailing soared into the sky, in the Winter Olympics freestyle ski women's big jump successfully won the laurel, this mixed-race little girl with a sweet and confident smile to return everyone's support, but also with a solid honor to crush some people's doubts.
In the world sports circle, "mixed blood" has long been a new term, but in the Chinese sports circle, mixed blood, naturalized athletes have been subjected to the beating of different voices from many parties, even if a talented girl like Gu Ailing can not escape the opposition, countless people are looking forward to her success, there are too many people waiting to see her fall into the dust.
A few kilometers away from the Shougang Ski Jump, a basketball hall also named after Shougang stands quietly, and in the empty room, a young man named Tarek Garniyou has been working hard for many years, and he is still eager to get more recognition. Tarek's Chinese name is Qiu Tian, and this year is his fifth season for the Beijing Shougang men's basketball team.
Like Gu Ailing, Tarek's mother is from Beijing.
Unlike Gu Ailing, Tarek grew up in Beijing since he was a child, and even a mouthful of Beijing is very authentic, except for the black skin left by mixed blood, he is actually a complete Beijinger. Because of his parents' genetics, he has been taller than ordinary children of the same age since he was a child, and even before he graduated from primary school, he has exceeded 1 meter 8.
His excellent physical condition made him a player who attracted much attention in the same age competition, and after practicing at Chaoyang Sports School for 4 years, he was recommended to the Beijing Shougang Men's Basketball Third Team in 2011. At that time, he was coached by Coach Liu Hongwei, who had played for Shougang for many years, and in the year he entered the third team, at the U16 League of the National Men's Basketball Club held in Nanyang, Henan, because the team was behind Liaoning by a large score, coach Liu Hongwei was eager to slap the players during the suspension.
This incident occurred in the same year as the impeachment coach Fan Bin of the National Youth Blood Book Gate, the Beijing women's basketball team was dissatisfied with the salary and the training volume of Coach Xu Limin was too large and went on strike, which was boiling for a while. The young player who was fanned by Liu Hongwei was his future friend Wang Xu, and the two also became the internal and external core of the Shougang youth team for a period of time, and Wang Xu played the best performance of his career in Tongxi this season.
By 2015, Tarek, who had been promoted to the shougang second team, appeared in the first National Youth Games men's basketball U18 competition in Quanzhou with head coach Zhang Yunsong. The 17-year-old exploded in the first game with 21 points, 9 rebounds and 4 blocks, a 106-84 victory over the Wenzhou team with Zhang Zhengxin, Lu Wenbo and others, and then faced the Jinan team with Wang Lanlan and others, he scored 17 points, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks and 2 assists.
Averaging 15.5 points, 8.6 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game, Tarek became the first mixed-race player in Chinese basketball a month later.
Selected for the national youth, he entered a new stage of his basketball career, and began to really appear in front of the public, and the mixed-race interior line became synonymous with him for a time. Tarek's father briefly played for teams such as the NBA's Trail Blazers and Philadelphia, and he was already showing athletic talent at the time, so he was expected by many people to go to a higher stage.
A year later, he was selected for the 12-man roster of the 2016 U18 Asian Youth Championship National Youth Men's Basketball Team, which also included Cheng Shuaipeng, Du Runwang, Fan Ziming, Hu Mingxuan, Li Xiang, Tang Jie, Wang Yibo, Wang Zixu, Wu Yujia and others.
Against Chinese Taipei, in the case of the team once trailing by 16 points, Tarek, who came off the bench, scored 10 points in the last quarter and bombed 19 points and 10 rebounds to help the team complete the reversal. In the same age group, his movement speed and confrontational strength are particularly outstanding, although the national youth eventually lost the championship of the year, but he averaged 10 points and 6.9 rebounds per game, which is still very eye-catching.
At that time, the Shougang men's basketball team was suffering from no strong local internal line, so in the 16-17 season, he actually let him train with the team, and in 2017, he played with the team in the National Games. As Zhang Songtao grew older and Ji Zhe was plagued by injuries, the 19-year-old Tarek was finally about to start his professional league career.
There are thousands of calls, and there are people waiting to see his jokes.
In the 17-18 season, he averaged 6 minutes per game and only had 1.7 points and 1 rebound, but scored 19 out of 26 shots. In the 18-19 season, Tarek became a miracle soldier in the playoffs, facing Shenzhen, Yannis suddenly changed, he started 6 shots and scored 10 points, anxious third game, he made 6 of 8 free throws, 12 points, 6 rebounds and 2 blocks.
It was the brilliant performance of this series that won him the start of the 19-20 season, and Yannis used the youngster as a fake start to enrich Beijing's rotation system. After 3 seasons, he did not become an interior star, the late contact with professional basketball training led to poor basic skills, originally expected to exceed 210cm height stopped at 208cm, lack of offensive skills, insufficient tonnage, so that he could not stay on the court for a long time.
In the 20-21 season, he should have continued to move forward and was gradually marginalized because shougang successively introduced Fan Ziming and Li Muhao, and played less than half of the games in the whole season. However, he became a surpriser in the narrow victories over Shanghai and Guangzhou at the beginning of the season, scoring 17 points on 8-of-10 and 13 points on 4-of-6.
This season, his playing time is still unstable, but whenever Beijing needs an interior line that can provide vitality, whenever Beijing's twin towers encounter a foul crisis, Yannis will think of Tarek sitting on the bench, which has become a fixed role in his Yannis system, and there are young people who will turn 24 years old for more than a month without discouragement, he is always conscientious and always passionate.
But in the atmosphere of public opinion of "meritocracy", his black skin and fluent Beijing dialect brought him not admiration but annoyance.
When he debuted, he was pinned high hopes, simply because of his skin color, he was touted by many people as the hope for the future of China's inner line, and after his debut, he grew up unsmoothly, and he experienced various sneers because of his skin color, which is the current situation of Tarek's career. Even if it is as strong as Gu Ailing, there are always so many people yin and yang weird, perhaps in the concept of many people, the world of competitive sports efforts are not worthy of praise, only the winner can enjoy the applause.
Speaking of returning to the basketball court, Tarek's progress is indeed a little slow, as early as a year after he entered the Shougang youth training, the then stern coach Liu Hongwei proposed that he wanted to stand on the court, "What I want to see most now is Qiu Tian's domineering, under the basket to have the domineering spirit of giving up who I am, the rebound is mine, I just want to beat you strongly, I have to have such a mentality." ”
Later, when he successfully entered the national youth, the American Draft express also mentioned his shortcomings in the scouting report, shorter in height, lack of game experience, lack of offensive skills, insufficient foot movements, low-level offense still needs to be honed, flexibility and explosiveness are average, not showing good awareness, defensive rebounding ability needs to be improved.
In his fifth year of career, these problems still plagued him, with inefficient endings and insufficient defensive rebounding ability, making it impossible for him to survive in the CBA as a main interior. However, despite the upward momentum interrupted by the sudden reinforcements of the Beijing team, this season, he still showed some progress and temptation.
In the second stage, Tarek sent 17 blocks in 14 games.
Tarek, who has almost no ability to take the initiative to attack, is also not a pile defensive gate on the defensive end, and his real advantage at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends is the speed and motivation of movement. With a block rate of 8.2 percent this season, he ranked Fifth among all centers, not only delivering a big hat in the defensive, but he also grabbed 23 offensive rebounds in the second stage.
So far this season, Tarek has averaged 13.4 minutes per game, averaging 5 points, 2.8 rebounds, 0.5 assists and 1 block per game, and averaging 1.3 offensive rebounds per game, a career high. He shot 79 times in the box, hit 48 goals, and shot 60.8 percent, a slight improvement from the previous two seasons, averaging a full 1 fewer fouls per game than last season.
Tarek is also struggling with some minor transition attempts, having made 12 shots outside the box this season, on par with his entire 19-20 starter season. When teammate Fan Ziming constantly punishes the opponent with a stable mid-range, he also hopes to increase the offensive threat, but at present, it seems that the efficiency is not enough.
In the most critical period of his career, he still maintained a high morale of the young interior, but there was still a long way to go to get rid of the "rough brother" image. Motivation can indeed bring him a bumper harvest of block rates and offensive rebounds in a short period of time, and can also allow him to play the Miracle In some games.
But these are far from enough, and in the end, he can stay on the field for a long time, and even play a more important role in more details.
The most important of those details is defensive rebounding, which he has only 10.8 percent of this season, out of 50 of all centers. By the way, it's interesting that in front of him is Beijing's Zhengyin center Li Muhao. Defensive rebounding protection has always been a big hidden problem for Beijing in dealing with many key games and handling key rounds, and assuming he can improve, he can get more time from the coach.
The other was the free throws, which he shot only 65.5 percent of the season, which turned out to be the second-best free throw number of his career. Mediocre offensive finishing efficiency and the disappointments that often play out on the free throw line are also the reasons for his trouble. There is not much time left for him, the third stage of the return of foreign aid, if he can not work hard to improve, the future opportunities will be even less.
The ice and snow of Shougang are shining, and Tarek, who is lost in the cold autumn, still has to walk strongly.