After 26 days of leaving the company and joining a new team, can the 39-year-old coach rebuild his team?

On the 26th day of officially leaving the Zhejiang men's basketball team, Liu Weiwei successfully took up a new position. With the official announcement of the Qingdao men's basketball team, the 39-year-old young coach will also "go north" to start the second stop of his coaching career.

In the past 5 years, Liu Weiwei's career coaching trajectory has been in the Zhejiang men's basketball team, and the parent team Zhejiang has also become the first stop of his professional coaching career. Liu Weiwei, who has been the head coach of the Zhejiang men's basketball team since the summer of 2017, has built the Zhejiang men's basketball team into a CBA powerhouse in the five years of coaching. Before Liu Weiwei took over, Zhejiang finished only 16th in the 2016-17 season, missing the playoffs again. But after Liu Weiwei took office, Zhejiang entered the playoffs in 5 years and 4 times, including a huge breakthrough in the semifinals for the first time in the history of the 2020-21 season, and under his leadership, Zhejiang became the first youth army in the CBA (the smallest average age of local players in the league). If it were not for the repeated injuries of foreign aid Stokes in his first year of coaching, frequent and unexcused absences from training and games (Stokes was cut at the end of the regular season), Liu Weiwei could even lead Zhejiang to the playoffs for 5 years.

Therefore, even if Zhejiang is swept by Guangdong in the quarter-finals of the 2021-22 season, it cannot hide the huge help that Liu Weiwei has brought to this team. Considering the limited overall talent of the Zhejiang men's basketball team, the team's top player Wu Qian did not debut and attracted much attention, and the talented yu Jiahao, who only joined the team last season, also made Liu Weiwei's successful transformation of Zhejiang more recognized by the outside world. It is precisely because of this that Liu Weiwei will quickly get a number of teams to pursue after leaving Zhejiang, and in the end, his choice is Qingdao.

Qingdao and former head coach Wu Qinglong no longer cooperate two weeks ago, and this time hiring Liu Weiwei is obviously also impressed by Liu Weiwei's coaching ability, performance and experience, after missing the playoffs in the 2021-22 season, Qingdao's goal next season is bound to impact the playoffs again. It is worth mentioning that Qingdao reached the quarter-finals in both the 2019-20 season and the 2020-21 season.

Liu Weiwei signed a contract with Qingdao, which is also a good choice on the surface. In the teams that have changed their managers or are rumored to have changed their managers, Qingdao's local squad is somewhat deep, and the contribution of local players cannot be ignored when they reach the quarter-finals in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. On the other hand, Qingdao is a team that lacks stars, compared with some teams that have also changed their managers, such as Beijing, Liu Weiwei, who has average performance during the player period and is not luxurious in coaching resume, is also easier to calm down the players of the new owner, which also lays the foundation for him to transform the Qingdao men's basketball team.

In addition, the investment of the Qingdao men's basketball team in the past three seasons has been relatively stable, especially the foreign introduction, Qingdao has done a good job. Tough foreign aid Dakari Johnson has been playing in Qingdao for four consecutive seasons, and in terms of small foreign aid, Qingdao has also been replenishing its strength. In the 2021-22 season, Qingdao's double foreign aid strength and investment were significantly better than Zhejiang's. When Zhejiang was swept away by Guangdong and the performance of Zhejiang foreign aid was sluggish, Liu Weiwei said bluntly at the post-match press conference: "Speaking from the heart, this year's team problem is mainly in the external invocation. "Coming to Qingdao, the problem of foreign aid is expected to be solved."

But Liu Weiwei also faces many challenges in Qingdao. One of the challenges is that this is the first time in his coaching career that he has coached a new team, and it is uncertain whether he can build the same cohesion as Zhejiang in Qingdao. Liu Weiwei played in Zhejiang during his time as a player, after retiring he coached the Zhejiang youth team for a long time, and now many of the players who play in Zhejiang are still young in the youth team and are guided by him, from training, competition to life, Liu Weiwei has given them great help to many of them, and many of them are his "concubine disciples". It is this relationship that ensures the absolute obedience of Zhejiang players to Liu Weiwei. Qingdao is different, the players here and Liu Weiwei need time to run into, and Liu Weiwei may even need to properly restrain his temper.

The second challenge is that Qingdao is not as young as Zhejiang, and it is uncertain whether it can effectively implement Liu Weiwei's offensive and defensive intensity like Zhejiang's youth army. In the 2021-22 season, the average age of local players in the Qingdao men's basketball team is 26.47 years old, which is the second highest average age team in the CBA, after Shanghai (26.68 years old), while Zhejiang is only 22.11 years old, which is the youngest team in the CBA. According to media reports, this summer's contract expired veterans Zhao Tailong (32 years old) and Zhao Dapeng (about to be 32 years old) have left the Qingdao men's basketball team, and Lin Weihan, who is also nearly 32 years old, has also left the team early, which has made the Qingdao men's basketball team younger to a certain extent, but the main or main rotation players such as Zhang Chengyu, 31-year-old Li Yuanyu, wang Qingming and Wang Hong, who are almost 30 years old, are not young, and Qingdao still needs to add more fresh blood, or more players with immediate combat strength. Otherwise, Liu Weiwei's transformation of Qingdao is bound to face more challenges.

The Zhejiang men's basketball team mentioned in a statement previously released agreeing to Liu Weiwei's resignation that Liu Weiwei, as an assistant coach of the national team, proposed the need to further recharge and learn to improve himself, and the national team will focus on preparing for various competitions in May. Although the Asian Games have been postponed, the Chinese men's basketball team still has World Cup qualifiers and Asian Cups to play, and it will not end the competition until the end of July this summer. Unless Liu Weiwei takes a leave of absence or leaves the national team coaching staff early, the task of the national team will affect his training of the Qingdao men's basketball team this summer, and the training in each summer is often the key to the success of a team, which is also another challenge for Liu Weiwei.

When Zhejiang was eliminated by Guangdong in the 2021-22 season, Liu Weiwei was reported to have released a circle of friends that "the painstaking efforts of one hand were destroyed by people and were not willing". The rapid signing of Qingdao in less than a month also shows Liu Weiwei's determination to make a comeback.

After the news came out, the official social media of the Qingdao men's basketball team, which usually has a limited amount of comments, has a hot topic that far exceeds the usual several times or even dozens of times, and it is clear that Liu Weiwei's joining has made Qingdao fans look forward to the Qingdao men's basketball team next season, but at the same time, the new journey and new challenge of liu Weiwei, a young coach whose hairline is constantly behind, has also begun from the first moment of the official announcement.