The Chinese Basketball Association's blockbuster announcement this morning directly sent the Shenzhen men's basketball team, which is still preparing for the game, to the final four.
The negative play between the Shanghai men's basketball team and Suzhou Kendia in the playoffs was confirmed, and the Chinese Basketball Association also issued a record heavy fine. Throughout the history of the CBA, the punishment this time definitely hit a new high, and it also sounded the alarm for the other 18 clubs in the entire league: the red line must not be touched, the violator will not be tolerated, and will be severely punished!
The two teams are strange
The life-and-death battle between Shanghai and Suzhou officially began on April 14, Beijing time, that is, last Friday night. The two teams fought to a draw in a best-of-three series before the two teams played. For both teams, who can win this G3 victory will advance to the quarter-finals of the season.
The Shanghai team, which has the advantage on paper, was unanimously optimistic before the start of the series, and even after the second away loss to Kendia, many media reporters still believed that it was not a problem for Shanghai to win the G3 and compete with old rival Shenzhen for the final four. But the G3 match surprised many people from the beginning, and many strange scenes happened one after another.
In the 12-man squad submitted by Kendia before the start of the G3 match, Liu Zhixuan, who missed G2 due to injury, was activated by Li Nan. As the team's most experienced player in the playoffs, Liu Zhixuan, who entered the squad, should have played in a life and death battle, but he did not get any chance to play for 48 minutes. At the end, the 11th playoff veteran didn't even take off his warm-up suit and walked straight to the players' tunnel.
If Liu Zhixuan's injury is really serious, then Li Nanda does not need to put him in the squad, the former can be like Wu Guanxi, who suffered a shoulder injury, sitting under the basket in civilian clothes, leaving the 12th chance to other young people. So keeping the team's most playoff-seasoned players on the bench is incomprehensible in itself.
In addition to Liu Zhixuan not playing, the Shanghai team's employment in the starting line is also full of drama. Wang Zhelin, who received his second regular season MVP trophy just before the start of G3, was not arranged by Li Chunjiang to start, while Shanghai insisted on using G2's Yan Pengfei and Ren Junwei to partner the inside. It should be known that Wang Zhelin, as the core of the Shanghai team, did not represent Shanghai as a starter last time back to the regular season on January 9, 2022, when he played against the Ningbo men's basketball team. In a life-and-death battle that dares to make a fuss about the arrangement of core players, it must be admitted that the Shanghai team was confident of victory before the game.
What made the fans even more confused was that in the live broadcast screen, after Suzhou Kendia's consecutive mistakes, Li Nan not only did not request a timeout, but sat on the bench with his butt, waiting for the time to finish with general manager Shi Lingjie. In an era when broadcast technology is so mature, such performance is equivalent to a showdown, and committing crimes against the wind can only allow the parties to suffer their own evil consequences and get the punishment they deserve.
Why is crisis PR so fast?
From the end of the game last Friday to the announcement of the penalty results by the Chinese Basketball Association on Monday, it took only one weekend to conclude the incident, and it is not difficult to see that the relevant departments attach great importance to it. In fact, when the Shanghai team was determined to advance to the next round of playoffs, many fans and media had begun to express their dissatisfaction, and even some netizens posted the contact information and report letter of the discipline inspection department, and the Chinese Basketball Association and CBA Company also responded late at night, saying that they would thoroughly investigate the matter.
Compared with the Xinjiang men's basketball team officially announced its withdrawal from the CBA late at night on February 28, the Chinese Basketball Association chose to deal with it coldly and did not respond, and this time their reaction speed became much faster, and they obviously had measures to deal with it. First of all, the basketball association held a briefing today, invited some authoritative media reporters to attend, and the relevant leaders of the Chinese basketball association and CBA company were present to directly respond to the matter. Yao Ming expressed his views on the punishment of the Shanghai and Jiangsu teams in an interview with the media today, and after that, topics such as #Like Yao Ming#, #Yao Ming has courage# and other topics appeared on Weibo. There is no doubt that the Chinese Basketball Association has learned from past experience and lessons in the handling of this crisis, and has also proved their ability to respond to thorny incidents in the first time and implement corresponding measures.
The reason why the relevant departments did not dare to be careless this time is that there are actually two factors that cannot be ignored.
First of all, this "match-fixing" incident aroused public indignation, and many fans shouted "match-fixing, ticket refund" videos have been fermented on the Internet, which has caused an extremely bad impact on the brand of the CBA league. Even before the results of the punishment were announced yesterday, the ticket sales of the Shenzhen team and the Shanghai team have been affected, and some fans have posted screenshots of "defecting to the Shanghai team". From many perspectives, the basketball association will lose a large audience if it chooses "cold treatment".
Secondly, Chinese football's "anti-gambling and anti-gang action" is staging a realistic version of the "fury", and the central inspection team has begun to patrol the State General Administration of Sports. Gao Zhidan, director of the General Administration of Sports, also stressed: "We must use strong medicine to eliminate the problem and restrain the determination to control chaos, focus on the outstanding problems such as lack of spirit, lack of righteousness, and lack of hard work style in the current work of the "three big balls", and persistently change the style of work, strengthen responsibility, and grasp implementation." "To have such a serious problem at this stage is tantamount to stirring up trouble. At this special juncture, the Chinese Basketball Association must not stand idly by, resolutely run events that are satisfactory to the people, and create a clean league environment.
What's more, the Chinese men's basketball team will also participate in the World Cup this summer, and if the results are not satisfactory, two consecutive Olympic Games will be detonated.
The mystery in the ticket
At the first time after the end of the Suzhou-Shanghai series, the author also asked many seniors of the sports media, and they generally believed that this kind of "tacit understanding" was quite difficult to obtain evidence, and even many people thought that this incident was unlikely to have substantial penalties.
A player who is playing in the CBA revealed that he felt that the game was abnormal after watching the entire live broadcast, and as for what the two teams did, I am afraid that only they know best in their hearts. Another player who has retired from the CBA said the league does sometimes have tacit balls, but the Shanghai and Kendia games are all too obvious.
In this ticket, the basketball association has different punishment results for the two head coaches Li Chunjiang and Li Nan, including the bans of the general managers of Shanghai and Suzhou, which makes people wonder what they did to make the four involved have different punishment results.
Obviously, the Chinese Basketball Association still has not been able to do a good job in handling this crisis. Since the statement clearly states that "the negative game situation is true", it is reasonable to make the evidence from the investigation public, which personnel were involved in the incident and punished for violating which league rules. If you blindly punish for the sake of punishment, there is no clear basis, which is not only difficult to convince the parties involved, but also an irresponsible behavior to the public. From the current penalty results, Li Chunjiang and Kendia general manager Shi Linjie are more involved than Li Nan and Shanghai team general manager Jiang Yusheng, but the tacit understanding ball can be completely controlled by relying only on these four people, isn't it too simple?
The relevant departments said that they will continue to conduct in-depth investigations based on this matter, and we do not know whether the judicial department will intervene, but judging from the existing punishment results, it is still possible to bring out some mud on the basis of pulling out the turnip.
In the series G3 between Shanghai and Suzhou, there are some Jiangsu fans scattered in the first floor of the stands at the Oriental Sports Center. In the first 47 minutes of the game, these fans would shout "Jiangsu team, come on" from time to time. When the lightning-fast missed score scene appeared, these away fans were completely stunned, and after the game lost, they either held their heads in their hands or covered their faces and cried. When Li Nan walked to the players' tunnel after the post-match interview, these visiting fans seemed to slow down, walked to the stands above the passage, and shouted the mantra of Chinese fans during the 2019 World Cup: "Li Nan, class!" ”
I wonder if today's ticket can save those fans who have broken their hearts?