From the grassroots dunk king to the CBA in 33 steps, it has been 14 years

In Chengdu on July 15, Yi Jinhong had red eyes here.

Xiangcheng Sports Center Gymnasium, the venue of the 2023 CBA Draft, Jinhong appeared as a draft player. There were two rounds (20 picks each), and Hiroshi was selected by the Beikong team with the 5th pick in the second round. When his name was called by CBA League CEO Zhang Xiong, the audience erupted into cheers and applause, and everyone was happy for the first-ever grassroots player.

He described this moment as "the realization of a dream." He got up and hugged his friends and walked to the rostrum, wiping his tear-filled eyes several times along the way, and walked to Zhang Xiong in 33 steps to pick up the draft hat that symbolized his becoming a CBA player. And at this moment, Yi Jinhong waited for 14 years.

The "wild man" who came out of Yuxi, Yunnan

Yunnan Yuxi, the hometown of clouds and smoke, can be reached by train from Kunming in as fast as 32 minutes, which is the hometown of Yi Jinhong. But Yi Jinhong's home is still about an hour's drive from Yuxi, Xishan Village, Yimen County, Yuxi City, a small mountain village with green water and green mountains, this is where Yi Jinhong grows.

When he was a child, he loved to jump and climb mountains, and his mother said, "When [he] was five or six years old, he got up early and ran up the mountain." "When I was in the third grade, there would be basketball games in the village every Spring Festival, and I couldn't understand or play, but I would still climb up the wall and shout cheers. From that time, a basketball seed was gradually planted in his heart.

Jin Hong's family was poor, and he began to help with farm work such as going up the mountain to cut firewood. During the harvest season, he would also carry things, and he would sometimes carry 50 kilograms of things home on his 10-kilometer journey.

These have not destroyed his basketball dreams, but have become a booster on his basketball road. In junior high school, Jordan's dunk inside the free throw line was deeply imprinted in Hiroshi's mind. He imagined one day being able to fly like Jordan, and to achieve that goal, he trained non-stop. Jinhong's talent is not particularly good, and his amazing bounce mainly depends on acquired training. Mom didn't understand why he always tied heavy sandbags to run and jump in the mountains, but he knew it was one of the ways he could fly. Over time, Hiroshi's bouncing skyrocketed, and he could catch the basket in his sophomore year of high school.

In his freshman year, Yi Jinhong, who studied at Yuxi Normal College, really completed his first dunk. Since then, he has started his own dunk performance, crotch, back dunk, big windmill... Yi Jinhong's dunking action became more and more difficult, and the slow play of a gliding dunk made him ferment rapidly on the Internet, and he was also called "Yunnan glider". Before that, he was nicknamed "Yunnan Savage" because of the dunk action wild, plus the mountains from Yunnan.

Jinhong is only 1.78 meters tall, but he can exceed 3.5 meters tall. And behind all this is his unremitting persistence and efforts. In 2017, he said that he had accumulated more than 8 years, and those 8 years, repeated running, jumping and strength training, eventually created this grassroots buckler. Up to now, it has been 14 years since the accumulation of Jinhong.

From CBA Slam Dunk King to CBA Player

It was in 2020 that Jinhong went from the private sector to being paid more attention to.

At that year's CBA Slam Dunk Contest, Du Feng, the head coach of the Guangdong men's basketball team, who met Jinhong because of the event, recommended the grassroots dunk general to CBA companies and sponsors. In this way, he participated in the dunk contest as a special guest player, and various high-difficulty and high-success rate actions allowed him to win the championship.

For a time, the media reports on him were overwhelming, and the scene of Jinhong crying with joy after winning the dunk contest also began to circulate frequently on the Internet. "At that time, standing on the stage, to describe my feelings from the countryside to the moment I won the award, I suddenly felt tears that could not be stopped. As a grassroots, I was touched to have this opportunity to show myself. Yi Jinhong said.

Since then, he has been invited to participate in more and more dunk performances and programs, and the impression of him by the outside world has always stayed at "old general" and "violent man".

It was not until June this year, when the news of the trial of the Beikong men's basketball team came out, that the outside world realized that the grassroots dunk king was about to start attacking the professional arena. According to Yi Jinhong, he wanted to participate in the CBA draft two years ago, and also wanted to go to Beikong for trial training (where his friend Wang Shaojie was there), but he missed it due to injury. This year, he mustered up the courage to sign up.

He may not have had much hope, and after participating in the trial training of the Beikong team, he said: "Thank you Beikong for giving me the opportunity to learn and improve, experience it, and enjoy the process." Just the day before the draft, Hiroshi said: "It's already very satisfying to come to this place, rush." ”

But the Beikong team was clearly preparing to pick him up in the second round. Otherwise, it would not have been possible for the Beikong team to release an information introduction about Hiroshi and a P-map that had been prepared long ago shortly after selecting him. Since then, Yi Jinhong is no longer a grassroots player, but a CBA player selected by the Beikong team, and the first grassroots player in CBA history.

How to walk under the boiling public opinion?

Whether it is doubting or supporting, it is undeniable that Yi Jinhong's "fulfilling his dream" did make public opinion boil for a while.

In this year's CBA draft, there are only two topics that rank among the top ten in sports hot searches. One is Chen Guohao elected champion, and the other is Beikong selected by Jinhong. The attention that this popular button will bring and the attention caused by Beikong's approach can be seen.

To be fair, with his 30-year-old age, 1.78 meters tall and rough technique, he really can't meet the standards of CBA players. A year ago, Zhang Ziyi, the "vicious rat" who once left the Internet, concentrated on training and participated in the draft of many teams, was once again rejected by CBA teams, and Ziyi seems to be more suitable for entering the CBA than Jinhong in all aspects.

But when the Beikong team ate the wave of traffic of Yi Jinhong, it really did not intend to treat Yi Jinhong with the standards of CBA players. When officially announcing the welcome to Yi Jinhong, the Beikong men's basketball team wrote: "I hope that after Wei Jinhong enters the team, he can maintain his original intention, adhere to his love for basketball, and continue to do a good job in basketball promotion with the club." The phrase "promoting basketball" is the positioning of the Beikong team for Jinhong, or perhaps, this is also what Jinhong hopes.

As early as 2021, Yi Jinhong said that he did not practice dunking much this year, focusing on the basketball career. Whether successful or not, he hopes to contribute something to Yunnan basketball. In recent years, in addition to participating in some grassroots games and dunk performances, he has spent more time on basketball promotion, hoping to improve the basketball atmosphere in Yunnan and help more children in Yunnan.

Now, for Ji Jinhong, who is almost 30 years old and has suffered from anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction and meniscal tear, the transformation to focus on basketball and promote basketball is indeed a path he is taking and will continue to take. "I came out of the mountains, and I also wanted to pass on my basketball skills to help the children of Yunnan, instead of talking about Yi Jinhong, I just remember that he would dunk." He hopes to let more Yunnan children get in touch with better platforms and bring better resources back to Yunnan, and he hopes to let more children in remote mountainous areas go out of the mountains, out of Yunnan, and to the whole country, which is also his ideal and goal.

epilogue

Last year, he wrote on social media: "Life always makes us bruised, but in the future, those hurt places will definitely become our strongest places." There are not so many talents in the world, excellent people always work hard to climb the mountains, you know: what ultimately makes you stand out is perseverance, is to really stick to doing something, and time will be visible. ”

Now, Yi Jinhong ushered in a new identity and a new beginning. This grassroots dream drama will soon wake up, but as he said, "it is already very satisfying to be able to participate in the draft", and the future cooperation with Beikong on the new platform may not be full of thorns, but the spring warm sun.