He is the future star of the Chinese men's basketball team, speaking almost blameless English, and will gobble up a few bites of Flair spicy chicken sandwiches whenever he has time. Plus, he didn't want to hear all sorts of arguments about why Jordan was better than James.
"LeBron was the first man in history." Zeng Fanbo, who is 208 centimeters tall and weighs 86 kilograms, said. He recently reneged on his decision to go to Gonzaga University and signed a contract with the NBA Development League's Ignition Team. It's a new team that was just formed last year and is on the rise, and it offers another option beyond the NCAA for those with top talent.
On a sunny Thursday afternoon, Mr. Zeng finished filming a video of a luxury sneaker website at the Ignition Team headquarters in Walnut Creek. A big reason why Ignition attracts young players is that this path allows them to add their own commercial value while leading to professional basketball.
While Mr. Zeng isn't as much a treasure as his teammates like Jaden Hardy, Michael Foster, Scott Henderson and Dyson Daniels, he deserves more attention. Zeng Fanbo's private messages are piled high with messages from Chinese fans, many of whom hope he will be the next Yao Ming. Now, although he is still three months away from his own 19th birthday, Zeng Fanbo is ready to sign a lucrative sneaker contract.
In the past two years, because of the epidemic, Zeng Fanbo has rarely had the opportunity to participate in high-level competitions, but the Chinese companies that signed with him do not seem to care much about the focus. As the NBA's largest overseas market, China has been very eager to produce a local player who can succeed Yao Ming in the more than a decade after Yao Ming's retirement, and this person is bound to become a well-known name in the world.
In China, there are about 300 million people playing basketball, but only 6 Chinese players have been on the NBA stage, and Yao Ming is the only one who has played. The only Chinese player selected by the NBA after Yao Ming retired from the army was Zhou Qi, who was selected by the Rockets in the second round in 2016, but unfortunately, the 2.16-meter-tall center lacked strength and appeared to be a bit exaggerated in 19 games for Yao Ming's old club, and then left the league to return home.
The original author omitted Wang Zhelin, who was selected in the same year as Zhou Qi (although the latter failed to land in the NBA).
Zeng Fanbo and Indian player Prinspar Singh signed by ignition team last year are not in the same situation, the latter joining ignition team is more to promote the influence of the NBA to his hometown of India, while the former is a real top star. Zeng Fanbo has a 211 cm arm span, a soft feel to the basket, a smooth shooting posture, and a vertical bounce that amazes everyone. Before returning home from COVID-19 in March 2020, he played at Windermere Prep High School in Orlando as a four-star high school student.
Zeng Fanbo's dunk videos have been played hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, and although the head coach of the ignition team, Jason Hart, has basically never seen him and the team practice, but has observed his personal training countless times, so he has booked him a key role in the team.
"He's really talented." Hart, who arrived at Walnut Creek less than three weeks ago, said, "As a striker, his skills are comprehensive and his shooting feel is incredible. His technique couldn't have been better and I was very happy. ”.
NBA officials should be happy too. In 1987, then-NBA President David Stern offered CCTV the right to broadcast NBA games for free, and China has been one of the NBA's most important markets ever since. In the decades that followed, China became the NBA's most important source of overseas income, with more than 200 NBA employees in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong.
The friendly and cooperative relations between the two sides were suddenly hit two years ago, and everyone understands the details. And if China can produce another Yao Ming-level star, it may help ease the tense nerves of the two sides in the past two years.
Many Chinese fans admit that Chinese basketball suffered from severe "Yao Ming dependence" at that time, and his influence made the problems of the sports training system that hindered the development of basketball career cover up.
American players are eliminated and selected through the junior team, high school league and college league, while China is different, their training system is the sports school system, that is, the sports school that recruits primary and secondary school students (some young players are even selected by the sports school at the age of 4). The criteria for selecting players in sports schools are mostly based on height, but height is not the only factor that determines the basketball level of a player, especially the concept of no-position basketball that prevails in today's top professional leagues, which makes the speed and skill of players more important.
In the Olympic games in Victoria, Canada, in July, the Chinese men's basketball team lost a total of 55 points to Canada and Greece with their average height being significantly superior. Some Chinese fans hope that Zeng Fanbo, who has followed the U.S. high school basketball system (rather than staying in the Beijing youth team for a long time), will set an example for other young Chinese players.
Zeng Fanbo is the only son in the family, and his parents were former professional basketball players. He has admired Yao Ming since he was a child, and he is from Harbin, northeast China, but the sports here are not as famous as winter tourism. So when he was 11 years old, Zeng Fanbo bravely broke into the southwest, came to Beijing, more than 750 kilometers away from home, and lived in a double room in the youth team dormitory of the CBA Beijing Shougang Basketball Club.
Three years later, Zeng became part of the Young Eagles Program, joining the Academy of Basketball (USBA) along with several other young Chinese players, a program designed to allow Asian players to build a foundation in English while adapting to the U.S. grassroots system. Over the next 12 months, Mr. Zeng learned the nuances of weak-side defense and no-ball running positions in a country arena in central Oregon, where banners about his idol Yao Ming fluttered.
Arranged by a USBA director, Zeng went to Windermere Preparatory High School in Butler Lake, Florida, where there were about 100 Chinese students. As a 15-year-old high school freshman, Zeng Fanbo can hardly speak English, hesitates on the field, and it is difficult to adapt to the intensity of the confrontation in the game.
But after a few months, he began to be more comfortable. On Saturday mornings he would have breakfast with his friends, talk about classes, talk about movies, talk about basketball. And when he misses home, varsity coach Brian Hove will also comfort him.
"As a young player, the pressure on Zeng Fanbo may not have been experienced by each of us." "It's a little unfair, but the child's psychology is still very strong," Hough said. Every time I talk to him, I encourage him to keep going without distractions and keep improving. ”
By his sophomore season, He was Florida's top high school player: He was an all-round forward with a 47 percent three-point shooting percentage, 2.6 blocks per game, and several offers from the NCAA Blue Blood League. However, when the epidemic came in the spring and the school had to close temporarily, Zeng Fanbo, like many Chinese students, chose to return to China.
He was supposed to return home briefly for a few months, but ended up staying for a year and a half. Due to the impact of flight restrictions, Zeng Fanbo could not return to the United States for a while, so he could only complete high school through online classes, communicate with college coaches by email, and train with the Chinese men's national basketball team.
Despite verbal promises to join Gonzaga University last November, Zeng Berber began to reconsider his decision as assistant coach Tommy Lloyd, who recruited him, became head coach at the University of Arizona this spring. During this period, Zeng Fanbo's agent contacted the former University of California and NBA star and current NBA Development League president Sharif Abdul Raheem, who offered Zeng Fanbo a six-figure contract, so Zeng Fanbo chose to skip to the class of 2021 and join the Ignition Team.
Many NBA scouts feel this is the right step for Zeng Fanbo — not just because his status as a professional player gives him greater international appeal, but also because he can get more playing time. Gonzaga's frontcourt depth stands out in the NCAA, so Zeng Fanbo estimates that he will have to play there for 3-4 years to get enough playing time. However, the coaches of the Ignition Team felt that giving Zeng Fanbo the space to show himself and helping him get the chance to be selected in next year's draft was exactly what they should do.
In order to realize this vision, Zeng Fanbo must complete the muscle gain and play a brilliant performance against the adult players in the G League. At the same time, he has to shoulder the high expectations of NBA officials and the world's most populous country.
"I can't represent the whole of China yet," Zeng Fanbo said when asked how it feels to be a new hope for the Chinese men's basketball team. ”