There are very few Asian players who can play in the NBA, but in addition to Yao Ming is the main player of the NBA, it is difficult for others to say that they are the main players of the team, most of the Asian players who enter the NBA are big players, and the only outside line before is Sun Yue, who has not established a foothold in the NBA. Now Hachimura is sitting on the main force of the Wizards, averaging 30 minutes per game, and his performance is getting better and better. He has averaged 19 points and six rebounds in the last nine games, close to an All-Star. This made China's Yi Jianlian and Wang Zhizhi ashamed of themselves. Today, let's get to know the unknown Hachimura.
In the hot June of 2002, at that year's NBA draft, Yao Ming became the first overseas draft in Asia for the first time in history.
On the day of the draft, Yao Ming could not go to the scene for some reason, and he and Xu Jicheng, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency, his father Yao Zhiyuan, and his parents Fang Fengdi could only watch the draft at home through live broadcasting.
Meanwhile, two thousand kilometers away in Sendai, Japan, Yamura, a famous Asian who is second only to Yao Ming in the NBA, is 4 years old and is still in kindergarten, and he did not know what basketball was at that time.
No one expected that less than 19 years later, the baby would become the most successful Asian in the NBA after Yao Ming.
Born into a mixed-race family, Yamura's mother is a Japanese named Ma Noriko, a professional teacher, she has studied English and run French classes. His father was a Native of Benin, Africa, whose name was Zagary Xavier, and whose parents were high-ranking intellectuals.
There is also a younger sister and younger brother under the Eight Villages, he is the eldest in the family, and he has been very protective of his younger siblings since he was a child.
Because he was of mixed race, Yamura was born with darker skin than other children and looked like a foreigner. Because of the color of her skin, Hachimura is often discriminated against by many children and even adults.
Hachimura grew up in Japan and has a good talent for languages, speaking several European languages, such as French and English.
As a child, Yamura was very athletic, because of the popularity of baseball in Japan, he played baseball since he was a child, and at that time he was also a pitcher and catcher. When he was a child, he was full of strength, and the ball he hit out was so powerful that many of his peers could not catch it. Later, he could only be allowed to double-time as a catcher.
At that time, Yamura's idol was Japanese baseball star and national hero Ichiro Suzuki.
His father, Zagari, played basketball in Benin when he was young and is a basketball family.
When Hachimura was a child, his father opened a bar in Mt. Fuji, and the business was particularly good.
At that time, there were often big men in the bar who came over for a few drinks, and he was the former Japanese men's basketball national player Ella Brown.
At that time, he was playing for a local club in Mt. Fuji and had time for a drink in the shop. Brown and Zagary became friends over time.
Because of their good relationship, Brown also gave Zagary's son a pair of basketball shoes.
At that time, Hachimura did not have a concept of basketball in his eyes, and he did not come into contact with basketball until he was in middle school.
Hachimura who went to middle school began to develop physically, his height and arm span were beyond the same age of the same age, just once a basketball training partner to find Hachimura, let him change the project, did not think that this changed his life.
Hachimura practiced basketball for a year and a half before being selected for the Japan Youth Men's Basketball Team, when he was only 14 years old. Those years were when he was crazy to grow his body, he was 1.70 meters tall when he was in junior high school, and in those years he grew at a rate of 10 centimeters per year, and reached 2 meters tall at the age of 17.
At the age of 16, Hachimura represented Japan in the U17 World Youth Championship, playing the United States team with 25 points, averaging 22.6 points per game to become the leading scorer of that world youth championship, when there was a player in the U.S. men's basketball team, Tatum, which is now the core of the Celtics, who missed the game against Japan due to an injury against Turkey.
The American team also knew from that time that the Japanese team had a mixed race, which laid the foundation for him to enter the NBA in the future.
Later, Yamura decided to go to college in the United States after graduating from high school, where he had the opportunity to play NCA, which was also a shortcut to entering the NBA. At the World Youth Championships, many scouts from famous American NCAA schools have paid attention to Hachimura.
Since he wanted to go to college in the United States, Hachimura began to practice English wildly, and at that time he often collected many videos of the NBA and imitated the movements of many players. He was occasionally Paka of the Bucks in high school, Anthony of the Knicks, and Mudiel of the Nuggets.
The reason why he liked Mudie was because the two had similar backgrounds, Mudie was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and later immigrated to the United States because of the war.
In 2016, Hachimura received an acceptance letter from Gangaza University in the United States. On November 11, 2016, Yatsumura made his college debut, and on February 23, 2017, Hachimura scored eight points to help the team win the WCC League Championship in a victory over the University of San Diego. In his freshman year, Hachimura played in 28 games for Gonzaga, averaging 4.6 minutes per game, 2.6 points and 1.4 rebounds, and shooting 53% from the field.
In the 2017-18 season, Hachimura played in 37 games for Gonzaga, including two starts, averaging 11.6 points and 4.7 rebounds per game. In the 2018-19 season, Hachimura was selected for the pre-season WCC League. On November 6, 2018, Hachimura scored 33 points on his season debut. On November 21, in the maui Invitational Final, Hachimura scored 20 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists to help the team beat Duke University, which was ranked first at the time, and won the championship himself.
Showed superhuman potential at NCAA Yamura, who was named Julius Irving's Small Striker of the Year in 2019.
In the 2019 draft, Yamura was selected by the Wizards with the ninth pick in the first round.
After entering the NBA, on October 31, 2019, the Wizards played against the Rockets, and Yamura shot 9-of-15, cutting 23 points and 5 rebounds. On December 2, 2019, the Wizards played against the Clippers, and Yamura had 30 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 steal. On September 16, 2020, he was selected to the 2019-20 NBA All-Rookie Team (Second Team).
Hachimura made japanese history after being selected at the draft, and he was received by Daichi Suzuki, the head of the Japanese Sports Agency.
He appeared on the World Cup, and in the 2019 Men's Basketball World Cup, Japan lost 76-89 to the Czech Republic, Hachimura played for Japan in the first 34 minutes, scoring 21 points and 6 rebounds. Yamura played in three games for Japan at the World Cup, averaging 13.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game.
Hachimura said, "My father is from Benin. In Japan, there are more and more athletes who, like me, have roots overseas. I also believe that more and more stars will be born in the future. ”
Due to his mixed race, Hachimura's body is beyond the traditional Japanese sense, he has a height of 2.08 meters, weighs 106 kilograms, and his arm span reaches a staggering 2.21 meters.
Hachimura is a steady player in the Wizards, playing more than 30 minutes, averaging 13.6 points and 6 rebounds per game, and he is also the most successful Asian player in the NBA after Yao Ming.
In March 2021, he averaged 15.2 points, 6.4 rebounds and 40.5 percent from three-point range. In the last nine games, he has scored in double figures per game, averaging 19.1 points and 8.2 rebounds per game.
As a forward player, Yamura's success in the NBA is no worse than yao Ming's.
In the past, most of the Asian players in the NBA were inside, and there has not yet been a player who has played the third position to become an All-Star, and Yamura is the first person to play outside the player, and he is constantly creating his history.