NBA in Macao

I went to Macao for the NBA’ China Games 2007 last night. The game featured the Orlando Magic and the China All-Star Team from the CBA. Most of the Chinese team were the same guys that play for the Chinese National Team, minus Yao and Yi. They also added 3 foreign players from the CBA (China Basketball Association).Basically, China was completely outclassed. Not surprisingly, since they don’t do very well against the US even when they have Yao and Yi. But there were some bright spots for them despite being behind by more than 20 points for most of the game.First, I don’t know why Wang Zhi Zhi isn’t playing in the NBA. He was certainly better than the three (Outlaw, Foyle and Gortat) back up centers that the Magic played. He outplayed Howard in the first quarter and was the leading scorer for the Chinese. He is a smart player with skills at least as good as most of the back up centers in the NBA now.Second, after getting burned three times in a row buy the faster Chinese guards the Magic’s Arroyo took the game into his own hands and completely schooled the younger, smaller Chinese guards. By the way, Arroyo and Wang were easily the best players on the floor. How is this a bright spot for the Chinese team? Well, they need to believe that they have good guards that are fast and can shoot—but just don’t yet have the attitude to compete for the full game. The guards themselves need to believe this—they obviously were scared or embarrassed or both after Arroyo took over. But that’s something they can learn with more international experience. Also, Arroyo has torched just about everyone, including Team USA, in the past. The fact that the Chinese guards got into his head at all means that he wasn’t ready for how good they could play. Backhanded to be sure, but a complement nonetheless.Finally, the Chinese can shoot better than and are faster than the Magic. So why didn’t they run and gun?! Why did they continually try to post up their three big foreigners against the obviously better Orlando big men? This was absolutely the coach’s fault. When the Chinese were running and shooting outside they lead. When they slowed down and decided that they could play NBA style power ball they went from up 9 to down 10 in about 5 minutes. Shooting guard Sun shot and dunked over the Magic 2 guards just about every time the ball didn’t get dropped down low.Now a word about the fans and venue. It’s very odd for me, as an American to go to a game and have the crowd cheer for both teams as well as the time-out acts. The fans loved the experience more than the game as many of them had no clue what was going on on the floor. To be sure there were a lot of Chinese NBA junkies there but it appeared to me that most of the people there were just folks with money rather than a basketball Jones.But the Venetian was awful!. The security was a joke, the crowd control non-existent, the food bad and the line horrendously long. If you got there early you were required to check your camera and bag. I couldn’t do it. There was no security at the camera check desk, just an open desk in the main hall that was soon packed waist deep in expensive cameras—I’m sure that many were stolen—no way they couldn’t have been; I personally reached over and took my own bag after I had second thoughts about checking it. If you got there late you had to wait in huge lines. The security were so overwhelmed by game time that bags, cameras and people without tickets were all getting into the arena. There were at least 5 people in my little section that had cameras with telephoto lenses and scores of others around the arena. People were posing for photos with mascots and the only security I encountered was a guy telling us that we could have cups but not bottles of pop in the arena even though they were both for sale at the top of the stairs!The game was fun despite the venue and the score. I got some great pics too!