Sports and them dang Chinese

Finally, a sporting event that I want to watch and am able to watch live - the World Basketball Championship. We are able to watch some MLB, but that is my number 3 sport and in Taiwan you mostly get Yankees games being shown three times in a row or the Red Sox. Slim pickins. So, let me share with you what I have gleaned from the games I've seen.

1. ESPN's Gregg Easterbrook rightly complains about the NBA's acceptance of traveling as part of the game, so he'd better not watch any of the WBC games or he'll have an aneurysm. To the Europeans and China, taking those extra steps is not just okay, it's mandatory. Start with a Flintstone foot shuffle, two of what Easterbrook calls "the hop through", alternate feet and pivot 10 feet, and then you may choose to shoot or add some more steps for style points.
2. Yao Ming sucks. He's a baby. So, he averaged in the 20's in the first round. They won two games and one of those was against Senegal. In the round that counted, he scored 10 and his team got routed by Greece. Sofoklis Schortsanitis (scrutinize that name carefully), 9 inches shorter than Yao, showed him how to take it to the hoop. He also scored 10, but in half the time (oh, do look at his picture). Against the U.S., he chased the ref to half court to complain about his bulldozing of Battier. Against Greece, he threw an elbow at their center (not Schortsanitis) after a gimme dunk. He does not know how to face up to the bucket in the paint. His best move is to kick it back out and let Yi Jian-lian score.
3. Number 14 for China, Z.Z. Wang, won't make any headlines as a b-baller, but the name on his jersey definitely could as the name for a Taiwanese Tai Ke band.
4. The Greeks have the best passing I've seen so far.
5. The Italians take dives in basketball, too. You know the soccer move where another player enters into your sphere of influence and you flail about and moan as if you just stepped on an anti-personnel device...well, I saw the Italians do it 3 times against Lithuania.
6. I would pay a lot of money to see a Brit team play basketball. I can't imagine the first thing as to how it would look, but it would definitely be hilarious.

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Not quite professional level athletics, but professional level bitching

At the International Children's Games in Bangkok this last week, Chinese athletes and officials used force to take the R.O.C. flag away from Taiwanese medalists who had it draped over their shoulders at the medal ceremony. I guess that the Chinese Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee needs to add a couple more groups to their list. Maybe the Chinese should take a look at the ICG's home page before they attack more teenagers.