It all started to provide coal miners some recreational viewing,
but a major industry-sponsored basketball tournament may soon
develop into China's own professional summer league.
The Lu'an Cup Major Coal Customers' Invitational Basketball
Tournament attracted 12 CBA teams and sponsors to its fourth annual
tournament last week, twice as many as the inaugural event in
2004.
Represented by Liaoning Panpan, tournament host and organizer
the Lu'an Group lost 100-71 to the Tianjin Steel Factory's CBA
charges, Jiangsu Nangang, in the final.
"Our aim is still to enrich the cultural life of our workers,"
director of the competition office of the Lu'an Cup Zhang Bin
said.
"There is no commercial factors involved in the event, only that
the play level is higher than before with more professional
teams."
The play attracted so much local attention that some fans even
forged tickets for the final, which saw Lu'an's Wangzhuang Mine's
4,000-seat gymnasium packed to the rafters.
The hundreds of would-be spectators who waited at the gates in a
standoff with local police have prompted calls for much larger
venue next year.
"The event has shifted from merely enlivening my workers' sports
life and summer vacation to making our contribution to the
development of basketball in China," Lu'an Group board chairman and
general manager Ren Runhou said during the tournament last week in
Changzhi, Shanxi Province.
Deputy general manager of Lu'an Group Liu Rensheng said many
more enterprises were keen for getting a piece of the action, but
just 12 of the 16 CBA teams were either worthy of corporate backing
or available last week.
Players from last season's champions Bayi Rockets and runners-up
Guangdong Hongyuan were busy with international commitments, while
the CBA's bottom two teams failed to attract sponsors.
Only a veto by basketball's governing body stopped companies
engaging foreign outfits such as the Lithuanian national squad.
The CBA sent two senior officials to the tournament, director of
the League Office Hao Guohua and CBA Training and Science Research
Department boss Gong Luming.
"The CBA did not exclude commercial matches for the clubs during
the summer break," Hao said.
"But in some commercial tournaments, the play level is very low
and thus the players did not gain anything."
Ren revealed that the CBA had even considered making the
competition into its summer league.
Hao said the CBA and the Lu'an Group would continue their
partnership with the view to reprising the NBA summer league, but
said the appropriate time to form it would be after the Beijing
Olympics.
"We'll add some commercial factors in order to make the event
better," Hao said.
"And 10 million yuan for running the event is not a big problem
for the 12 participating enterprises."
Ren said next year's event should be played at a new 10,000-seat
gymnasium.
"We want to develop the event into a national competition with
better management, excellent service and environment plus a new
gymnasium," he said.
Former China National Team player Hu Weidong, now coach of the
Jiangsu Nangang, said the 200,000 yuan his team won and the 20,000
match fee represented the most his players could earn during the
off-season.
"It's really a good thing to assemble the best clubs to play in
the tournament and also make money," he said.
To make participating clubs more evenly matched and the
competition more attractive to sponsors, Liu Rensheng has proposed
inviting about 50 international players to be drafted in similar
fashion to the NBA, where the lowest-ranked clubs enjoy first
pick.
If this eventuates, the competition will bear an uncanny
resemblance to the NBA's summer league.
With such success, Lu'an Group no longer wants to remain as just
an organizer.
"After the new gymnasium, we'll look for a decent basketball
team and build a team of our own," Cao Chunming, Labor Union
chairman of the Lu'an Group, said.
(China Daily August 10, 2007)