John Calipari and China Use Basketball to Bridge the Great Wall

October will be a fun time in the city of Memphis with the college basketball season kicking off and the University of Memphis Tigers being ranked preseason number one according to most sports watchers. With a high-flying team and a national schedule opportunities will be endless for Coach John Calipari to build up his work in building a national program with a team stuck in a mediocre conference.

But unlike his ability to schedule teams like Gonzaga and Georgetown, Kansas and Texas, the University of Memphis will be getting some national flavor this fall as fifteen coaches from mainland China will arrive in Memphis for two weeks of coaching shadowing on the campus of the university. And one of them will remain and basically serve as an intern for the 2007-2008 basketball season. A phenomenal coupe for a team that has little history and no national attention, the ability to get China and its Chinese Basketball Association to agree to a four-year agreement between the university and the country will have benefits beyond the game on the court.

While Yao Ming has become the most dominate center in the National Basketball Association and this year, the Milwaukee Bucks selected a Chinese player in the first round, the game of basketball in China appears to be in a typhoon of sorts. Unlike American basketball, where competition is based on a continual progression of leagues, teams, and athletic tracks, basketball China is relegated to less development focused activities. So a player with a solid game at fifteen will see little growth over the next three years in comparison to an American player who has his game honed through high school and then the AAU circuit as well as the summer basketball camps.