Yang Yi throws out a question like a bolt of lightning, followed by a series of deep thoughts. Is Chinese basketball wandering along the same path as the national soccer team? How to ensure that naturalized players can devote themselves to the game without distractions and guarantee substantial improvement in performance? Will they take the money and work perfunctorily? Although the contract does not foresee everything, if the naturalized players lead to a decline in performance instead of an increase, then who will be blamed?
What is more worrying is that if a black defender is brought in who wears a Chinese team jersey but fails to improve the team's performance, wouldn't this be a replica of the national soccer farce?
A deeper thought is whether naturalization can really improve the long-term level of Chinese basketball? If basketball relies on naturalization, does the future mean complete despair? After raising the level of the game for one or two tournaments, does it mean we can rely on naturalized players in the long run?
Yang Yi's revelation is more like a heavy bomb that raises questions about the development and selection of local players. Since we are naturalizing defensemen and black defensemen are clearly superior to domestic players, do we need to train defensemen in the future? Naturalization has become a quick fix, so do we still need to train?
The original purpose of naturalizing players was to make an impact in Asia, but is that too narrow a goal? What is the point of naturalizing black defenders if they cannot win even in the Olympics? It doesn't really make much sense to start naturalizing players just for the sake of winning Asian tournaments. Compared to the national soccer team, is this move by Chinese basketball following the path of success or repeating the same mistakes?
