Published Thursday April 7, 2011
Former Omaha North great McGee coaches Chinese team
By Max McElwain
SPECIAL TO THE WORLD-HERALD
JISHOU, China — What is Mike McGee doing in China?
As always, the former Omaha North basketball great is winning games with lots of offense.
McGee,
51, coaches the Beijing Aoshen Olympians, who compete in a far-flung
international league known as the American Basketball Association.
It's
not the NBA, where McGee played for nine seasons in the 1980s and won
two championship rings with the Los Angeles Lakers. But he said it's
better competition than you might think.
“The quality of play in
China is on the uprise,” McGee said. “We may have four or five players
kind of rough, but there are a couple who could find their way to the
NBA, too.”
McGee has coached in the Far East for 13 years,
including a stint in Korea. His current team improved to 20-0 after a
105-94 win against the West Texas Whirlwinds last week at Jishou
University in northwest Hunan Province.
His players include Jamel
Staten, a former Minnesota State-Mankato star who scored 21 points
against the Whirlwinds, and former Chaminade University star Chris
Reaves, who had 26.
But the biggest attraction for the 2,500 fans at Jishou was the Olympians' Sun Yue, who like his coach is a former Laker.
The
6-foot-9 left-handed guard showed how in 2009 he became the second
Chinese player to earn an NBA ring, handing out nine assists while
shooting just six times.
McGee also has bulky 6-10 forward Wu Guanxi, another player he said has NBA potential.
“We are looking good, like last year,” McGee said. “We went 32-3 then, and that included playing some European teams.”
Chinese professional basketball has a colorful and complex history, and McGee and Sun Yue have played their part in it.
McGee
became the first non-Chinese head coach in the Chinese Basketball
Association when hired by the Olympians in 1998. But the team was
suspended from the CBA in 2004 when Beijing refused to release Sun so he
could play on the national under-20 team.
The Olympians intended
to rejoin the league the following year. When negotiations broke down,
the Beijing team joined the American Basketball Association for 2005-06.
The
ABA, which debuted in 2000, has no connection with the American league
of the same name that merged with the NBA in the 1970s.
This ABA is best described as a transitional league. It has 60 teams, but they often come and go during the season.
“The
caliber of basketball here is good,” said Reaves, who played for the
ABA's Los Angeles Slam last season. “I've been here eight months and I
like the people and culture. And I like playing for Coach McGee.”
Staten,
a 6-7 forward, also left another ABA team to play for McGee. The NCAA
Division II All-American at Mankato averaged 27 points for the Minnesota
Ripknees in 2007, when he recorded a rare quadruple-double in an ABA
game.
Last week's game with the Whirlwinds was the first
professional basketball game in the mountain city of Jishou. It was one
of 12 stops on a Sino-U.S. international tour of the province.
Middle-aged and older Chinese fans sat in awe as Sun flipped passes to teammates for three assists in the opening two minutes.
As in the U.S., professional basketball doesn't come cheap.
The
“VIP” tickets cost the equivalent of about $30, while seats in the
rafters that cost about half that amount were still too expensive for
Jishou University students, many of them rabid fans. The seats were
mostly empty.
“That's too bad,” McGee said. “I look up and around the gym and I mostly see older people.”
McGee,
who visited Omaha in the past year, maintains a home in Marina Del Rey,
Calif. He was unaware that 34 years after his graduation from Omaha
North he still holds Metro Conference scoring records — 54 points in a
game, an average of 38 in a season.
“I live in Beijing 10 months
out of the year,” he said. “It's an international city that I like.
Russians, Chinese and others, all living together.”
TOM体育讯 北京时间2011年1月2日，奥神迎来了河北国际篮球邀请赛的第7场比赛，北京奥神与本次邀请赛的第三个对手泽西特快队进行了首场比拼。奥神以 93-81战胜对手，夺得邀请赛的七连胜。孙悦得到9分2助攻，16岁的小将吴冠希砍下28分11篮板 1盖帽 2助攻，令人欣喜。
今天的比赛是吴冠希在奥神一队的第一次亮相，第一次亮相就震惊四座，不仅数据漂亮，表现全面，也抢了球员老大的风头，掌控了这场比赛。
吴冠希今年只有16岁，已经在奥神二队打了四年。小小年纪，身高已经达到2米08。当记者问到他预测自己到底能长到多高时，吴冠希腼腆的说，“这得看自身的发展了，自己也不是特别清楚。”
