The game ended, and the audience burst into applause.
After Su Jun stood up, he suddenly sighed with emotion, "This is good in a way. It’s like ripping off the fig leaf, forcing us to open our eyes and see the world."
In Su Jun’s eyes, Chen Yu’s arrival was like a catfish thrown into a pond, stirring up waves in the otherwise placid professional league.
The soccer world was a bit different. It had taken another path, bringing in stars on the verge of retirement, focusing on selling gimmicks and tickets.
The fans’ attention was all on these stars, so no one really cared about the skill level of their own domestic players.
But basketball was different.
With this move, Chen Yu was essentially telling all the fans just how bad Chinese players really were.
Some fans might argue, ’But we still have Yao Ming! He even led the Lakers to the Finals.’
But in the end, there was only one Yao Ming.
And Yao Ming’s existence couldn’t mask the overall low level of basketball in the country.
On the contrary, Yao Ming’s very success created the illusion for all fans that Chinese basketball was improving.
Now that this fig leaf had been ripped away, forcing all the fans to face reality, it was actually a good thing.
Chen Yu overheard Su Jun’s words and quickly said, "It’s not as exaggerated as you make it sound."
’A fig leaf? He’s making it sound so serious.’
Su Jun shook his head, his expression a bit bitter.
’China’s best group of players, a championship team!’
’And some five random players pulled from a secondary league just pinned them to the ground and beat them.’
Su Jun considered himself to have a decent eye for the game, and after watching that match, he truly felt that the domestic players were lagging behind in every aspect, from technique to physicality.
Chen Yu clapped Su Jun on the shoulder and said, "Don’t always be so worried about the state of the nation. Things might not be as good as you imagine, but they’re not as bad as you think, either."
At least things were already changing.
The professional league was improving, and perhaps it would get better and better.
And on the National Team side, a batch of seeds was also secretly sprouting and growing.
Then there were those coaches. They were growing too, and perhaps in the future, they could bring many different things to Chinese basketball.
After offering a word of comfort, Chen Yu turned to find Chen Haitao.
He was genuinely depressed.
Even though his main starters weren’t playing, to be beaten so badly was still a bit hard for him to accept.
So he couldn’t help but ask Chen Yu a question, "Dr. Chen, are we really that much worse than foreigners?"
’Look at Yao Ming, he’s not bad at all.’
With so many people in the great nation of China, he refused to believe it could only produce one Yao Ming.
But for them to just grab a few random guys and proceed to knock your teeth out... he just couldn’t accept it.
"How could you think that?" Chen Yu said quickly.
"There might be differences in physical talent, but the gap shouldn’t be that big."
"Back in the ’80s and ’90s in China, even with such terrible training conditions, we still produced a batch of tough-as-nails players."
"It’s just that the world has been advancing, and you haven’t kept up."
"The level of training and its underlying concepts are improving so fast now that, to be honest, even Jordan’s generation wouldn’t be enough to compete today."
"Don’t overthink it. I have something for you."
Chen Yu took an invitation from his assistant’s hand and gave it to Chen Haitao.
Chen Haitao opened it and saw it was an invitation for them to go to Phoenix, United States, on August 25th to attend a player tryout.
This invitation was for the management of the 14 CBA teams—all except the Pioneer—to go to the United States for a unified recruitment of foreign players.
At that time, Chen Yu would find a group of players and arrange a tryout for all the Chinese teams to watch and make their selections.
teams, 5 foreign players each—it was a considerable scale.
Clutching the invitation, Chen Haitao had a complicated expression on his face.
’Chen Yu is really going for it!’
Next season’s CBA league might actually see starting lineups with five foreign players.
The key was that the Basketball Association was backing Chen Yu, pushing the other teams to keep up.
If you didn’t keep up, given what happened in today’s game, you were bound to get crushed.
But selecting five foreign players meant the investment would increase again.
In the past, foreign players cost about 10,000 to 15,000 US dollars a month. The cheaper ones might even go for eight or nine thousand a month.
They were usually signed for six months.
But at the caliber Chen Yu was suggesting, the base price would be 100,000 US dollars—the equivalent of 800,000 in local currency.
For five foreign players, that would be four million.
How much were player salaries per year?
In the current CBA, the very top stars only had an annual salary of 800,000 to one million.
And the benchwarmers—the "water cooler managers"—even with win bonuses and playoff bonuses, had an annual income of only around 100,000.
Assembling a team with a salary investment of four million was already considered a lot.
And now, they were heading toward doubling that.
The most important thing was that the environment was forcing you to change.
Fortunately, the soccer world had set a good precedent for the CBA, proving that a large investment could also lead to large returns.
As the saying goes, the rougher the waves, the more expensive the fish.
Chen Haitao wasn’t a stingy person. He also wanted to see if playing like this could actually lead to something big.
Because reporters were present, news of the friendly match was reported.
It generated considerable attention and discussion.
Naturally, there were also some dissenting voices.
The massive influx of foreign players would inevitably eliminate a group of domestic players.
Many people worried about what would happen to these players.
This was unavoidable; they could only be relegated to the lower leagues.
That meant being circulated to the various teams’ secondary squads and the Chinese Basketball League teams.
The Chinese Basketball League was the former Jia-B league. It was formally established last year and, because its name clashed with the Chinese Baseball League, was renamed the National Basketball League.
It was not a subsidiary league of the CBA and couldn’t be directly promoted to it.
But Chen Yu knew that Li Yuanwei had a plan to slowly open up promotion and relegation, allowing NBL teams to move up and expand the scale of the CBA.
Fortunately, no matter how intense the discussion became, it didn’t stir up any major trouble.
The previous incident with Bartel had already made it clear to all players: causing trouble would not end well.
Instead of wasting energy causing trouble, they were better off thinking about how to improve their skills and fight to stay in the CBA.
Chen Yu handed over the team’s formation and development to Stevens and his own team.
Chen Yu was going back to China.
He hadn’t seen Xiaoyanfei in a while and missed her terribly.
Besides, the Five Major Leagues were about to start their seasons one after another, and things were busy at the clinic.
Oh, right. After a year of treatment, Oden was finally about to be discharged from the hospital.
In fact, his medical treatment had ended long ago; the subsequent phase was focused on rehabilitation.
The new bone growth, muscles, and tendons all needed to be trained to increase their strength. He also had to adjust and readapt after years of habits formed by his leg-length discrepancy.
And while rehabilitating, he had to be mindful of his body’s limits to avoid re-injury.
This concerned his future; there was no room for carelessness.
At the Pioneer Training Base—also known as that "retirement home"—Chen Yu arranged an assessment for Oden.
If he passed the assessment, he could be officially discharged.
This assessment wasn’t open to the public, but it even attracted Brian.
Oden could be in the draft as early as ’07, which was just a year or two away.
So he also wanted to see what kind of condition an Oden who had corrected his leg-length discrepancy could achieve.
At the same time, Gong Luming, Song Jun, and the others at the training base were naturally drawn over as well.
"Let’s begin."
Once Oden finished his thorough warm-up, Chen Yu nodded to Nelson, signaling that they could start.
Oden didn’t hesitate and immediately took off.
First, shuttle runs.
The human body has a powerful adaptive ability—it can even adapt to a leg-length discrepancy. But after all, the bones and muscles were imbalanced. Now that he had recovered, you could clearly see that Oden’s running was much smoother and more natural.
Before, people called him an 18-wheeler truck when he ran. Now, he was an unstoppable train.
Continuous shuttle runs, four-point drills, interspersed with catching the ball for powerful dunks and jump shots—it was all designed to rapidly increase Oden’s workload.
Only when his body was completely exhausted did a few Trainers, led by Ewing, take turns on the court to test his various low-post techniques and offensive moves under pressure.
And throughout the entire process, there were no rest periods.
For players talented enough to enter the NBA, when there’s no contact and you’re not tired, ’I am Jordan.’
Therefore, to see how good someone really is, you have to look at their performance under extreme physical fatigue.
Stability at this point is true stability. It would also show whether Oden’s body still had any underlying problems and whether the long period of rehabilitation had been effective.
The CLANG CLANG of dunks and the sharp squeal of sneakers against the floor were incessant.
On the sidelines, Gong Luming was simply dumbfounded.
"He’s only 17!"
Gong Luming grimaced as he watched.
He felt that not a single player in China could endure such a high-intensity tryout, let alone a hulking big center.
What was even more incredible was that Oden was only 17 and was already performing like this.
The basketball coach standing next to him, Zhang Xiaochun, was also watching, dumbfounded. He gave a bitter laugh and said, "Forget it. He’s not an ordinary player. The media has already said that if he enters the draft, he’s a 100% number one pick."
For a player at the level of an NBA number one pick, this kind of performance really wasn’t an exaggeration.

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