Yao Ming: Lose a Game and Blame the Refs — Have You No Shame?
2006/8/22 16:43:57
Chinese men's basketball has lately been popping too many virility pills, driving market hype through the roof — starting to resemble what football used to be. What gets even more delusionally hyped than football is the claim that Chinese men's basketball now has a world-class star, something football never had. Thus, for basketball, the power of delusion grows even greater — especially after absorbing the hordes of so-called fans who fled from football to basketball, whose wounded psyches desperately seeking compensation have turned basketball into a Man-Ball!
In the past, Chinese men's volleyball also had its glory days, but ultimately ended up right where it started. Football goes without saying. Can basketball escape the constraints of Chinese men's fundamental weakness just because "basket" happens to rhyme with "man" in Chinese? Dreams can be dreamed, but dreams are just dreams. The reason Chinese men have no trouble with small-ball sports but fall apart once the ball gets bigger — while it cannot be entirely attributed to physiological factors — the problem remains a problem, with absolutely zero signs of having been changed.
Recently, this basketball team, led by some old coach, went abroad and wilted in all three matches. The latest one was the most spectacular: their own balls went limp, and Yao Ming — who fancies himself the representative of Chinese men's ball sports — pulled the old blame-the-refs trick: "When 8 people play against 5, there's nothing to say about losing." That tone is straight out of Chinese football's playbook. Sure enough, this basketball has truly become Man-Ball — in the end, it's still the same sorry pattern of Chinese men going soft whenever the ball gets big!
Bring the market's false fire back down. Wake up from those unrealistic fantasies. What basketball is going through now, volleyball and football have both been through before, and the final outcome need not be spelled out. To make Chinese men stop going limp at the sight of a big ball — that road is still very long. Don't think popping a few virility pills makes you a real man. Perhaps only when the day comes that Chinese men no longer need virility pill advertisements will China's three major ball sports have a shred of genuine hope — rather than the present state of hope being nowhere to be found!