By: Abe Chong
John Thompson III is a great man. In regards to the the brawl in China between the Georgetown Hoyas and the Bayi Rockets, the Georgetown coach said in a post-game statement that “Tonight, two great teams played a very competitive game that unfortunately ended after heated exchanges with both teams. We sincerely regret that this situation occurred.” If I were the Hoyas coach, more than three-quarters of my speech would have been censored and my team would be on the first flight home to the States.
No matter how objectively I try to think about it, I can’t — the Chinese effed up. Big time. I understand that some games get heated, but Georgetown was in China playing roundball as goodwill ambassadors of sport. The classless Bayi Rockets and Chinese basketball basically spit on John Thompson III and the Hoyas’ gesture. And let’s not forget that this is, supposedly, a professional Chinese team playing a bunch of college students. Is the whole concept of “gracious host” completely foreign to the Bayi Rockets?
Let’s get right into the facts. Mex Carey, Georgetown’s sports information director, reported to ESPN that the game got “very physical” and that Bayi took 57(!) free throws compared to just 15 to Georgetown. Gee, do you think the referees were Chinese? Compare that with Game 5 of the 2006 Finals — the one Mark Cuban swore was rigged — where Miami shot 49 free throws to Dallas’ 25. This is much, much worse. Furthermore, this game was part of a two-day “China-U.S. Basketball Friendship Match,” yet the Chinese refs are calling phantom fouls to sway the game. The funny thing is, Georgetown was still up at halftime despite the blatant favoritism.
Gene Wang of the Washington Post, who was courtside during the melee, said in a telephone interview with ESPN that at one point during the game a Chinese player got up in Georgetown Coach John Thompson III’s face and started screaming at him. A Hoyas fan who was at the game wrote “…the craziest thing I’ve ever seen happened — one of the Bayi big men got in JT3’s face and almost took a swing. He was so shocked he didn’t know what to do.”
There’s more: Hoyas player Aaron Bowen was pushed through a partition, mounted by a Bayi player and punched a number of times. Bowen is a college sophomore. Georgetown center Henry Sims was hit by a thrown chair. The rest of the Hoyas dodged a bunch of water bottles and other objects thrown from the stands as they tried to leave the court.
So the Hoyas are playing a fixed game in a hostile environment against a team that openly dissed their coach. How was a fight NOT going to happen? I’ll tell you how: don’t use crooked refs, respect the other team’s players and staff, and realize that these games are supposed to be for fun. It’s obvious that the team and officials had too much pride on the line to admit that they couldn’t win without cheating.
Get over yourself, China: Americans are supposed to be better at basketball. We invented this sport that you love and have been playing it a lot longer. I was always taught that you learn more in defeat than in cheating to win. If the Bayi Rockets are so tough playing in front of a home crowd with officials on their side, let’s invite them to play against some of the street ballers at Rucker Park and see what happens.
I see, I spupose that would have to be the case.
I’m gonna be completely honest. The fact that Warriorsworld even allowed this article to be posted is a damn shame. Seeing this on your site, makes you lose ALL credibility. Not only is it misinforming, it’s painfully “IGNORANT”. I didn’t even have to read the name of the author to know that the writer was black. It’s writen in every paragraph where he generalizes a team, as CHINA as a whole. The name of the article is “china doesn’t deserve the Hoyas” for crying out loud. Because Americans are gods gift to basketball right? The physicality of the game is something that cant be determined, but even in the video, it’s the hoya who threw the first punch. It sounds like the writer is more mad about the hoyas losing a fight to some chinese dudes. This entire post sounds nothing like a real article and more like a ridiculous comment you would find at the bottom of the video posted on WSHH. I’m not saying that its the Hoyas fault, it doesn’t really matter. What happened, happened. Emotions of basketball games always run high, regardless of which race is playing. If two college teams fought on one of there home turfs, would the other team not deserve to come back? You are in desperate need of some new writers.
-an UN-biased commenter.
The above comment is so ignorant it’s barely worth dignifying with a response. Doesn’t warriorsworld.net censor bigoted commentary?! As for the article, anyone who has played basketball knows that emotions often run high, especially when one team really has something to prove as this Chinese team seemed to. It doesn’t sound like the writer has any idea what went on on the floor before the fight with the exception of one comment made to the hoyas coach (which apparently was because JT3 was screaming at his own players in a goodwill game, a fact conveniently omitted by the writer), and a really lopsided number of fouls being called. Not nearly enough info to determine that the Hoyas players/coaches had no part in causing or escalating the conflict. The way the article was framed encouraged idiotic comments like the one above to be posted. I learned nothing from the article, and instead was subjected to an uniformed and clearly biased opinion. You may be right about what happened, but it sounds like you really have no idea.