(Photo: CGTN)
China's men's basketball team on Sunday announced a 17-member squad for Team Blue, which will play against Iran on Wednesday.
Star players including Guo Ailun, Yi Jianlian and Han Dejun are not on the list while Team Red does have some of the leading players like Zhai Xiaochuan.
It comes after Yao Ming, chairman of the board at CBA, introduced a new policy for national team selection.
China started to invite instead of recruiting players to join its men's basketball team since 2017 by sending formal invitations. Many of the players who received posted pictures with the invitations on social network.
Chinese basketball player Zeng Lingxu posted his invitation for the national team on Weibo. (Photo: Weibo Screenshot)
The invitation is more than just a new form but has true benefits for players. In 2017, Yi Jianlian finally got a break for the whole summer, something unimaginable in the past years.
Young players like Ding Yanyuhang and Zhou Qi departed for the US to play in NBA Summer League. More followed them in 2018 without being forced to train and play for the national team. Even Zhou Peng, Li Gen and others, who chose to stay in China have enough time to recover.
Although because of the new policy, both Team Red and Team Blue had to rely on non-leading players for matches and thus, lost in some, the two head coaches, Li Nan and Du Feng never complained to the press because, like Yao Ming, they used to be professional basketball players who knew that the rest means a lot to the players' health.
China's men's basketball team can compete with world-class teams for most of the time in the game. (Photo: VCG)
As a benefit by surprise, young players including Zhao Rui, Abudushalamu Abudurexiti and Hu Jinqiu have gained more opportunities on the court and have remarkably improved their skills or made excellent performances.
This is also one of Yao Ming's goals when he decided to set up two teams: to have more talented players for the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup in China, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and more competitions in the future.
In the past, China's men's basketball team consisted of Yao Ming, Wang Zhizhi, Yi Jianlian, Zhu Fangyu, Su Yue, Liu Wei, Wang Shipeng and other great players was always able to contend with world-class teams in the first half or event the first three quarters but always ended up losing for running down at the end of the game. As a result, China did not win a single game at London in 2010 and Rio de Janeiro in 2014.
In order to solve this problem, Yao Ming has implemented the two-team and the invitation policies so China can have more players with better strength. In case the country has eight to ten players, who have no big difference between the leading five and the substitutes for its basketball team, it may have better chance against the strong teams in the world.