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If you're not embarrassed by this mess, raise your hand.
Let's start with you, Shanxi fans. It's mostly your fault. If your hands are down, just go ahead and put them right back up. Keep them there.
(Wait. Before you do, put those matches back in your pocket.)
You threw a tantrum. You did. Your Brave Dragons weren't quite running away with Game 5 of their CBA playoff series with the Beijing Ducks on Sunday, and you couldn't deal with it.
You started throwing things on the court.
You bullied the refs.
You made every single person who watched any part of that game think less of your team and your league.
If you were a part of the mob outside Riverside Sports Arena, know this: You knocked the CBA backward two, maybe three years.
Look, every tenured sports fan has been there. Yankees fans, Lakers fans, Barcelona fans – even the most successful team loses a call, or a game, or a series. It's not fun, but it's not what you'd call a lighting-fires event.
Act like you've been there before.
Did Michael Jordan ever chug a bunch of Tsingtao, storm the parking lot with his friends, throw bricks at the other team's bus and set things ablaze?
After a win?
Don't fool yourself about the CBA. The CBA is a league that's gaining respect. Rightfully so. But it's not there yet.
You want to claim a title now and then in a third-rate league?
Keep the bricks and matches coming.
You love basketball? Want to keep your home-grown talent here? Maybe bring in some stars from the NBA?
At the very least, save your anger for a time when things don't tilt ridiculously in your favor.
You won the game, in large part because the refs helped you win the game. Enjoy it.
Refs, you probably didn't enjoy it, but put your hands too.
Nobody likes to be the authority figure. If being the bad cop was easy, there'd be no good cop.
If the whole of the job was jogging up and down the court, having a good time and watching professional basketball – well, they'd probably charge for it rather than paying you for it. (Really, how much do you think you could charge in a charity auction for the right to referee the deciding game of the CBA semifinals? Does 100,000 RMB seem outrageous, when scalpers were getting 110,000 for courtside tickets?)
This is what you do for money, refs. There are thousands of wealthy coal magnates in Shanxi who would pay many times your salary for the chance to whistle make-up calls once the crowd starts booing.
Your whole job is to be impartial. That's it. You're there to watch what happens, decide who's right when there's a conflict - then accept that there's a whole bunch of people who aren't going to like that decision. That's the whole reason you're there, the reason they're paying you instead of the other way around.
If a bouncer's whole job was to hang out a bar and talk to girls, it wouldn't really be a job.
As for the CBA itself …
Well, CBA, it doesn't matter if your hands are up or down. Just try to keep them out of what could be a perfectly fine league of basketball players.
You've already managed to make one last mess out of what should've been the league's coming-out party.
This was to be the CBA's year. The NBA lockout pushed a few of the world's best to China – Wilson Chandler, Aaron Brooks, J.R. Smith and Kenyon Martin would've been starters in the US. Jim Cleamons, who has spent most of this millennium winning titles with Phil Jackson, signed on to coach the Guangsha Lions.
Stephon Marbury was already here. He was the end result of Yao Ming, the guy who was a star in the NBA, came to China, loved it. Of course, Yao never found himself mobbed after a loss, then accused of assault.
Basketball has been building in China, evolving in the natural way everybody keeps hoping sports in China will evolve. Basketball got popular. Yao came along.
A few legitimate foreign stars took notice of the sport's popularity, took a chance, came over and thrived. The national team isn't one of the world's best, but it's competitive and getting better. Basketball is a thing here, now.
If a sport is growing to develop here, the beginning would look just like that.
If a sport is going to go away, the beginning would look just like that. The ending, of course, would involve bricks, fire, mobs, and the most satisfied foreign star in league history being accused of assault.
Hands down.
Dusty Lane is a sports copy editor who would've rather spent this column writing about the Seattle Seahawks' quarterback situation than harping about the CBA, but was left with no choice. Reach him at dustylane@chinadaily.com.cn
