Puerto Rico players hit by fans BEIJING, July 30 (Reuters) - A basketball game between China and visiting Puerto Rico deteriorated into a mass brawl that state media denounced as a "night of shame", saying it set a bad example for the 2008 Olympic hosts.
The fighting erupted at Beijing Capital Gymnasium on Friday night after two Chinese players charged off the bench to fight Puerto Rican players in the dying moments of a game in which China was leading comfortably.
The bad feeling spilled into the stands where 3,000 home fans hurled insults and missiles, the China Daily reported on Saturday. Officials abandoned the game as the visitors fled to the locker room, one shielding his head with a plastic chair. ADVERTISEMENT
Chinese players Li Nan and Mo Ke had reacted after seeing teammate Yi Jianlian fouled hard by Puerto Rican centre Manuel Narvaez, the newspaper said.
"Fists, plastic cups, water bottles and even a fan's shoe went flying during the fracas with China's Yi Jianlian, Tang Zhengdong, Mo Ke and Li Nan right in the middle of it," the official China Daily reported on Saturday.
China's basketball association deplored the violence as setting a poor example just three years before Beijing hosts the summer Olympics and said it would adopt measures to prevent such violence from recurring.
"Such behaviour is very disgusting and leaves an extremely bad impression," the China Sports Daily quoted association spokesman Li Jinsheng as saying.
NBA superstar Yao Ming, out with a toe injury, watched from the sidelines as the melee erupted but took no part.
"The Chinese basketball team should learn a lesson from this incident," Yao was quoted as saying by www.sports.sohu.com.
Victory in the Stankovic Cup game, abandoned with China ahead 91-80, was later awarded to the hosts. A basketball association official said China should apologise to fans.
State media railed about the team's behaviour.
In a story headlined "China suffers night of shame", China Daily said the brawl "badly hurt the growing reputation of Chinese basketball".
"China and Puerto Rico stage 'free for all'," said the Guangzhou Daily.
It said they had turned the Capital Gymnasium, a 2008 Olympic venue, into "the Palace of Auburn Hills arena", where Detroit players and fans brawled near the end of a game against the Indiana Pacers in November 2004.
Three thousand fans hurled abuse along with drinks, plastic bottles, yoghurt and popcorn at the Puerto Rican team as it headed off-court.
"This is the ugliest scene I have ever experienced in my life," 31-year-old fan Wang Kai was quoted as saying.
"The Puerto Rico players have travelled more than 30 hours to come to China and they are our guests. As the host team, how can we treat them with such disdain?"
It was not the first instance of violence for Chinese basketball.In Shanghai in July 2001, China and Lebanon clashed just 10 days after Beijing won the right to host the Olympics.
Both benches emptied after the final buzzer of a physical game, Chinese fans threw water bottles and other objects and several Lebanese players were bloodied before police broke it up.
In other sports, overzealous Chinese supporters have frequently embarrassed the authorities. Soccer in particular has seen a number of violent incidents.
Fans rioted in Beijing in 1985 after the national soccer team lost a World Cup qualifier against tiny Hong Kong, missing out on the 1986 finals in Mexico.
In August 2004, angry fans went on a rampage in the capital after the national team lost the Asian Cup final to Japan.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/050730/15/vaqx.htmlThe Electric New Paper :
China rewrites history too CHINA may take offence at Japan whitewashing the atrocities it committed during World War II, but China itself may be guilty of that.
10 May 2005
CHINA may take offence at Japan whitewashing the atrocities it committed during World War II, but China itself may be guilty of that.
A Los Angeles Times report alleges that China's Communist Party has also diluted many of its own major embarrassments, such as the Great Leap Forward and the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, in its history textbooks.
The daily quoted an academic as saying that some decisions taken by the party in the past have resulted in the deaths of more Chinese than those caused by Japanese militarism. Many such decisions, the daily says, were ignored in Chinese textbooks.
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/printfriendly/0,4139,87999,00.htmlUS basketball team pelted with bottles by angry Chinese crowdBEIJING, May 10 (AFP) -
A basketball game between Chinese and US players turned ugly when the Chinese crowd pelted the US team with bottles following a collision between two players, a US coach said Thursday.
"There were many, many water bottles flying around, so we got the team off the court as soon as we could, but we were followed by some of the Chinese players to the locker room which made us feel very unsafe," US coach Mike Frink told AFP.
The game between the Chinese national team and a team made up of players from the US International Basketball League was played Monday night in the central city of Changsha in Hunan province.
Frink declined to say if the incident was brought on by anti-American sentiment provoked by the April 1 collision between a US EP-3 spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet that destroyed the Chinese plane and killed the pilot.
"We've been aware of this spy plane incident and we knew that this was a very sensitive issue, but we are a basketball team and we have nothing to do with politics," Frink said after arriving in Beijing Thursday.
A spokesman for the Chinese Basketball Association refused comment on the crowd incident as did Wang Fei, head coach of China's national team.
News of the incident emerged as former US president Bill Clinton hailed the NBA debut of Chinese star Wang Zhizhi during a speech in Hong Kong in which he suggested basketball diplomacy could help heal fractured Sino-US ties.
Frink felt the Chinese players helped incite the crowd by leaving their bench area and encircling the US bench after a US player fouled one of the Chinese side as he was attacking the basket.
"All of a sudden a lot of these Chinese players are around our bench, and we're not a full team, we've only got nine players, so it got a little bit threatening there," said Frink, who coaches the IBL's Cincinnati Slam.
Hunan Satellite Television broadcast the game live to parts of the country, but pulled the plug after the crowd became unruly, leaving millions of viewers in the dark as to the outcome of the brawl and the game.
The incident occurred with China leading 85 to 72 with eight minutes left. It was eventually resumed with China winning 109 to 87.
"They pulled the plug just as I was watching a Chinese player chasing an American player around the court with a clenched fist," said an American businessman who watched the game from his Beijing home.
Said the online Xinkuai news, "It only took a minute, but the American team appeared to recognize that this wasn't the EP-3 incident and all nine players went to hide in the locker room."
Frink had nothing but praise for his Chinese hosts and said he hoped that basketball exchanges could further promote ties between the two countries.
China won the first game of the three game series 88 to 85, while losing the last game played Wednesday night in Xian 120 to 103.
The Chinese team is preparing for the upcoming Asian Basketball Championships in Japan this summer.
China sees basketball brawl as "night of shame"
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