Team China: Striving to reach the elite

The story of Team China, as the Chinese national team is known, is a story of almost unbroken success on a continental level and great promise on an international one. Since joining continental competition in 1974, China has won the gold medal in 14 out of 16 appearances at the Asian Championships, taking silver and bronze the other two times. Besides hosting the Olympic Games in 2008, China will also mark the 30th anniversary of its participation in world-level basketball competition. The first was the 1978 World Championships, in which China finished 11th out of 14 teams. Since then, China has competed in every other World Championships except 1998. Highlights included a jump to ninth place among 24 teams in 1986, in Spain, where China finished ahead of notables like Greece, Argentina, France, Germany and Australia. In 1994, this time in Canada, China jumped to eighth place by virtue of group-phase victories against Brazil and Spain. China's experience in the Olympic Games has shown similar improvement. From a 10th-place finish at its first Summer Games in 1984, China has been able to improve slightly despite the worldwide improvement of many countries. It moved up to eighth place in 1996 in Atlanta, ahead of teams like Argentina and Puerto Rico. That result was repeated in the 2004 Olympics, despite China bringing the second-youngest of the 12 teams to Athens. China defeated and ranked ahead of the previous world champions, Serbia & Montenegro. To have followed that good performance with its worst international finish ever, 15th place at the 2006 World Championships in Japan, was a disappointment, but China keeps looking ahead. With the 2008 Olympics on its own turf in Beijing, there will be more support for China than it has ever had before in world-class competition.

Stankovic Continental Cup 2007

China's second-place ranking in last summer's third edition of the Stankovic Cup was encouraging for several reasons. First, tthe six-team tournament featuring some habitual Olympics competition. Second, even in the two games it lost, China was close, falling by less than five points in each and coming within two baskets of winning the tournament. In two other games, China blew out New Zealand and a team representing the NBA Development League. Even more important, China did all this without start center Yao Ming, showing that even without a 2.26-meter center, giving confidence to the rest of the team.
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Summer 2007 exhibition games
The Chinese national basketball team spent the summer of 2007 playing a series of exhibition and preparation games, almost all of them without the team's biggest star, center Yao Ming, who got married in mid-summer. The rest of Team China set off for Europe, where it took on some teams getting ready for EuroBasket 2007. While the final results of losses to the likes of Germany, Poland, Serbia and Latvia do not spell success, the team's bonding as well as the experience for players to use Yao's absence to try new things were promising signs for the future. Yao returned to Team China for a recent game against the Australian club Melbourne Tigers and his impact was felt immediately, as China waltzed to easy victory.

TEAM CHINA SCHEDULE

vs. Benetton Tamoil, September 30 21:00 local time | 15:00 CET vs. CSKA Moscow, October 1 14:30 local time | 8:30 CET vs. Sydney Kings, October 2 16:00 local time | 10:00 CET

TEAM ROSTER # Name Pos. Height 4 Sun Yue G 2,05 5 Liu Wei G 1,90 7 Wang Shipeng F 1,96 8 Zhu Fangyu F 2,01 10 Li Nan F 1,98 11 Yi Jianlian C 2,11 12 Mo Ke C 2,08 13 Yao Ming C 2,26 14 Wang Zhizhi C 2,12 18 Wang Zhongguang G 1,93 19 Chen Jianghua G 1,88 20 Liu Xiaoyu G 1,88 21 Wang Lei F 2,04 23 Ding Jinhui C 2,04 24 Li Xiaoxu C 2,04 25 Zhou Peng F 2,05 26 Zhang Songtao C 2,12

TEAMS CSKA Moscow Benetton Treviso Team China Syndey Kings