Se son rose…, week 4 – Early MVP candidates, Saving Private Wang Zhelin, imports’ 4th-quarter usage and Guo Ailun, who isn’t as f***ed as we thought.

Brief (hopefully) edition of “Se son rose…”, where I’m gonna elaborate on whatever caught my attention every week while watching some old good Chinese ball. Today I have to go with MVP talks first, because apparently I’m the only one thinking it’s not too early. Hey, we’ve seen almost a third of the whole regular season already, time to dig up some predictions!
But there’s more to add: Wang Zhelin playing for a horrible team, how 4th quarter rules have changed the perception of how you should pick your two imports and the resurgence of Guo Ailun.

The Missing Piece: 6 CBA teams and 6 local players that could turn them into title favorites.

Special edition. If you didn’t expect it, well, neither did I, but this was too long and fun to be just a part of our usual “se son rose…”. This game is pretty easy: there’s a number of contenders and generally very good teams, and then we all know there’s a heap of players that would deserve to be in such winning teams but haven’t been lucky enough.

CBA Power Rankings, week 3 (part 2).

We concluded the first half yesterday by awarding place no. 10 to Qingdao. Let’s move on to the second half, where we’ll see some of the cringiest and most hopeless CBA sides up to date. Yes, some of them are that sad, I’m sorry to spoil that for you.

Zhou Qi’s coming out party – CBA Power Rankings, week 3

Zhou Qi has literally eaten alive Guangdong today, while Blatche has killed from deep en route to a commanding 17-point win in Urumqi. But is this enough to award the Mongolians a place right at the top of it all?

Se son rose… – week 3: of Delonte West, Andray Blatche, how to carry a team and the next great Chinese big man, who may not be Zhou Qi.

Week 3 is in full swing; Delonte West is gone and his team has won both one-import games, Tongxi is playing with just an asian import, Blatche is averaging unreal numbers (27,3 ppg 14,6 rpg 4,6 apg 2,3 spg) and shooting 41% from deep, McCollum is paying the price for lonesome greatness, Bobby Brown is piling up assists and shooting a full 4 attempts per game less than last season.

Phew, where do I even begin?

CBA Power Rankings, week 2 (part 2).

Part 2 of Shotsuey!’s power rankings (yep, that’s me, but I don’t mind talking about myself in the third person). We covered the league all the way through number 10 yesterday, but before we get started with the bottom half, let me have your attention on how I rank teams: first off I consider the record, of course, then how well they fared this week. After that there’s a whole bunch of criteria making an impact. For instance, I might consider how tough was their schedule, how actually good they could be and what possibly hindered their progress (be it injury issues, lack of chemistry, lack of experience) so far, and that’s a crucial way of defining teams. Zhejiang might play no better than Tianjin or Jiangsu, but they’re such a young team that they can only improve. And if you plan on improving by taking daily lessons in how to be a real professional you want someone like Charles Gaines on your team, don’t you?

CBA Power Rankings, week 2 (part 1)

It’s been another crazy week of questions and answers in Chinese BBall, and because there are now 20 teams but still only 8 make the postseason there’s a growing need for efficiency and quality, in a moment where it’s probably clearer than ever how instrumental local players are. One great example for that? I’m just about to show you.

Se son rose… – week 2: Chi L’Ha Visto, Shotsuey’s Zhou Qi scouting report, and (more) mixed thoughts about (even more) mixed stuff.

Yessir. We’re gonna have some scouting notes on some CBA youngsters as well. Of course, this is not at the expense of the weekly thoughts I’ll keep sharing with you.

CBA: Shot Suey’s first week power rankings (sooooo early, but…).

It was pretty much bound to happen: first week in the books, some intriguing stuff going on in the league already and some mind-boggling surprises in the early standings (like, you know, not seeing Guangdong already 12-0 despite having played only 4 games). No one in their right mind would say that these standings are meant to remain even close to what they look like now, but with 4 games already behind us it’s time to tidy up our first impressions.

Se son rose… – Weekly roundup of thoughts, ideas and peculiarities that caught my attention watching the CBA.

First of all, it’s good to be back. This blog has been kept silent for a little while, as I was observing an inevitable moment of grieving: Byron Mullens will not, unfortunately, be playing in the CBA anytime soon after Shanxi decided to cut him.