Jeremy Lin, pro basketball’s overnight sensation, never could have emerged from China, said Brook Larmer in The Washington Post. Jim Yardley’s “rollicking” new hoops book never mentions the California-born, Harvard-educated Asian-American starting point guard for the New York Knicks. But as Yardley chronicles the ups and downs of the Shanxi Brave Dragons, a misfit team trying to climb out of the cellar of China’s government-controlled pro league, the “inventive, take-charge” style of American players like Lin raises a key question: Since China is home to several hundred million basketball fanatics, how could it be that the country has never produced a world-class point guard? That winds up being more than a sports conundrum.
Cultures do clash in this “very funny” book, said Jay Jennings in the San Francisco Chronicle. Yardley frames the story as a fish-out-of-water tale starring Bob Weiss, a former NBA head coach who’s been hired by the Brave Dragons’ owner, Boss Wang, to inject American-style swagger into a listless team. From the start, much is lost in translation. When one player leaves practice, Weiss gets only this explanation, supplied by a translator: “His ass is blue.” Troubled NBA veteran Bonzi Wells is brought in to boost scoring, then goes AWOL. Wang, a steel magnate, fires and rehires Weiss regularly, once within the same day. All the while, the Chinese players battle an organizational mind-set that discourages the type of improvisational play that they see in the NBA.
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