As Towering Star Retires, China Is Unprepared to Replace Him

Nine seasons after Yao Ming walked onto a basketball court in Texas and inspired a generation of young Chinese to learn to dribble — or at least to watch until the final buzzer — his looming exit from professional basketball is being accompanied by nostalgia for the man who became a national hero. It is also triggering frustration over why no one in China, which has tens of millions of basketball players, appears capable of replacing him as an N.B.A. star.

Yao Ming led the Chinese team into the 2008 Olympics in Beijing but could not lead them to victory.

For nearly a decade, China has been enthralled by the cult of Yao spun by Communist Party propagandists and corporate sponsors: the winner, the gentle giant, the favorite son. His image was ubiquitous here, and the public basked in his glow even as other Chinese players in the N.B.A. sputtered.

Yet his retirement is forcing many Chinese to acknowledge that their country has relied on Yao alone for victory and national pride, ignoring shortcomings in the state sports system that leave China facing a future bereft of N.B.A. and Olympic basketball glory.

“We can either choose to blame the gods and whine about our misfortune or we can step up to the plate and train the next generation of basketball talent,” Zhang Weiping, a basketball commentator and former national team member, wrote in an editorial last week.

Yi Jianlian, who Time magazine once predicted would be the next Yao, is now an unrestricted free agent after being dropped by the Washington Wizards. Sun Yue, the only Chinese national to play point guard in the N.B.A., was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers but played 10 games, averaging a mere 0.6 points, before his demotion to the Development League. He has returned to the Chinese Basketball Association.

China, Zhang wrote in Basketball Pioneers magazine, must develop smaller, faster and more skilled players like the ones who thrive in the West.

“China has no shortage of this kind of talent,” he said. “We simply have coaching and systemic problems that prevent us from discovering and developing these players.”

“What’s amazing is that in a country of 1.3 billion I can’t find a point guard,” he said.

A case in point is Shanghai, population 22 million, which picks a maximum of 30 people for its club team. “If you’re not selected, there is no coaching, no practices and no training,” Donewald said. “China is filtering through guys and cutting them off so early there’s no way for them to get better.”