New CBA chief Yao Ming to usher in new era
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 23, 2017
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Yao Ming elected as president of the Chinese Basketball Association at the 9th national congress of the association. [photo:Xinhua] |
Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming was elected president of the Chinese Basketball Association on Thursday and has promised to lead association and league reform.
Yao, 37, was unanimously voted as president of the Chinese Basketball Association at the 9th national congress of the association. He will be the association's first-ever president without government background.
The national congress also elected the leading body of the association, which consists of 11 individuals, seven of whom are not from the government, indicating the change of wind. The previous leading group consisted of 22 people, all from state departments.
Yao will have absolute powers of decision, leadership and personnel appointment, according to the new charter of the association.
The former NBA player said at the congress that he would like to make systematic reform and innovation, including changing the player recruit system into an invitation system. "I also want to innovate the player selection system, and bring highly skilled, strong-willed athletes to foreign courts."
Yao has bigger ambitions to raise China's basketball players' training and competitiveness and to enhance the influence of the league in the international community by arranging more friendship games and exchanges between China and other countries, including the United States and Australia as well European and Asian countries.
He noted his will to make the association an engine for bringing together sports and education as well sports and society while working with educational departments to make the sport more universal. He also expressed his hopes to attract more people to basketball in order to improve the public's health level.
The new basketball president also offered to establish a basketball hall of fame and a musuem "of our own" to promote Chinese basketball culture.
Yao's presidency was suggested as early as last year in order to reform the CBA by the new director of the General Administration of Sport Gou Zhongwen.
Yao was the first pick in the 2002 NBA draft, playing for Houston Rockets for nine years and entering the all-star game eight times. He was later inducted as a member of Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016. He also led the Chinese national team to the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
In 2009, Yao bought the Shanghai Sharks, the CBA club where he played as a teenager. And last year, Yao was elected as vice president of the newly-established CBA League (Beijing) Sports Co., which is in charge of the league's management and business development.
Since his retirement in 2011, Yao has been pursuing reform of professional basketball in China.
"Yao was a player and also a boss of a club. He truly understands what is important for players and investors. He knows the sport in all its dimensions," said Shi Linjie, the general manager of the basketball club Jiangsu Dragons.
"This is a great news," said Du Feng, the chief basketball coach for the Guangdong Tigers and former teammate of Yao in the national team. "Congratulations Yao Ming. China's basketball association made a critical decision at a critical time."
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