The Bayi Rockets will resume their quest to be champions of China's top basketball league CBA tonight, taking on the Liaoning Hunters in the Ningbo Youngor Center. This marks the domestic season's second phase after being halted by the Asian Games tournament for over a month.

However, the spotlight in this game is neither on ex-NBA star Wang Zhizhi of the Rockets nor on World Championships point guard Zhang Qingpeng of the Hunters, but on Fubang Holdings Ltd., a Ningbo local enterprise which will earmark its nameplate on Bayi, the army's team in the CBA, before the match.

According to Song Hanping, board chairman of Fubang, the contract between Bayi and its new sponsor will last for over a decade with the army still retaining complete personnel arrangement control.

Bayi was established in the early 1950s as an army team, winning seven championships since its CBA debut season in 1995. Prior to the league's reform that year, the basketball center performed its official functions as a governmental organ administrating the teams, most of which were affiliated to local sports bureaus. With the league's further development, privately owned teams rapidly became the norm. Foreign importing of players and new transferring rules were established and privately owned teams gradually outplayed teams under the old system. The Rockets have missed the league title for three years in a row since the 03-04 season.

Recalling the moment in the 2002 CBA finals when Yao Ming cut the net in the Youngor Center for the Shanghai Sharks after beating the Bayi Rockets to become the second league champions, Song Hanping, then board chairman of Pairdeer Trading Co, said, "I was deeply impressed by the game and began to contact the Bayi team."

"I asked the players to stay one more day in Ningbo before they went back to Beijing and treated them to dinner," Song added, smiling.

He said that the annual cost for operating the club stands at US$2.56 million and that they wish to make Ningbo a permanent home to the Rockets.

The Ningbo sports bureau shares this wish. Before Fubang took over, the local authority had to leave the business to Ningbo's basketball association, who were reluctant to collect the operation fund via a planned-and-market mixed management.

After Song's company expressed its will to sponsor the team, the General Political Department of PLA did not discuss it until October this year when Li Jinai, director of the General Political Department, gave his approval.

Commenting on the development, Li Yuanwei, director of China's basketball administration center said the establishment of the Bayi Fubang Club removed obstacles in the way of the CBA's reform. "Finally, the last worry has been removed," he said.

But Li also admitted that more work remains in the league's professionalization process as Bayi's personnel affairs and management right are still separately owned.

"Army men have the special identity therefore the personnel administration right must be taken by the Bayi army's sports work team," said former Bayi player and CBA MVP winner Liu Yudong, explaining why Fubang has no right to interfere with contracts between the club and its players.

As for whether Bayi could import foreign players, Song Hanping said the directorate may empower the coach team to do it if necessary but not as yet.

Are the army's basketballers capable of taking off their uniforms and becoming a real professional lineup? "It's up to the Bayi sports work team," Li Yuanwei noted.

Bayi Rockets' star center Wang Zhizhi

(China.org.cn by Li Xiao, December 22, 2006)