God proved too strong for Winling in their Adidas Asian Basketball Confederation Champions' Cup opener yesterday. The SAR side suffered a 100-90 defeat to defending champions Al Ittihad, led by ex-NBA player God Shammgod, to leave themselves in a difficult situation in their bid to emulate their top-four finish of last year.
'He is the main reason we lost to Al Ittihad today,' said Winling coach Cheung Tai-wing after Shammgod, who was drafted by the Washington Wizards in the 1997-98 season, sank 35 points to help the Saudi Arabian team beat the Hong Kong league champions. Winling had hoped for revenge over Al Ittihad, who prevailed over them in the opening game last year, but once again had to settle for second best.
Cheung revealed they had considered hiring American Shammgod, who played for Zhejiang in the Chinese Basketball Association league last season. 'We thought about hiring him because he's technically very good and is able to inspire the team as a leader,' said Cheung. 'As you saw today he can score and is very offensive. But we don't regret deciding against signing him. We wanted taller imports and he's shorter than we wanted.'
Shammgod, who is 1.91 metres tall, entertained a small crowd at the MABA stadium in the fourth quarter by performing the first dunk of the game to widen his team's lead to 75-70.
Winling's main problem, however, was the lack of co-ordination between their two imports - Canadian Scott Paterson (2.08m) and American Eric Dailey (1.98m) - and their local players, a problem which arose because the duo only joined the squad a few days before they left for Malaysia.
'It's very hard for even a star player to lead a team if he has only trained with them for a few days. Eric and Scott had only three practice sessions with us, so we can't ask for much in this game. And Scott had his form affected by a few refereeing decisions today,' Cheung said.