China advanced to the knockout round despite their coach's dubious decisions

The coach of China's national basketball team has the habit of berating his players and blaming them for defeat. Fortunately, the team went into the second round of the world championship thanks to Wang Shipeng's three-pointer at the last second in the game against Slovenia. If the team had gone out after the first round, the coach should have borne the sole responsibility.

China would have practically been assured of qualifying for the second round if they had beaten Puerto Rico. In that game, for reasons known only to himself, coach Jonas Kazlauskas benched Wang Zhizhi a short while after the player had scored two consecutive three-pointers. In the middle of the last quarter, when China were on the upswing and extended their lead to more than 10 points, Yao Ming was substituted, allowing Puerto Rico to come back and win the game in overtime.

In the final group game against Slovenia, Sun Yue, who made next-to-no contribution in the two games before, played for about 15 minutes in the second half while shooters like Du Feng, Wang Shipeng and Zhu Fangyu remained on the bench.

China would most probably have won more decisively if any of them had reappeared earlier.

Yao Ming is no doubt the hero among the heroes. Head and shoulders above his teammates in terms of his world fame as an NBA player, he integrates seamlessly into the team and has no sign of any airs and graces.

In fact, he has put in more effort than the others. For example, he was the only one who played the full 40 minutes against Slovenia. He keeps a cool head despite calculated provocation from his opponents.