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The 2012-13 CBA season is officially over, which means most teams will be running three-man weaves for the next eight months as they wait for next season to start. For the teams that didn’t make the playoffs, that process has likely already begun. To ensure your squad isn’t forgotten, Leon Zhang is writing an end-of-season ode to every team in the league. In his ongoing series of CBA Farewell Letters, Leon Zhang says goodbye today to the Jilin Northeast Tigers, who finished in 14th place.

Jilin, we know many have told you that anyone can be special special — including you — but here’s the hard truth: this season you weren’t.

You are that team who recently has always had a losing record, characterized by an overmatched and raggedy group of youngsters, the overburdened imports, and mismanagement. We should add that there’s nothing wrong with being so ordinary. If you’re a player, honestly, you did the best you could.

In fact, count us in with anyone that finds it hard to criticize Jilin. By all accounts, though this wasn’t a talented team by any stretch of the imagination, it was a group that was tough and fought in every game. The plucky little underdog even pulled out some opportunistic wins, case in point a thrilling Round 19 victory against Beijing, and it’s easy to admire Dewarick Spencer (28.6 points on 53.7% shooting) and Samuel Hoskin (a walking double double with 20.9 points and 10.3 rebounds) for their production and general lack of sulking in the face of such monotonous mediocrity. It’s credit to the players on the team that we really haven’t heard much from Jilin all season, no drama, just a workmanlike effort each and every time out on the court, for a win every three games.

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A week has passed since the Guangdong Southern Tigers captured their eighth Chinese Basketball Association title with a 4-0 series win over the upstart Shandong Gold Lions to place themselves alongside the Bayi Rockets with the most titles in the CBA’s short history.

After a stunning loss to the Beijing Ducks in the 2011/12 CBA Finals, the Tigers made sure that their next trip would assure them of victory. And one of the reasons behind this season’s success was because of Yi Jianlian.

Following another unsuccessful stint in the National Basketball Association with the Dallas Mavericks, the former sixth overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft made a return to the CBA and picked up where left off the last time he was in the league. After averaging 24.6 points and 10.5 rebounds over the season, it can be said that the seven-footer provided a great impact to his team’s pursuit in regaining the CBA crown.

With the season now over and respective provincial and regional teams preparing for the upcoming National Games in Liaoning province as well as the country’s various national teams gearing up for their summer schedules, one question that will consume many basketball enthusiasts’ minds in the coming months is whether Yi’s performance this season could secure him a contract with an NBA team next season.

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Stephon Marbury’s Beijing Ducks may have been sent home packing earlier than expected, but Marbury will be sticking around in Beijing to start another China career: coaching.

In an interview on BTV, the 36 year-old guard announced that he will serve as an assistant coach for Beijing as they prepare to participate in the 2013 China National Games. He will work under his CBA head coach Min Lulei, who serves the same position for the Beijing Ducks.

The National Games, which happen once every four years, are completely separate from the Chinese Basketball Association season. As a sort of intra-China Olympics, the National Games pit the country’s different provinces against each other in various athletic events, including basketball.

The two-week competition will start in late August in host-province Liaoning. However, there will be a qualifying tournament in late April for basketball. Guangdong won the basketball tournament in 2009, which was held in various cities in Shandong.

Marbury’s addition to the coaching staff comes on the heels of other big news this week. The Beijing team got a boost when it was announced that Sun Yue, who plays for Beijing Aoshen — a team that is not part of the Chinese Basketball Association — will be representing Beijing at the Games, in addition to several other Aoshen players. A longtime key contributor for the National Team, Sun will be one of the best players in the tournament.

The National Games, though technically centered around athletic competition  are the epitome of not only basketball, but sports with Chinese characteristics. With the eyes of provincial governments focused directly on their teams, the Games’ main purpose serves government officials, who can be gain status and be promoted to bigger and better positions if their teams achieve good results. Though the Olympics trump all in terms of importance, the National Games is a major event and one that places great pressure on athletes to perform for the glory of their province.

In general, athletes represent the provinces in where they were registered as a professional athlete. For example, although Wang Shipeng hails from Liaoning, he was registered in Guangdong as part of the Southern Tigers and will thus represent them this summer. However, as provincial officials are always looking towards the next National Games, under the table agreements can be made between different provinces are not uncommon. Mengke Bateer, who is from Inner Mongolia and got his start in the CBA with Beijing, will be playing for neither team this summer; instead, he’ll be suiting up for Liaoning. Though not reported, it is speculated that his player registration forms were transferred over to Liaoning as part of the deal that sent Zhang Qingpeng over to Xinjiang three years ago. These deals are not illegal, but they part culture that make Chinese sports unlike anything in the United States or other Western countries.

The Beijing team will be comprised of a combination of Beijing Aoshen and Beijing Ducks players. Final rosters have not yet been announced and likely will not be made public until sometime in April.

I miss Linus, too.

As the great Marv Albert made the call, Yes! After nearly four years in Dalian, suddenly there it was: a club for my boy. Lucked out, I did – it turned out that it operates out of my own university, and I happened to poke my head into the gym one Saturday morning in the middle of a run. Kids?! Playing BASKETBALL?! I was so excited, as like most foreigners here I am blind (can’t read) and stupid (can’t talk to most people). However, between my limited Chinese and the coach’s non-English, I managed to walk away with a sheet of paper I couldn’t understand, a vague conception of how the club operated, and a phone number. A few friendly translations, a little coaxing, a couple of months and a friend’s phone call later, I spent some weekend hours watching Son the Fourth on imitation hardwood. An old coach’s pedestrian prayer has been answered. I love it too much! as my Chinese students say. They mean so much, but in my case, my fever for the game does run absurdly hot, sometimes, even after all these years.

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The regular season is over and for the eight teams who finished with a good enough record to participate, the month of March will one of hope and optimism… unless you’re playing Guangdong or Beijing in the first round (as Guangsha and Zhejiang both found out). Then, maybe it’ll just be a month of collecting first-round playoff bonuses. But for those nine teams who are already relaxing at home, you’re not forgotten. Leon Zhang says goodbye to the second-worst team in the league, the Tianjin Golden Lions, in his ongoing series of CBA Farewell Letters.

It was the best half season anyone could’ve expected, and then abruptly, it was the worst. The first part of the season saw Tianjin, high upon the standings, looking to preserve a low playoff seed as a pleasant surprise — a Cinderella story in the making, a testament to what good coaching and solid import selection can do. The second was, in short, a massive flop towards the finish line.

And at the end of the season, the inevitable question is raised: Just what were you, Tianjin? Borderline contender or a historic failure?

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Jumping around a mininature car shoe whose hood is 5 inches off the ground equals “bad.”

OK, we’ll admit: Our recap of All-Star Weekend sucked this year. In part, that’s because our opinion from the 2011 Beijing edition has already been aired out loud and clear. But mostly it’s because our guy at Shark Fin Hoops, Andrew Crawford, made the journey down to sunny and warm Guangzhou last weekend to take in the festivities first-hand and to write us a report. Here’s the good, the bad and the unexpected from his Southern journey.

And if that’s not enough All-Star coverage for you, James Howden has a great write-up over on his blog about the game as well.

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The 2013 Chinese Basketball Association All-Star Weekend pretty much went down like previous ones, failing for the most part to capture the overall atmosphere of the the NBA one it tries too hard to imitate. But that’s not to say there weren’t moments: As is becoming a yearly tradition, Guo Ailun went onto the court to give everyone a performance on Saturday night, Xirelijiang knocked down 10 threes in a row in the final round of the three-point competition to take home the trophy and and Yi Jianlian nabbed All-Star MVP honors with 34 points and eight rebounds as the South All-Stars defeated the North 120-117.

Here’s the rest of what went down last weekend in Guangzhou:

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I still remember trying to convince my mother-in-law to watch the superb documentary Hoop Dreams, a window into poverty, race, sport and education in America. (If you haven’t seen it, you should. The book is also highly recommended.) This was a few years ago, and she did finally watch it. The review was fairly brief: “My dear, that most certainly was about basketball! But there were some interesting parts.”

Brave Dragons by the American journalist Jim Yardley, really is about the Shanxi Brave Dragons (based in Taiyuan), their unpredictable owner (Boss) Wang Xingjiang, their 2008-09 season in the Chinese Basketball Association, and about Bob Weiss, the first former NBA bench boss to work in China, and the very mixed bag of players he had to work with. (I remember the chronically slump-shouldered Weiss, with a pained expression on his face, imploring referees or his Seattle Supersonics players to listen. Were I older, I’d remember him as a resilient, nothing-keeps-me-out-of-the-game player for the Chicago Bulls. Both of these qualities made him the perfect person to try to coach in Taiyuan under Boss Wang.) It spotlights the babes-in-the-Chinese-woods that wide-eyed young Americans, imported for their superior skill, are in adjusting to hoops with Chinese characteristics. Anybody who enjoys NiuBBall is going to love Brave Dragons, and Jon has been recommending it for months.

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