China's head basketball coach Jonas Kazlauskas may have hammered the country's domestic league for its lack of defense, but the sport's authorities believe the criticism is unfair.

The league, the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), has for the last 12 years been cultivating talent in a bid to produce more players of the calibre of Yao Ming, starting centre for the Houston Rockets in the NBA.

"Every time I look at the league, I feel it is the foundation of the sport in the country," said Li Yuanwei, director of the Basketball Administrative Centre.

"It brings kids to basketball courts and turns them into stars. We witness their growth, Yao, Yi Jianlian and those like Zhu Fangyu and Tang Zhengdong. We cheer for them at home and in international competitions. I would say the league is like the engine of our hoop system. Everything starts from it."

China's hoopsters underlined their regional dominance with a 6th gold at the Doha Asian Games in December, and the team was made up entirely of CBA stars with the exception of Sun Yue, who plays for Beijing Aoshen in the American Basketball Association.

Although it produced the "Walking Great Wall" of Yao, Wang Zhizhi and Bateer, the league has received strong criticism for its poor quality defense, boring schedule and shortage of home stars.

National team head coach Kazlauskas has publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the league and blamed the clubs for his players' bad habits.

"Whenever the players are training for the national team, I try to change their approach to defense. But in the clubs, they have to play a different style of basketball. Sometimes in the clubs, the coaches tell them to relax on defence in order to save energy. But in modern basketball, it is important for you to give your all when playing defence.

"I know people have high expectations of the team, me too, but we only have what we have from the domestic league. It's very hard to pick up the talented players the team needs."

Adding salt to the wounds, the league cut over 100 matches this season to give more time to national team players for international tournaments.

The league was spilt into two stages to allow a break for the Asian Games. The second stage, which started late December, has seen a sharp fall in ticket sales.

Fans complain that the league is uncompetitive and inconsistent, and sponsors are unhappy about the lack of coverage.

The national team's success at the Asian Games was perfectly timed to put a stop to the criticism.

Equipped with quick transition and tough defence, the young players from the CBA won every match. They thrashed arch-rivals South Korea 68-52 in the quarterfinals, a reverse of four years ago in Busan when they lost to the Koreans in the final with Yao in the line-up.

"This time we are a different team, our players are getting stronger all the time through the competition in the national league. Without Yao, we still have the best young players in Asia," said Hu Jiashi, vice director of the CBA.

The pick of the talent is 19-year-old Yi Jianlian, hailed by some as the "next Yao Ming".

The 2.13-metre forward from Guangdong is highly rated by US scouts, and has announced his entry into November's 2007 NBA Draft.

Leading draft website NBADraft.net predicts the teenager will be picked in 11th position next year in a strong group, while other experts rank him as high as fourth.

He averaged 16.7 points in Doha, behind only former NBA player Wang Zhizhi, and led the team in rebounding (10.3). This was a big improvement on the Asian Championships last year when he struggled to 6.9 points and 5.7 rebounds.

Despite China's lackluster showing at last summer's world championships in which the team finished 11th, Yi won praise from US coach Mike Krzyzewski, a man famed for recognizing and bringing through young basketball talent at prestigious Duke University.

"The kid should be in the NBA. He'd be a lottery pick. That kid is really good," Krzyzewski said. "He'd probably be starting for some teams in the league. The kid's just got it."

His CBA statistics show his year-on-year progress in the league. Yi averaged 5 points and 3.3 rebounds in his rookie 2002-2003 season, but now he tops his team with 20.5 points and 9.6 rebounds.

He led his native province's Guangdong Tigers to three consecutive CBA titles last season, recording 20 double-doubles in regular season and topping the 30-point mark eight times, including a 43-point performance in the regular season finale.

Growing alongside Yi include players like Zhu Fangyu, who started from 2.1 points per game five years ago to 20.8 last season, and Tang Zhengdong, who has gone from 12 points per game in 2000 to 23.

"The CBA is the foundation of my improvement," said Yi. "I can see my progress every time I step onto the court, from a rookie to the team's mainstay. I think the CBA is where it started."

Following the success of the NBA in China, the CBA launched a ten-year development plan in 2004 in a bid to better cultivate young talent.

The NBA network started to broadcast the CBA finals in 2005 and tickets were reportedly sold out during last season's finals between Bayi Rockets and Guangdong Hongyuan. Ticket prices, normally 200 yuan ($25), rose to 3,000 yuan ($380) on the black market.

According to stats released by a league official, a total of 315 million people watched CBA games on television last season. The average audience was 79.15 percent that figure, approximately 250 million people.

In addition, last month the governing body enacted its first regulations to deal with age fraud concerning young players.

In a sign of the growing commercialism of the league, military basketball team Bayi Rockets, the only state-owned team in the league, last month signed a 10-year contract with a local company and set up the Bayi Fubang Rockets club.

"We will work hard to make it better than ever," said Li. "The CBA is a fundamental factor in our preparations for the Beijing Olympics. I believe it is able to give us what we want."

(China Daily January 11, 2007)