Winning come with perks. After leading the Beijing Ducks to their first Chinese Basketball Association championship, Stephon Marbury was honored with a statue. Then he got a book deal. After championship No. 2, he was made an honorary citizen of Beijing. After championship no. 3, in which he was selected MVP, he’s now on a Chinese postage stamp.

On Saturday, the stamps were revealed in a ceremony at the National Museum of China. Marbury was quoted in Xinhua:

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that people will be able to buy a stamp of me to mail packages anywhere in the world,” said Marbury, who plans to give a speech at the National Museum of China in Beijing.

“I am truly humbled. Never did I imagine in all of my 38 years of living that I – a kid who grew up 7,000 miles away from Beijing and a kid who came from the projects of Coney Island – would have a stamp of myself. I can never have dreamed it.”

Xinhua also reports that the Coney Island native has applied for a Chinese green card.

More pictures of the stamps are here.

At this point, I’d be shocked if the Stephon Marbury movie isn’t released in Chinese theaters within five years.

Don’t look now, but a basketball dynasty is blossoming in Beijing, and the only man who was brash enough to dream it — to, indeed, articulate that dream — was the pride of Coney Island, Stephon Marbury.

“I said we wanted to build a dynasty here in Beijing,” Marbury told reporters in the locker room following the Beijing Ducks’ series-clinching Game 6 win over Liaoning, 106-98, on the opponent’s court. “A lot of people said that I was crazy for saying that, but I believed in my teammates, I believed in Coach Min, I believed in the Beijing organization. We’ve done everything in our power to make this work. To be able to be in this light right now, I’m just thankful and I’m just humble.”

(Before that: “The real men will rise. The real men will rise. I just want to thank my God Jesus Christ for giving me the light to do all the things that I’ve been able to do. It’s been beautiful journey in Beijing, baby. They said I was old, they said I can’t play no more, the critics said I can’t do it no more — it’s all good. It’s all good, baby. Can I get my championship shirt, please?”)

Marbury — and I can’t emphasize this enough — was unstoppable all series, as he has been all postseason, as he has been all season, and every season in which he’s played in China. There were no tears this time, just a lot of joy and the relief of ending a season on top. The Ducks have now won three of the last four titles, including the last two.

Marbury again: “I want to say congratulations to Liaoning, those guys played a great season throughout the whole year, they’re a really good team, they’re going to be tough in the future, but the real men rose today, and that’s just all that happened today.”

The 38-year-old (!) guard was selected finals MVP, the first time he’s won the honor. (In the Ducks’ first title win in 2012, a rule prevented foreigners from winning MVP, though everyone knew Marbury deserved it. Last year, his teammate Randolph Morris earned it.) Here he is with his handprint plaque:

Check out the following highlight reel, in which Marbury goes Jordan on everyone. It truly has been a delight to watch:

(Images via Sina, Sohu)

Yeah, I don’t think that’s how it’s done.

Previously, from 2013: The CBA All-Star Weekend Wasn’t Terrible, But This Dunk Contest Was (Terribly Funny)

(Via Deadspin)

The Xinjiang Flying Tigers may have lost the CBA championship to the Beijing Ducks, but Xinjiangers around the world came away from the games with a powerful meme. It came at the end of Game 5, after the Tigers rallied and pulled off an improbable win in front of a hostile Beijing crowd of 18,000. Shiralijan, the star Uyghur point guard for the Tigers who had been tasked with defending Stephan Marbury — the star of the Ducks (and best player in the league, according to Anthony Tao!) –threw the ball in the air and raised a twirling, emphatic fist:

He punched the air with his right hand while his left hand grabbed his bicep. Relating the gesture to the semiotics on the Uyghur countryside where he’s from, most Uyghur onlookers immediately interpreted the gesture as a “fuck you” to the crowd that had been chanting “East Turkistan stupid cunt,” or “DongTu shabi,”¹ for the past three days. According to some Uyghur observers, Shiralijan was reacting as any self-respecting minority might to targeted ethnic slurs.

As a Uyghur friend put it in reaction to the situation:

I think he probably meant ‘f you’ when he did that gesture. Many Uyghurs understood it as that, whatever his original intention was, because in Uyghur culture it only has that one meaning. Period. I didn’t even know about the meaning of the middle finger until I came to college. That was the main gesture that Uyghur kids used with each other when I was a kid. I think that is why my friends and many other Uyghurs found it brave that Shirlijan did it in front of thousands of Han. I am sure other gestures of victory would not attract such attention. His status as a Uyghur also brought undue attention to it.

After the fact, the Beijing Ducks were fined 40,000 yuan for being “uncivilized.” Shiralijan said he didn’t realize that his fist was a vulgar gesture. He said he was merely imitating the gesture of a character in the animated film One Piece. He was given a warning regarding his “unsportsmanlike conduct.”

Regardless of his intent, his gesture went viral on Xinjiang social media. Kids mimicked the gesture; Uyghur “uncles” from the countryside offered their fists to the camera; young men who self-describe as balangzi (“wolfish,” or cocksure young men) punched the sky; even Han fans of Shiralijan² posed for group portraits.

Sports apparel manufacturer Li Ning has put out an ad featuring Shiralijan asking sports fans not to discriminate against the culturally different. They said that what Shiralijan expressed represented the collective defiance of Xinjiang spirit (Shinjang rohi in Uyghur).

In comment sections, Beijing fans talked about how uneducated Shiralijan must be and that he should be taught a lesson. Xinjiang fans talked about how proud they were that Shiralijan stood up like a bad ass. Sports promoted conversation, and might have — just might have — fostered some understanding…

In the days that followed, many of their comments were deleted.

¹ Ch: 东突傻屄. By raising the specter of “East Turkistan” the crowd was associating Shiralijan with “the three evil forces” that so often pervades discussions of Xinjiang, not to mention the fact that they are saying he is a stupid cunt.

² A commentator on WeChat refers to them as neidiren, or people from “inner” China, but I’m not convinced.

Beige Wind runs the website The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, which attempts to recognize and create dialogue around the ways minority people create a durable existence, and, in turn, how these voices from the margins implicate all of us in simultaneously distinctive and connected ways.

|Dispatches from Xinjiang Archives|

The Beijing Ducks won the CBA championship last night in Xinjiang, beating the Flying Tigers 98-88 in Game 6. Here are some photos and a video of the celebration. The top image, by the way, is now Stephon Marbury’s profile pic on Sina Weibo:

After the game, Marbury wrote on Sina Weibo about beginning a basketball dynasty in Beijing:

We’ve written about this before, of course, but let’s reiterate how far Starbury has come from New York. The man who never before won a basketball championship at any level is now a two-time champ, and all it took was traveling to the other side of the world.

This season was especially tough, as Marbury — inarguably the most valuable player the Ducks have ever had, and probably the most valuable to any team in the CBA — flew back to the US for knee surgery in November. Already universally beloved by teammates, coaches, and fans — he’s on the short list of candidates to coach the Chinese national team whenever he chooses to retire (this is not a joke) — we wonder what other plaudits can be thrown his way. Maybe a second statue outside Wukesong is in the works. (If it doesn’t go to his running mate Randolph Morris, whose deadly midrange jumpers earned him finals MVP honors.)

What will the next act bring?

UPDATE, 4/4, 4:08 pm: Marbury’s been given a key to Beijing and made an honorary citizen.

Top picture via here, bottom pictures here (both CFP/Sina)

Beijing is again king of Chinese basketball. The Ducks beat the Xinjiang Flying Tigers 98-88 tonight in Urumqi, clinching the CBA championship 4 games to 2. Stephon Marbury and Randolph Morris, who played so shockingly poorly in Game 5 in Beijing that I heard more than one person say they threw the game (14 points each, combined 7 for 38 from the field), redeemed themselves by scoring 28 and 30 points, respectively. Morris was chosen series MVP (a recent rule change now lets foreigners win this award, traditionally reserved for Chinese players only).

Inside the locker room after the game, Marbury sat and sobbed into a towel while members of an overzealous media crowded around him. “Beijing is champs!” players shouted.

There were no demonstrable gestures on the court, unlike at the conclusion of Game 5, when Xinjiang’s Muhtar Xirelijiang did this.

The Ducks also won in 2011-12, their first basketball championship. (Marbury was clearly the MVP that year, though the award went to Lee Hsueh-lin.) They lost in the semis last year to the Shandong Lions.

Meanwhile, this marks the fourth time in six years that the Xinjiang Flying Tigers have lost in the CBA finals. The team finished second in the regular season this year, behind the Guangdong Southern Tigers (who Beijing beat in the semis). Xinjiang’s quest for its first CBA title will have to wait one more year.

We’ll have more coverage — pictures and videos — tomorrow. UPDATE: 3/31, 4:15 pm: here.

(Top image via Sina)

The Xinjiang Guang Hui Flying Tigers are flying high. Riding the phenomenal success of their imported stars, Americans Lester Hudson and James Singleton and a Taiwanese player named Yang Jinmin, the support of China national team players such as the Uyghur point guard Shiralijan (Xi-re-li-jiang) and the Han center Tang Zhengdong, they’re back in the Chinese Basketball Association finals for the fourth time in six years — but the first since 2011, when Quicy Douby took them within two wins of a championship.

There are many reasons for the quality of Xinjiang’s teams, but money and the depth that buys are the main drivers of success.

Where the money comes from 

The story of the Flying Tigers begins back in the 1990s with the beginning of large-scale oil and coal development during the glory days of “Uncle” Wang Lequan and Xinjiang oil-man-turned-blacklisted-thug Zhou Yongkong. During those years Xinjiang became a lucrative place for China’s burgeoning caste of venture capitalists to jump into the ocean of market development and real-estate speculation.

By 2004 a local Han man, former soldier and seafood restaurateur, Sun Guangxin, had amassed the sixth largest fortune in China with his construction company General Assemblage (Guang Hui)¹. Utilizing connections he had with well-positioned bureaucrats and Party officials such as “Uncle” Wang from his ancestral home in Shandong, Sun came to own more former state enterprises than any other individual in China. He currently controls 60 percent of Ürümchi’s real estate, vast amounts of construction material supply networks, and natural gas — and one of the two best basketball teams in China².

Sun, along with a cohort of other entrepreneurs (the vast majority of which were Han), have become fabled success stories who motivate and justify economic governance techniques by utilizing the tautological language of progress that dominates much of Chinese political ideology: development is quality, quality is development. The message they present is simple: even people in “backward” Xinjiang can become rich first. Even more importantly, as Guang Hui’s leaping-tiger logo and slogan “Always Going Forward” suggests, Xinjiang can also be thought of as positioned on the frontier of the Chinese future.

The Guang Hui Model

In true Ayn Rand fashion, one of the best-selling books on Xinjiang economic development, published in 2009, has the catchy title Trust Broadly in General Assemblage (Guangxin Guanghui). The Xinjiang economist and Guang Hui consultant Tang Lijiu, who wrote the book, likened the Guang Hui model to models of success elsewhere. To his thinking what Xinjiang needed at that time³ was to “Learn Lessons from California.”

The main similarities Tang saw between Xinjiang and California was Xinjiang’s potential to become a new breadbasket of China completely dependent on the miracle of irrigation technologies which harness the rapidly draining water table. But he also saw similar potentials when it came to natural resources, military capabilities, and entertainment industries — of which basketball is a key component. By building a diverse economy around both production and consumption, Tang saw a way of both stabilizing the borderland tensions that have troubled the area and building Las Vegas/Las Angeles-style urbanism in the desert.

Backed by Sun’s billions the Flying Tigers can throw a lot of money at players; this alone might be what puts them in competition with franchises in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong. Singleton and Hudson are both very well compensated by CBA standards. But they also have a great deal of support from national-team-level players with the scrappy toughness of Shiralijan and the towering presence of Tang Zhengdong (and Monghbatar).

As Josh Summers wrote last week, Flying Tiger games can be rowdy. At Red Mountain arena in downtown Ürümchi, under the shadow of Sun’s three glass-and-steel towers called “Times Square,” people yell. They own their position out on China’s western fringe. Maybe they are “becoming Californians,” or maybe they are just coming into their own. Regardless, the Flying Tigers of 2014 are a point of pride in what has otherwise been a miserable start for the Year of the Horse in Xinjiang.

Although Shiralijan is a household name for most Uyghurs, as Josh mentioned, basketball in general is still not that popular in Xinjiang. In some ways the success of the team is symptomatic of the kind of uneven success Xinjiang development has produced. Money moves toward images of a beautiful, victorious future, while the underemployed watch from the sidelines. The Flying Tigers really are Xinjiang’s team.

Jiayou Tigers!

¹ This is my translation – could also be “broad collective” – as far as I know there is no official translation for Guang Hui.

² Based on figures compiled by James Millward (2006), Eurasian Crossroads. Columbia University Press.

³ He has since shifted his focus from a California model to a New Silk Road model that positions the cities of Xinjiang as entrepôts to Central Asia and Europe.

Beige Wind runs the website The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, which attempts to recognize and create dialogue around the ways minority people create a durable existence, and, in turn, how these voices from the margins implicate all of us in simultaneously distinctive and connected ways.

|Dispatches from Xinjiang Archives|

Believe it or not, a 37-year-old point guard from Coney Island, New York who played 13 years in the NBA is putting the city of Beijing on his back.

With one CBA championship on his resume — and a statue outside MasterCard Center — Stephon Marbury already is a Chinese basketball living legend. So what happens if he wins another, all while averaging 28 points per game this postseason on a bum knee?

We’re three Beijing Ducks victories away from finding out. On Wednesday night, the Ducks dominated on the road in Game 1 of the CBA finals, beating the Xinjiang Flying Tigers — who were 4.5-point favorites — 95-75.

This comes on the heels of the Ducks’ upset of the Guangdong Southern Tigers, dubbed the “Miami Heat of China.” Marbury, whose official nickname is “Political Commissar Ma,” took over that series, including scoring 43 points in a Game 3 win.

Beijing fans have taken notice. Today marked the official ticket launch for Games 3 (March 23) and 4 (March 25) in Beijing. It’s been reported that a total of 225,000 fans attempted to buy the 16,000 available tickets, crashing the online system.

The Ducks, along with their marketing affiliates iRENA World, are hosting a Game 2 viewing event on Friday at Gala (located between gates 21 and 22 of Workers Stadium at Gongti). Doors open at 6:30 pm for the 7:30 pm tipoff. It’s free, and probably your best place to root on the hometown team.

The professional basketball team in Beijing is called the Ducks, but I don’t see why. It should be the Beijing Stephon Marburies. There is no player more valuable to his team — not Yi Jianlian for Guangdong, not Doug McDermott for Creighton, not even LeBron James for Miami — than Marbury is to Beijing, and if you needed any proof, just fire up last night’s decisive Game 5 of the CBA semifinals, which saw the Ducks beat the Guangdong Southern Tigers 110-102 in Dongguan.

It’s not just the numbers: 31 points (on 9 for 15 shooting), 5 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals (and fouled 11 times). It’s that when Marbury’s on the court, the Ducks resemble a professional basketball team. Defenders get spread out and put on their heels. And it’s the way the veteran — now in his fifth year in China — carries himself on the court, never scowling at his teammates or losing his focus despite getting his arms chopped every other possession.

When Marbury sits — as he had to for the start of the second quarter last night — the Ducks fall apart. Plain and simple.

Last night could have been a disaster. Zhu Yanxi somehow racked up four fouls in less than 20 minutes. Li Gen was his usual tofu-with-limbs self. Ji Zhe continued to shrink into his own head. Randolph Morris seemed more interested in pouting and fighting — here he is literally punching Dong Hanlin in the second quarter, which could have warranted an ejection and cost Beijing the game. Point guard Lee Hsueh-lin kept passing like he was throwing a bowling ball. The Ducks had a 29-21 lead after the first quarter and then raced out to 40 points, but — against a stifling full-court press that no one seemed able to break — stalled there and seemed in danger of crumbling.

Marbury had to be subbed back in. (The CBA limits the combined court time for a team’s foreigners, so Morris had to sit — though he was playing so poorly, he should have anyway.) Immediately, the game changed. Guangdong called off its press — it wouldn’t play it again all game, since Marbury is arguably the best ball handler in the league — and Beijing regained control of the tempo. The Ducks led 48-44 at intermission — Marbury hit the final shot just before the buzzer, of course — the first halftime lead they’d had all series, and there was a palpable sense that Marbury was not going to let his team falter.

The 37-year-old, on a surgically repaired knee, continued to dominate over the course of the next 24 minutes. (He would log a game-high 40 minutes and 27 seconds. Did we mention surgically repaired knee?) As time bled away in the fourth quarter with the Ducks clinging to a six-, then four-point lead, Marbury continually took it to the bucket, enduring the blatant hacking of both Zhou Peng — who is easily the most detestable basketball player I’ve ever witnessed — and Yi Jianlian. Yi, it should be noted, is a wonderful competitor, but he absolutely had no idea how to keep Marbury in front of him on the perimeter.

Guangdong was unable to duplicate its perimeter shooting success from Game 4, and Beijing iced the game from the free throw line. Somehow, inexplicably, the road team won the final three games in this series. (Beijing won Game 3 in Dongguan behind Marbury’s 43 points.) For the first time in 12 years, the Guangdong Southern Tigers will be watching the CBA finals from home.

The best-of-seven finals will open next Wednesday at 7:35 pm in Xinjiang, home of the Flying Tigers, who finished second in the regular season standings (26-8) behind Guangdong.

Images via Sina:

One from Sohu:

Here’s the reception the Ducks received when they arrived home today. The top picture is the cutest.

Nick Bedard of Basketball Buddha is courtside on press row at MasterCard Center, aka Wukesong, for tonight’s Game 4 clash between the Beijing Ducks (23-11 regular season, No. 4 in standings) and Guangdong Southern Tigers (30-4, No. 1). Thanks to an epic performance from Stephen Marbury on Saturday in an overtime win, Beijing currently has a 2 games to 1 lead in this best three-out-of-five series. We now join our regularly scheduled Bedard in progress. (Newest updates appear at the bottom.)

4:45 pm: I’m told by Ducks ticketing staff that tickets are completely sold out. Scalpers, who are at every corner from Wukesong subway station to MasterCard Center, have a limited quantity and are selling tickets for triple the price of face value. If you’re going to go the game without a ticket, don’t think that the first scalper you see is the best deal, shop around a bit.

5 pm: I’ve been informed by various sources that Guangdong Southern Tigers head coach Jonas Kazlauskas is missing in action. As a matter of fact, he is NOT EVEN IN BEIJING!

5:30 pm: They’ve opened the gates for general admission. Every single person is going through airport-type security.

6 pm: Nothing really happening. Fans are slowly but surely getting past intense security and into their seats. Randolph Morris is first out on the court, working on his smooth jump shot:

I’m going to get an iced tea from the KFC that sells no chicken.

One more note: Beijing sets up “shabi police” in every section of he arena to prevent the word shabi, which literally means “stupid cunt” but probably can be translated better as “asshole,” from being said. Here are some shabi police getting ready:

7:30 pm: Security is trying to kick everyone out of the media section and knocking everyone’s laptop/camera over. These guys run a tight ship. (They want to show their boss that they are actually doing something other than standing around and watching the game, which is what they do anyway.)

On the floor (trying to look over the shoulder of all of these security guard), both teams are warming up.

Still no sign of Guangdong’s head coach, Jonas Kazlauskas. The official word is that he’s out with an “ankle injury” and did NOT travel with the team. Is it a cover-up? He is under-performing in this series. Life in the world of Jonas is not going so great right now.

An assistant coach wearing a purple suit that would make Ron Burgundy jealous will be leading the Guangdong squad tonight. He has so been keeping that suit in his closet for this very moment.

7:35 pm: AND WE ARE OFF!

Ed’s note: The game is scheduled to be on CCTV-5, but that channel is currently showing the final minutes of an AFC Champions League match between Shandong Luneng and Cerezo Osaka. Chinese media is stupid.

7:40 pm: It is packed in here from bottom to top. This place is electric.

What it might mean to have a first-time coach on the sideline in the biggest game of the season: the refs may lean more toward the experienced coach who knows how to work the officials, which in this case is Beijing’s Min Lulei.

Jonas Kazlauskas’s absence has a sense of him quitting on your team.

7:53 pm: Officially a sell out. I cannot spot one empty seat.

3:07 left in first quarter: Beijing’s coach just popped a vein on his forehead after Guangdong’s Yi Jianlian grabs an offensive rebound and draws a foul. Makes two free throws to push Guangdong up 16 -12.

Ed’s note: 7:56 pm, 2:25 left in Q1: CCTV-5 has finally cut to Wukesong. Guangdong up 19-13.

:57 left in 1st: Stephon Marbury, driving to the bucket, is kicked in the shins and falls to the ground. The crowd erupts in “shabi” chants, and not even the shabi police can stop them. A flagrant foul is called on Wang Shipeng.

Marbury sinks two free throws, gets the ball back, and drills a three-pointer.

P.S. That was a very, very dirty play.

At the end of the first quarter it’s 25-20 Guangdong. Stay tuned for the second quarter, when Randolph Morris takes his turn on the court.

A g-chat conversation about Beijing forward Li Gen:

Anthony: how fat does li gen look in person
that dude’s bad at basketball, right?
Nick: He’s a bulldog
I once witnessed him doing pushups an hour and a half after a game.
The guy does arm curls on the bench
…
Li Gen hits a three
and blows a kiss to the fans. A girl beside says “he’s so cute!”

5:20 left in 2nd: Li Gen whistled for offensive foul.

Guangdong’s Wang Shipeng is being mercilessly booed every time he touches the ball. You don’t mess with Beijing’s local hero (Marbury).

4:35 left in 2nd: Guangdong’s Dong Hanlin just picked up his fourth foul. Guangdong has two other players with three fouls each.

A picture to share: Marbury is protecting his head with a simple bandage on the back:

And here’s Guangdong’s coach:

8:30 pm: At halftime I walked over to see our friend Karan Madhok, aka @Hoopistani, who said, “I noticed during the playoffs that the cheerleaders step their game up. They are on another level tonight. Wow!”

That was his answer to my question, “What did you think of the first half?”

(We know where his head’s at.)

From my point of view, all cheerleading aside, the game was up and down. Guangdong is choosing to live and die from the three-point line. They are not going to Yi Jianlian inside, but are instead working the ball around the perimeter.

As for Beijing, the Ducks scrapped their way through that half quarter. It wasn’t pretty, but it was efficient.

Each team can play their foreigners for a combined six quarters. Beijing chooses to play Marbury during the 1st quarter, Morris during 2nd quarter, and then both, together, for the entire second half. This bodes well for Beijing, which has been down at halftime in every game this series but still has a 2-1 series lead.

Beijing 46 (Marbury 8 pts) – Guangdong 48 (Yi 10 pts).

Guangdong opens the second half on an 8-0 run. The Ducks are unable to grab a defensive rebound to save their lives. One of their players just — instead of easily grabbing the basketball — tried to bat it to his teammate, and of course Guangdong ended up with it. A bucket followed to make it 73-55.

While the language police are hard at work, the fans continue to yell “shabi” at Wang Shipeng and the referees.

With 3:46 remaining in the 3rd quarter and Beijing down 18, coach Min calls a timeout and the in arena the DJ plays “I want to know if you will be my girl” by DJ Otiz to try and lighten the mood. Great attempt but poor results.

2:38 left in 3rd. Randolph Morris has 25 points. Marbury has 12. We wonder about his knee.

Morris looked extremely tired during those last few possessions of the third quarter, and it hurt Beijing on rebounds. Guangdong has about 20 offensive rebounds.

Guangdong is only up 11 heading into the fourth. Its biggest lead was 18.

Every basketball fan should watch the CBA someday to understand how fucked up it is. Marbury is an NBA player on court with high schoolers.

— Anthony Tao (@anthonytao) March 11, 2014

Ed’s note: Li Gen continues to be a waste of space. A fat amount of space. He’s kind of fat.

6 min left in 4th: A Marbury bandage update: he has removed it. Guangdong up 9.

Ed’s note: my updates:

5:01 left: Guangdong officially has 19 offensive rebounds.

3 min left: The turnover battle is close enough, Beijing with 11, Guangdong with 13.

2:54: Marbury spins around his defender, Royal Ivey, and converts an and-1 to bring Beijing back to five. I don’t want to overemphasize this, but Marbury is Beijing’s basketball team. Randolph Morris hits some shots, but it’s Marbury who is the leader in every way.

2:07: Another Marbury and-1 after getting by Ivey. He quietly has 30 points. Beijing only down 97-93.

9:45 pm: And it’s over: Guangdong 109, Beijing 101. For the first time ever, Guangdong won in Wukesong. I think the Ducks came into this game with too much confidence. It seems like they forgot who they are playing.

Guangdong is the best team in China — the defending CBA champions — for a reason. I noticed the Ducks took a few possessions off and lacked discipline. Stephon Marbury played a good game; there is no denying his will to win, but he is going to need other guys to step up. Morris led all scorers with 34 points and Marbury added 31; no other player on Beijing’s squad had more than 9 (Ji Zhe and Di Xiaochuan). Guangdong outrebounded Beijing 54-41 and shot 50 percent from beyond the arc (12 for 24) compared to Beijing’s 33 percent (8 for 24).

Guangdong is going to have a lot of in-house problems with the sudden disappearance of its head coach, but Beijing coach Min Lulei will have to work some magic if he wants a road victory.

The deciding Game 5 is Thursday at 7:35 pm in Guangdong.

Stephon Marbury may have turned in his finest CBA performance — and it came against the best team in the league, the defending CBA champion Guangdong Southern Tigers. With his head bandaged for the last four minutes of the fourth quarter and through overtime — the result of a gash sustained during one of his trademark drives to the basket — the 37-year-old finished Saturday night with 43 points on 13-for-20 shooting (including 4-for-8 from behind the arc). He was fouled 13 times, hitting all but one of his 14 free throws. The Beijing Ducks won 109-104.

Marbury posted to Sina Weibo afterwards: “No matter what it takes. Bloody head surgically repaired knee bruised thigh the mission must be complete.” It was a typically physical contest between these old rivals – Beijing beat Guangdong 4 games to 1 to win the CBA championship two years ago – as the teams combined for 62 fouls (33 on Guangdong, 29 on Beijing).

The win puts Beijing one game away from the CBA finals. The Ducks lead 2 to 1 in the best-of-five series, with the next contest at home at Wukesong — the NBA-quality arena built for the Olympics — tomorrow at 7:35 pm. The game will be broadcast on CCTV-5. If you’re wondering whether to tune in, I’ll go ahead and tell you the answer is yes. (UPDATE: Swing by BJC tomorrow for a live-blog of the game, with updates sent in from press row by Nick Bedard.)

Beijing’s Randolph Morris scored 33 points on Saturday, though he needed 30 shots to get those. (He also missed some late free throws that had everyone grimacing.) Needless to say — though Guangdong’s coach said it after the game — if Beijing’s two foreigners combine for 76 points, the team’s going to be hard to beat.

Guangdong’s Yi Jianlian scored a team-high 29 in a losing effort.

The winner of this series goes on to face Xinjiang, which finished a 3-0 sweep of Dongguan on Sunday on its home court in Urumqi.

Some pictures via Sina:

After sitting out more than two months with an injury and missing 22 games, Beijing Ducks superstar point guard Stephon Marbury returned to the court last night against the Shandong Flaming Bulls in his team’s first game of the new lunar year.

It was an eventful night, to say the very least.

With 35 seconds remaining in the third quarter, Marbury uses his patented NYC crossover to beat Sui Ran (#1) to the bucket, but as he goes up for a layup, his shoulder appears to slam into Ran’s face. (Watch: 1:30 mark in the video above, 1:45 mark below.)

Ran’s teammate, Wu Ke (#15), then delivers an elbow at Marbury, and all hell proceeds to break loose inside Beijing’s Shougang Arena.

Marbury whirls around and shoves Wu while unleashing a half-punch that kind of lands around Wu Ke’s chest (there’s a massive height difference, with Marbury at 185 centimeters and Wu Ke at 210).

As officials sort things out, Wu receives a rousing chant of “shabi! shabi!” from the crowd (literally, “stupid cunt,” though a better translation within this context would be “asshole”), along with a few plastic bottles hurled his direction. I was right there under the basket, and it was madness. From my vantage point, it threatened at times to get out of control.

Fans become all the more aggravated when officials announce that Marbury has been ejected from the game. He was assessed a technical foul on the initial drive to the hoop (a confusing, terrible call), then another technical for throwing a punch.

There’s more to this story: while officials were sorting out free throws, Shandong forward Donnell Harvey engaged Marbury’s trainer in a bit of trash talk, with the two apparently agreeing to meet after the game to throw down.

The Ducks won 99-95.

Afterwards, players and personnel from both teams began shoving while heading down to their respective dressing rooms. I saw a Chinese player from Shandong punch Marbury’s interpreter in the face during the post-game scuffle.

Fans blocked Shandong’s bus afterwards, because that’s just what happens. Marbury and many of his teammates have seen it firsthand.

Nick Bedard writes the blog Basketball Buddha. Follow him on Twitter @bedardnick. (Pictures via Sina [here and here.])

Last night, the Dongguan Leopards beat the Sichuan Blue Whales 137-135 in Wenjiang District Stadium in Chengdu, but to say “Dongguan” won is really to diminish the efforts of one individual, Bobby Brown, who took half of his team’s 104 shots and made exactly half of them to finish with 74 points. He also led his team with 10 rebounds and 4 assists. Bobby Brown earned his post-game star.

Brown hit 26 of 52 shots (plus 17 of 20 free throws; box score), including five three pointers. Though he missed 10 threes, check out his running prayer of a shot at the 4:37-mark in the above (apologies for the video lacking sound; we’ll switch it out once someone posts a Brown-exclusive highlight reel, which is surely forthcoming). You know it’s your night when those are falling.

The ball was in Brown’s hands with time winding down in a tie game in overtime. For whatever reason, Sichuan didn’t send everyone to guard him, and he threw up an 18-foot floater that hit rim five times before going in, just as time expired. Check out this fan video via @burniegram.

If not for Brown’s performance tonight, we’d all be talking about the four players ejected from the game after Dongguan’s Li Muhao delivered a blatant forearm to the face of Sichuan guard Mike Efevberha, knocking him down. (By the way, Efevberha scored 50 in a losing effort.) The incident happens in the 3:38 mark of the above video, or at the start of the one below.

Brown, who played at Cal State Fullerton, was on four NBA rosters in the 2009 and 2010 seasons (Kings, Timberwolves, Hornets, Clippers) before going to the Euroleague. According to Wikipedia, he “tied a Euroleague post year 2000 single-game scoring record with 41 points” last season with Montepaschi Siena. He signed with Dongguan this past summer.

He can’t leave until after the CBA season, but ESPN analyst Marc Stein just tweeted that he thinks Brown is “sure” to join an NBA team in March. Seventy-four-point games will make an impression. Let’s not forget, JR Smith scored 60 points in a CBA game in 2012, and look at him now.

Ku6 versions for those in China: game highlights, the fight.

POSTSCRIPT, Bobby Brown tweets:

What Victory looks like.. Thuggin in China wit my young goons!! http://t.co/xGpcIEtrU5

— Bobby Brown (@BBROWNLAU) December 27, 2013

The CBA is back, and thank goodness. As featured on Deadspin, here’s Ivan Johnson, 29, doing a celebratory dance that in the NBA would have set him back 15 grand, because no one in corporate appreciates the Big Balls Dance.

But Big Balls Dance away, Ivan Johnson. You’re in China now. You can do anything*.

Context? You want context? Deadspin:

Johnson racked up a team-leading 24 points, 11 boards and three assists against the Jiangsu Nangang Dragons today before fouling out with just 27 minutes of play. He sank five three-pointers on eight attempts, one of them preceding his homage to Sam Cassell. For context, Johnson attempted 20 threes in his two seasons with the Hawks, and made three. Apparently, he now has range.

*Just not everything.

Ivan Johnson Is Shooting Threes And Doing The Big Balls Dance In China (Deadspin)

This was ugly. The Sichuan Blue Whales, playing its first CBA game in 15 years, having just been promoted from the second-tier National Basketball League in September, lost by 53 points on Friday. The previous CBA record for most lopsided season-opener was a mere 40 points, nearly 25 percent less than Sichuan’s deficit.

Talk about doing the new kid on the block no favors: Sichuan’s opening game was against the reigning champs, the Guangdong Southern Tigers, whose Yi Jianlian happens to be the league’s best player. Yi scored a modest 10 points and pulled down 10 boards. His teammate, Zhou Peng, scored 26. The final score was 120-67.

It’s not like Sichuan expected to win — Global Times reports via Tianfu Morning Post that the team’s president, Zhou Shiqiang, offered half a million yuan if the players could keep the losing margin within 15 — but fifty-three is pretty incredible.

It would’ve gone differently if Sihuan’s star import, the 7-foot-2 Hamed Haddadi, hadn’t sat out with an ankle injury. They likely wouldn’t have covered the 15-point spread — 15 is very far from 53 — but they also likely wouldn’t have set a new standard for futility.

Meanwhile, the Beijing Ducks won on the road in Xinjiang, 106-98. It’s the second straight year the Ducks have won at Xinjiang to open a campaign. New guy Sun Yue — who was on a Los Angeles Lakers roster for a stint — scored 15 and grabbed 5 rebounds while contributing 5 assists. Stephon Marbury scored 20. But most importantly: 1-0, baby.

Foul?

(Images via)