Rocky start in China's rudimentary basketball league

Displaced in China, 5,000 miles from basketball civilization, Tom Newell listened as a Pancake told him he was fired.

Newell hadn't even coached a game as the first American to lead a Chinese Basketball Association team, and here was Pancake, the 4-foot-8 translator whom Newell preferred to call Short Stack, giving him the strangest news ever.

The mother of all rich-man whimsies felled Newell, a former Sonics assistant and basketball lifer. The owner of the Jilin Northeast Tigers abruptly fired his general manager, Chinese basketball legend Sun Jun, and then rehired a former coach to replace Newell. A day later, Pancake was sent to tell Newell the team still wanted him to lead practice.

"WHAT?!?!" Newell asked.

"Coach, this is China," Pancake explained. "We do things differently here."

Do they ever. Beat that, George Steinbrenner.

As interest grows in Chinese sports, especially basketball, Newell offers a fresh account of the current landscape. The Olympics are coming to Beijing in eight months. The NBA just formed NBA China, an entity that should help promote better basketball in Yao Ming's home country. But while change is coming, don't expect China to morph into a basketball superpower overnight.

"It's so rudimentary," Newell said of the current system here. "It's like a time warp."

Despite the inauspicious start, Newell has spent the past four months in China. He remained on the Tigers coaching staff as an assistant because the new coach, Gao Shumin, requested his help. He survived the entire season, watching the team struggle through a 10-20 record.

Newell remembers the owner interrupting a practice to take team photos. The Tigers play in an airplane hangar built in the 1950s with asbestos covering the ceiling. At most of the league's arenas, which were largely empty during games, the floors are so hard that Newell figured they were "nothing more than hardwood on concrete."

It is cold inside the gyms, so cold. A morning shoot-around might find the players battling 35-degree temperatures to practice.

"And let's talk about the weather outside," Newell said, speaking by phone from Changchun, which he calls Coldchun. "You tell me the difference between zero and 20 below zero. My nose would wiggle at zero. At 20 below zero, my septum raises up, telling me, 'OK, fool, if you don't go back inside, you're going to lose your nose.'

"PETA would come here and say, 'We're going to have to step out of party lines and wear some fur because we can't take this.' "

But none of the obstacles stopped Newell from having a good time. He thought he helped some of his Chinese players develop. He also watched the Tigers' best player, an American named DaJuan Tate, turn into "a bona fide pro."

Tate, who began playing basketball at 16 and went to Mountain State College in West Virginia, scored 68 points in a game and had a chance to break Sun Jun's CBA record for points in a game but relented. For his gesture, Tate gained the respect of Chinese fans.

"It's an act that will forever be remembered," Newell said. "From that point on, even if we were at another arena, every time DaJuan scored, they'd cheer for him."

And then there were the other Americans playing in China.

"I'm so embarrassed by their boorish behavior and lack of respect for the officials," said Newell, a hoops purist like his father, Pete. "They denigrate the game of basketball. They just act like fools."

In the next few weeks, Newell will meet with Tim Chen, the CEO of the new NBA China, to discuss his thoughts on improving the professionalism of basketball in China. Newell plans to highlight the poor conduct of American players and encourage a referee-training program, among other things.

As a basketball market, China is as unpolished as it is intriguing. The nation of 1.3 billion people now has Yao and Yi Jianlian to whet its hoops appetite, and with the NBA sensing the opportunity for growth, perhaps it can help China create a more appropriate basketball infrastructure.

If so, then Newell will be a pioneer, of sorts, a man who left the comforts of the Puget Sound area to lead a team he never really got to lead. It was a wacky journey. It was a rewarding one, too.

The season ended nearly two weeks ago, and the team held a party. During the celebration, all bad feelings were forgotten. Newell even talked at length — through Pancake — with the coach who replaced him. Newell always thought the coach was resisting his suggestions. Not so.

"I know you have a great passion for the game, and you think I didn't listen," coach Gao told him. "I did listen — but I just didn't understand what you were saying."

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com