The Chinese three-person basketball league is officially born!People’s Daily Interview with Yao Ming
2022-08-05 09:38:03Source: People’s Daily client
Interview with Yao Ming. Video source: People’s Daily client (04:41)
On August 4th, the 2022 season of the China Three-person Basketball League (Zhangjiagang Division) kicked off. Following the CBA and WCBA, another top professional basketball league in China has officially set sail. Why was the Chinese three-person basketball league (Super Three League) established? As a start-up league, what are the challenges faced by the Super League? What are the goals and plans of the Chinese Basketball Association for the development of the league? On the 4th, in Zhangjiagang, the People’s Daily Client Sports Channel conducted an exclusive interview with Yao Ming, chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association.
1. What plans does the Chinese Basketball Association have for the future of the Super League?
Yao Ming: First of all, we have a very clear goal. The Super Three League will be our key development project after the three-person basketball game enters the fast lane of development. We hope that through the establishment of the Super League, we will gather all three basketball enthusiasts across the country into one brand, create a channel for everyone to meet friends with the ball, and at the same time expand the population of our entire three-player basketball game, so that everyone can feel that basketball is not only in addition to basketball. There is another game and another rhythm besides five-a-side basketball.
2. There are many CBA players in the Super League three. How do you see the relationship between the two leagues?
Yao Ming: They are two different games, kind of like indoor volleyball and beach volleyball. The two leagues are the top leagues in China within their respective game rules. Naturally, there will be many players who will cross the border in basketball to play three-player or five-player basketball. I think such a diversified way of participating in the competition makes the league more exciting and enriches the experience of athletes and spectators.
Super League promo. Video source: People’s Daily client (01:30)
3. In the future, how will the Super League three be improved in an all-round way?
Yao Ming: The key is to do a good job in system construction. The Super Three League is a whole, connecting the men’s secondary three-player basketball league and the women’s three-player basketball league. There will be a lot of exchanges here, including exchanges of athletes and so on. It’s not like our traditional five-a-side basketball game, as if you walk into a stadium and you’re only watching one game, one content. When you walk into the Super League, what you actually see is a fully covered and interlinked mechanism. There will be more elements in it.
Yao Ming, chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association, at the opening ceremony of the Super League.
At the same time, we need to provide audiences with a richer viewing experience and attach importance to cultivating the audience base of the league. We have conducted research and found that the audience for the three-player basketball league is actually younger than the five-player basketball league. Therefore, we need to add youthful elements, including integrating with some pan-cultures, to attract more people to the sidelines. Including referees is also a new topic. Many of the officiating rules in three-man basketball are completely different from five-man basketball. This requires us to make everyone better understand and watch the game through continuous promotion and publicity of the game.
4. Is it possible for the future competition system to provide a stage for the public or amateur players?
Yao Ming: I think for sports events, there is no absolute distinction between professional and amateur. If there is, we should get through it. We all want to see little people on the big stage. Only if we open up such channels and make more ordinary people take the stage, that is the slogan that our Chinese Basketball Association has been shouting: make ordinary people great.
5. As a start-up league, what challenges does the Super League face?
Yao Ming: At the beginning of any league, there will be great challenges. First of all you need to know what this is. Through the stage of the Olympic Games, three-person basketball has already made everyone aware of it. And a lot of people, including people our age or older, actually played three-man basketball when they were growing up. However, the rules were not fully unified at that time.
The scene of the Super League (Zhangjiagang Division) match.
Now for us, the biggest challenge is still cognition. In the past, everyone felt that three-person basketball was attached to five-a-side basketball, but we now think that three-person basketball should actually be a different style of basketball. Like you might like to eat this cuisine, but you can also go for another cuisine. But they are all a type of dining. That’s a very young element for us in basketball, and we hope the audience can pick it up faster. This is one of our challenges.
We have a lot of work to do, but we are very confident. Because in the history of our Chinese Basketball Association, there has been such an experience. Our CBA and WCBA were not achieved overnight, and have grown to the scale they are today after decades. I believe that our Super League will grow into a tournament that everyone knows and loves over time.
