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T-Mac and Tang

Ill-fated ‘80s music duo? Fast-food lunch combo? Bachelor grocery list?

The answer is D) None of the above. Here are some notes about two bits of news that might be meaningful to you if you have both a mildly unhealthy appetite for basketball and a streak of Chi-curiosity. They are about two ballplayers whose careers will likely never come in direct contact, yet which are bizarre mirror images of each other.

T-Mac, of course, is Tracy McGrady, the former NBA scoring wizard who spent last season in what was, to some, a startingly unimpressive late-career stroll through a season with the Qingdao Eagles of the Chinese Basketball Association. Tang is T-Mac’s basketball opposite, a teenaged hoops prodigy from Jiangsu province who went to the United States for high school so that he could be a student and an athlete. Tang Zihao is called Chris Tang in the States, Chris for the point guard’s sporting hero, Chris Paul, and Tang as in the powdered sugary-orange drink, not as it’s pronounced back home in southeastern China.

“Surprisingly athletic” will be the phrase.

I’d read about young Mr. Tang in an excellent December feature by Jay Caspian Kang of Grantland. The 6’3” guard was mid-way through his junior year of high school at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, after having dominated at another school in his first two high school seasons.

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Cousin Tracy and the Double Star: McGrady in China

T-Mac flies high in the Rocket days.

The I Love Tracy Show just came into my Saturday morning life, not-quite-live from Qingdao, China (that’s a city in Shandong province, just north of Shanghai). With an NBA game coming on at a routine-for-China 10:30 a.m., there was time for CCTV 5, my inscrutable Asian ESPN, to show a mercifully edited version of last night’s CBA game. The Qingdao Double Star Eagles were trying to keep their perfect record with the great T-Mac on board, and they did it! After losing to the Shandong Flaming Bulls — though apparently no animals were harmed in the naming of this team — they are now 0-9, and it wasn’t even that close a match. “Led” by the lethargic former NBA star – still an icon in China, having played much of his fluid prime in Houston alongside Yao Ming – the Eagles don’t guard much. Down 18 with under 5 minutes to play, they were in a flaccid zone, having been unable to contain a quick little American point guard named Pooh Jeter, and Jordanian forward Zaid Abbas (who pretty much had his way with Mr. McGrady). It was another day in the life of Americans trying to find a basketball refuge (and make a few million yuan, in this case) in the Middling Kingdom of pro basketball. 

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