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according to media reports, chinese basketball player choi young-hee will sign a two-way contract with the nba team brooklyn nets in the near future.

on august 31, well-known basketball commentator su qun posted an article on his personal social platform titled "choi young-hee, you can only rely on yourself when you go to the nba this time."

the article said that although it was only a two-way contract, it was a ray of light in the darkness for the sluggish chinese basketball; but it was precisely the two-way contract that meant that choi young-hee's road to the nba would be full of thorns and extremely difficult. choi young-hee was like a soldier, who picked up a gun and groped for a way out in the darkness by the wujiang river surrounded by enemies.

su qun said that choi young-hee should not be regarded as the savior of chinese basketball. he just showed that even in the darkest time of chinese basketball, there are still people working hard.

the original text is as follows:

choi young-hee and the brooklyn nets are about to sign a two-way contract. after taking this step, the rest of the way will depend on himself.

"rely on yourself" is yao ming's famous saying, and it is also the most basic principle in basketball. once he steps out of his comfort zone, choi young-hee will face fierce competition and a life-and-death struggle.

although it is only a two-way contract, it is a ray of light in the darkness for the sluggish chinese basketball; but it is also a two-way contract that means choi young-hee's road to the nba will be full of thorns and extremely difficult.

xiao cui is like a soldier who, standing by the wujiang river surrounded by enemies on all sides, picks up a gun and gropes for a way out in the darkness.

this significance alone is remarkable.

due to a series of processes involving the guangzhou team, cba, chinese basketball association and fiba, the nets have not officially announced that choi young-hee has signed a two-way contract, but it is only a matter of time.

two-way contracts have many restrictions, such as being able to stay with the team for a maximum of 45 days or play a maximum of 50 regular season games, not being allowed to play in the playoffs, etc., so they are different from formal nba contracts.

so has choi young-hee made it to the nba, or has he not yet?

i can give an analogy here: zhengyangmen, also known as qianmen, was originally the southern gate of beijing. passing through this gate meant entering beijing. but outside the gate of qianmen, there is a circle of urn walls with arc-shaped walls and tall towers. this is the arrow tower, which is printed on the cigarette shells of daqianmen. the urn city is used to resist foreign enemies and is equivalent to the first pass; if the enemy attacks, once the gate of the arrow tower is closed, they will be trapped in the urn city, unable to enter or leave. for choi young-hee, getting a two-way contract is equivalent to breaking into the urn city.

for the players with two-way contracts who break into the city, the gate is still closed, but it will open from time to time. every time the gate opens a crack, the people in the city will have a battle royale.

watanabe made it, alvarado made it, reeves made it, and they are all role models for the two-way contract players in the city. first of all, you have to work hard, and then if you encounter opportunities, you may get a standard nba contract like them.

if each team signs a maximum of three players with two-way contracts, then the total number of players with this status is 90, and only a few of them will eventually get formal contracts, with the probability being only 23, 34, or 45 percent.

cruel? of course, because life itself is cruel, and so are you and me.

for people outside the city, these players with two-way contracts are enviable and a testament to their hard work.

of course, don't regard choi young-hee as the savior of chinese basketball. he just shows that even in the darkest times of chinese basketball, there are still people working hard.

such efforts cannot be reflected in wages, because the maximum salary for a two-way contract is $580,000, which is only two-thirds of the cba's maximum salary after deducting about 50% tax.

what makes me feel gratified is that this time when choi young-hee went to the nba, the public did not have overly high expectations for him, so there was not that much pressure.

every chinese player who ventures into the nba has different personal abilities and starting points, and therefore different goals. among choi young-hee's predecessors, dazhi's goal was to find his way, gain a foothold, and strive to play in the rotation; yao ming's goal was to lead the rockets to play well in the playoffs and compete for the championship; and yi jianlian's goal was to take over yao ming's gun and realize his unfinished ideal.

if you take the goals of your predecessors as your own goals, the road will be long and bumpy. but choi young-hee has his own situation. he failed to be drafted and has a lower starting point. starting as a two-way contract player may be the only way.

this path is a bit like the one ding yanyuhang has taken, but ding's situation is even more difficult than choi young-hee's. he has always played as a small forward, but was thrown into the mavericks' summer lineup to play the power forward position, and then injured his knee.

choi young-hee does not have a specific goal, such as achieving a certain goal.

his only goal was to go up.

look up and see how high you can reach and where the ceiling is.

try your best and leave no regrets, this is his entire mission.

completely different from their several center predecessors, choi young-hee and ding yanyuhang face more intense and cruel competition because they both play on the outside. choi young-hee is not as tall as ding yanyuhang and has less plasticity.

ding yanyuhang can choose between positions 3 and 4, while choi young-hee, who is only 2 meters tall, can only play at positions 1 or 2.

according to the advice of choi young-hee's mentor li qun, his best direction of effort is to play the no. 1 position, but in the cba, choi young-hee does not play point guard. in the national team, old joe once wanted him to change to point guard, but it ended before it even started.

in this way, choi young-hee's direction of effort is a bit like sun yue, who didn't play point guard before, but his boss li su suggested that he change, and he ended up playing point guard for the chinese men's basketball team. sun yue has an advantage in height, 2.05 meters, and can play from 1 to 3, so the lakers also thought it was worth a try.

no matter which position he plays, choi young-hee is like being thrown into a pack of wolves because he can only play on the outside.

when i gave lectures at universities, students asked why only centers from china could enter the nba. i told them the "spindle theory" i had summarized:

draw a coordinate system with the origin being the average height of the nba, which used to be 1.98 meters, then changed to 2 meters, and then changed to 2.01 meters, and is now estimated to be 2.03 meters. place all the players according to their height into the horizontal coordinate position where they should be, and move up or down if the position is already occupied. more than 400 small dots will eventually form a densely packed shape - a spindle with pointed ends and a bulge in the middle.

the reason for this graph is that there are few players who are particularly tall or short. if kawamura nagaki were playing, he would be on the far left, and if yao ming were still playing, he would be on the far right. the closer to the average height, the more players there are, and choi young-hee is squeezed in the position with the largest number of players.

where you are in this spindle pattern can tell you how much competition you face. the closer you are to average height, the greater the competition you face, because there are more people who can replace you.

the more competitive a position is, the more likely it is that those who stand out will become extraordinary figures, such as kobe or james. it is easy to imagine how difficult it would be for choi young-hee to snatch a living from such people.

later, this spindle shape will become closer and closer to a circle as the heights of players become closer and closer.

players with two-way contracts are not like rookies in the draft. rookies are to be trained, but players with two-way contracts are to be used. this is a big challenge for choi young-hee.

the biggest obstacle for chinese players to play in the nba is not training, eating, flying to away games, or staying in the hotel with the team at three or four in the middle of the night, but language. there are many black players playing in the nba, with accents from all over the world, colloquialisms (slang) and tactical terms that must adapt to local customs. a person who claims to be good at english will be confused when he enters this circle. if you don't understand what they say, you don't know what you should do. this is a major bottleneck restricting the rise of chinese players.

but there are a few points that make choi young-hee different from his predecessors:

first, young people today are facing a more open language environment, are exposed to more things than their predecessors, and there are many foreign players in the cba;

secondly, choi young-hee trained at the nba training center in australia for a year and a half since 2018, and only returned when the epidemic broke out. although australia is not the united states, choi young-hee has had the experience of playing among foreigners;

third, cui is not fighting alone, he has a good team supporting him behind the scenes. there are staff sent by li qun following him every day, just like yao ming had pan kelun by his side in his first year.

but after all the supporting work is in place, it is still choi young-hee himself who decides his future.

the so-called hard work is not just empty talk, and hard training does not mean blind or brute training, because basketball is a team sport and the fundamental determining factor is the brain.

choi young-hee is a very smart basketball player with a high basketball iq, a strong comprehension, and the ability to think proactively, which is much more important than any praise for his basketball skills.

the wujiang river is surrounded by enemies on all sides. how can one break through in the darkness with a gun in hand? it requires more than just courage.

[source: "su qun" wechat public account]

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