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since qiu tian in 2016, the chinese men's basketball national youth team has once again welcomed mixed-race players, so zhang huafei and feng ao naturally became the focus of this u18 asian youth championship.

the stereotype that black people are more successful in basketball is deeply rooted around the world, so when we see black and mixed-race players, we naturally have great expectations for them.

but to be honest, fans should be disappointed with the national youth team's two talented players. they are not as talented as we imagined.

if you have watched the game twice, you will feel that they are really not as "strong" as some self-media and netizens say, not to mention "domestic ball-holding core", "domestic edwards", "the ceiling is definitely not limited to cba"...

just tell me whether this collection is cool or not.

without a magnifying glass, we only need some simple data to illustrate the problem:

there are 5 players in this year's national youth u18 lineup who are actually over 18 years old. the three oldest players, chen jiazheng, duan ruiqi, cui xinquan and the absolute core zhang boyuan are the only four players with an average playing time of more than 20 minutes.zhang hua, 18 years and 6 months old, ranked second from the bottom in terms of non-playing time, while feng ao, 18 years and 4 months old, ranked first from the bottom in terms of playing time...

in theory, mixed-race players like feng ao and zhang huafei, who have both physical and age advantages, should be very useful. but in the semi-final against new zealand, zhang huafei played for 5 minutes and feng ao played for 2 minutes. in the group match against japan u18, feng ao played for only 4 minutes and zhang huafei was directly dnp.

coach qu shaobin's actions directly conveyed a message to us: he did not trust the intensity of these two players at all, because although the japanese team is small in size, it is not low in intensity. in particular, the fact that zhang huafei, who he brought up in hongyuan, was not used can better illustrate the problem.

this goal is actually very telling. japan is small, but feng ao couldn't get it in...

the black wind twins were excluded from the core rotation of the national youth team because they were not strong enough. there is a saying in anna karenina: happiness is similar, but misfortune is different. although the black wind twins can be abstractly summarized as not being strong enough, the problems they each encountered are completely different.

compared to feng ao who has a standard forward physique, zhang huafei's stagnant physical development is the problem that causes his slow progress.

although zhang huafei also has an excellent modeling foundation of 1.96 meters tall and 2.08 meters wingspan, as the level of competition continues to improve, the slight advantage brought by this physical talent is no longer enough for him to create considerable profits in the semi-professional arena.

so we can see an objective fact: zhang huafei's crushing offensive performance, similar to the domestic edwards-style performance he showed in the early age-group competitions, is gradually decreasing, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it has disappeared.

and everyone underestimated the extent to which zhang hua relied on his physical talent to play. if you follow him, you will know that he showed very sexy technical movements in the lower-level youth team, which is the typical black guard style, but in the u18-u19 competition, this spirituality no longer exists.

zhang huafei played like this in the low-level youth team, and he looked like a king of ball

in other words, zhang huafei's technical flexibility is based on the premise of physical crushing, and the latter is a necessary condition for the former. then when everyone's body grows up, or encounters more excellent talents across the country, the advantage of physical suppression will be eliminated, and all of zhang huafei's technical abilities will have to be re-evaluated.

the interception was beautiful, but he couldn't hold the ball when he encountered resistance during the counterattack.

the pre-swing of this single is indeed quite comfortable, but the ending is irrelevant

so you will see that in hongyuan u19, zhang huafei is actually more often squatting in the bottom corner and 45-degree wing without the ball, rather than being a ball handler.

as a ball handler, his tactical position within guangdong hongyuan is not as good as yang yi's. he is allowed to dominate the ball movement only in garbage time when the team is leading by a large margin. as a forward, his delayed development means that he does not have enough height and strength to cope with a large amount of assist defense, sweeps, and fast breaks, and the technical movement habits he has developed are not those of a 3d player.

in other words, zhang huafei is not a typical teenage soccer champion. when a teenage soccer champion enters the adult world, the playing style he relied on in the past becomes ineffective, and he inevitably falls into a period of confusion.just like many black players in france have overwhelming performances in youth-level competitions, but become counterfeits once they enter the professional world or the nba.

zhang huafei had a 34.4% hit rate and a 22.4% three-point efficiency in the national youth league, which was not enough to convince the coach to trust him. therefore, he was not a high-ranking choice in hongyuan u19, let alone in the national youth team...

feng ao is the main force of xinjiang u19. his growing height also enables him to play the 3-4 position. his height, wingspan and other conditions are obviously sexier than zhu mingzhen.

however, after a while of publicity, he was as fierce as a tiger, but his record was zero and five. this is the most appropriate description of feng ao.

in the u18 asian cup, feng ao averaged 13.3 minutes per game, contributing 4.7 points, 1.8 rebounds and 2 assists, 0.2 steals and 0.2 blocks on the defensive end, and his three-point shooting, which has always been his advantage, only had a hit rate of 28.6%...

even if we go down a level, feng ao's data in the domestic u19 youth league is not very impressive. and his biggest problem is that he doesn't seem to have made any significant progress.

we can break down his stats for the u19 youth leagues in 2023 and 2024:

in 2023, feng ao averaged 16 minutes per game, 4.7 points, 2.9 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 1.6 turnovers, 1.1 steals, and 0.4 blocks, with a shooting percentage of 47.5%, 61.2% from three-point range, 3.1 of his 4 shots were three-pointers, and 1.9 free throws.

in 2024, he averaged 22 minutes per game, 10.9 points, 3.7 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 2 turnovers, 1.6 steals, and 0.6 blocks, with a shooting percentage of 41.9%, 29% from three-point range, and 4.7 free throws per game.

after comparison, we can conclude the following facts.

first, although he scored more points, his efficiency has deteriorated. the significant increase in free throws is the result of more attacks on the basket, but at the same time, his three-point shooting percentage has dropped rapidly from 61.2% to 29%, which shows that he cannot calmly control different offensive methods and cannot maintain his touch in confrontation, which is a manifestation of poor ball feel.

feng ao lacks the explosiveness to break through the first step

in the match against kazakhstan, where there was a huge gap in strength, there were also shots where the opponent suddenly appeared from behind.

second, after two years of playing in the league, feng ao has always made more mistakes than assists. this means that feng ao is not a striker who can use the ball. this is also another manifestation of his poor ball sense and ball skills.

he was half a head taller than his opponent, but his lob was intercepted.

third, the 18-year-old feng ao has not changed much from the 17-year-old feng ao. this shows that feng ao's improvement is not as high as expected.at least it’s not like what he said. give him a few years and “hachimura rui means nothing.”

two years ago, xirelijiang commented on the 16-year-old feng ao: "his goal is to be better than barrett and hachimura, which is unrealistic. he has not shown such excellent conditions. at present, his defense and lateral speed on the court are actually not as good as those of domestic pure-blood players of the same age."

"but he has an advantage over his peers in terms of ball control, ball handling and overall vision. every one of the 20 clubs wants him. because we don't know how he will change after he grows up in two years."

translated, this means that feng ao is not stronger than pure-blooded domestic players in terms of immediate combat effectiveness, and what he is selling is a lottery ticket for future growth.

choi young-hee also said in an interview that black players do have a natural advantage in terms of race. "it takes me a long time to gain a little muscle, but they gain size easily."

as for feng ao's growth rate... his height has indeed increased a lot, but his basketball skills have basically remained stagnant. the advantages in ball handling and overall view that xire mentioned also seem to be not very evident.

a very realistic set of data comparison: 16-year-old hachimura jumped to the u17 world youth championship and averaged 22.6 points per game, and averaged more than 20+10 per game in the u19 world cup, while feng ao has not even figured out domestic competitions...

if we add in the negative public opinion caused by his off-court behavior of wanting a guaranteed contract with a cba team but not wanting to give up tsai chongxin's scholarship spot, i believe that industry insiders' evaluation of feng ao will obviously not be as high as it was two years ago.

in fact, based on historical experience, we should disenchant mixed-race players.qiu tian averaged 10 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game in the u18 asian youth championship, and even scored 20+ points in a single game.his status in the national youth team is obviously higher than today's black wind duo, but now after many years of training, he is only a substitute blue-collar center for beijing shougang.

we must acknowledge the objective fact that there are differences in physical talents among different races, but we should not be superstitious that black players must be the talented lottery tickets worth betting on.

it is not advisable to be blindly optimistic, nor is it necessary to criticize someone with one blow. we should seek truth from facts, find a scientific balance, and judge a hero by his or her competitive level.

in the final analysis, white people can fly, and black people can shoot. the topic discussed in this article is actually a false proposition:

“the black wind duo is not strong” is a very reasonable phenomenon. why do black people play basketball better than yellow people?

friends, stereotypes are harmful.