The NBA and China

[Goldstar88]

I was watching some of the Portland summer league game to see how Yang looked and now I?m curious... Why do you think China hasn?t been producing NBA players?

There wasn?t one Chinese player in the NBA last year. Considering basketball is the most popular sport in that country and their large population size (1.4B), it seems odd that they haven?t been generating NBA level talent.

[tazzmaniac]

Mostly genetics.  The Chinese Basketball Association is not a particularly good league and yet the Chinese players get dominated in it by foreign players who aren't close to NBA caliber.  Jared Sullinger is the outlier with a 5-year NBA career. 

https://basketball.realgm.com/international/league/40/Chinese-CBA/stats/2025/Averages/Qualified/All/points/All/desc/1/Regular_Season

Scroll down the list of top scorers and it looks like Lin Wei at #20 is the first Chinese player.  Scroll down a bit further for a blast from the past, Jordan Mickey (age 31) at #29 whose stats were:
PPG   RPG   APG   SPG   BPG
19.0   9.1   2.6   1.3   1.1

[Goldstar88]

Mostly genetics.  The Chinese Basketball Association is not a particularly good league and yet the Chinese players get dominated in it by foreign players who aren't close to NBA caliber.  Jared Sullinger is the outlier with a 5-year NBA career. 

https://basketball.realgm.com/international/league/40/Chinese-CBA/stats/2025/Averages/Qualified/All/points/All/desc/1/Regular_Season

Scroll down the list of top scorers and it looks like Lin Wei at #20 is the first Chinese player.  Scroll down a bit further for a blast from the past, Jordan Mickey (age 31) at #29 whose stats were:
PPG   RPG   APG   SPG   BPG
19.0   9.1   2.6   1.3   1.1

That?s crazy. A small country like Serbia has a half dozen NBA players. Even Japan has a few.

[Kernewek]

Mostly genetics.  The Chinese Basketball Association is not a particularly good league and yet the Chinese players get dominated in it by foreign players who aren't close to NBA caliber.  Jared Sullinger is the outlier with a 5-year NBA career. 

https://basketball.realgm.com/international/league/40/Chinese-CBA/stats/2025/Averages/Qualified/All/points/All/desc/1/Regular_Season

Scroll down the list of top scorers and it looks like Lin Wei at #20 is the first Chinese player.  Scroll down a bit further for a blast from the past, Jordan Mickey (age 31) at #29 whose stats were:
PPG   RPG   APG   SPG   BPG
19.0   9.1   2.6   1.3   1.1

That?s crazy. A small country like Serbia has a half dozen NBA players. Even Japan has a few.

Some of it will be genetics, some of it will be the viability and traditions of professional sport within China, which has a very weird and very interesting history (look at the way the country built up their surf program from zero in the wake of it becoming an Olympic sport, for example).