Post by LWPD on Aug 19, 2011 18:31:32 GMT -5
Tempers flare in China during an attempt at sports diplomacy!
Courtesy of Wall Street Journal
Fallout From Georgetown’s ‘Great Brawl’
By Nando Di Fino
Charles Barkley’s elbowing of Angola’s Herlander Fernandes Coimbra in the Dream Team’s first Olympic game in 1992 stood for almost 20 years as the most famous example of United States rough-housing in international basketball. But Sir Charles has nothing on the violent brawl between the Georgetown University men’s basketball team and the Bayi Rockets during an exhibition game Thursday in China:Yes, those are chairs being tossed around. And yes, if you look closely, there is a fan wielding a stanchion. The melee happened just a day after Vice President Joe Biden, also in China, attended another Georgetown exhibition that went off without a hitch. And it came shortly after the university’s website posted a strangely prophetic headline about the exhibition tour.
This game got ugly fast. The Rockets had a distinct advantage in foul calls at halftime, and the fight was perhaps precipitated by a Bayi player yelling at Georgetown coach John Thompson III on the sideline earlier in the game. It was immediately precipitated by Bayi’s Hu Ke fouling Georgetown’s Jason Clark a little too hard for Clark’s liking. The argument escalated to shoving, which eventually devolved into the battle royale. After the brawling was over, Thompson decided to pull his team off the court and call it a night with over nine minutes left in the game and the score tied, 64-64. And that’s when the water bottles and debris started flying. “I was in great fear for everyone associated with Georgetown University,” Thompson told the Washington Post’s Gene Wang, who wrote a spectacular recap of the events. “If you look at it in terms of sheer numbers, we were very much outnumbered. Once all the skirmishes had ended, my only thought was to get our fans, our players, our family, our friends out of this building as soon as possible.”
Nathan Fenno of the Washington Times confirms that the final two games of the tour will be played, and that no players were injured in the fracas. Wang later tweeted that Thompson, along with Clark and Hollis Thompson, met with the Bayi coach and some players before departing for the second leg of Georgetown’s tour in Shanghai. Georgetown’s website, GUHoyas.com, reported that the meeting ended with an exchange of autographed basketballs and hopes that maybe some of the Chinese youth players could attend the Hoya summer basketball camp next summer. A Georgetown spokeswoman referred a WSJ request for comment to Thompson’s statement issued after the game, which said that it was unfortunate and that the school has great respect and admiration for China. “We sincerely regret,” Thompson says, “that this situation occurred.” Reaction in China was muted, too.
At the end of the day, though, it’s still a basketball game, and Sean Pendergast of the Houston Press took a uniquely refreshing view on the fight, casting aside all political and international worries for a solid analysis of the brawl. He blames NBA’s “don’t leave the bench during a fight” penalty, which likely caused Georgetown’s bench players, following that mindset, to hesitate in running to the floor to help their teammates. Pendergast also noticed the sparse crowd in the arena, something that never would have happened in the halcyon days of mid-80s Georgetown hoops, with Patrick Ewing pulling huge crowds at the height of Hoya Paranoia. And that wasn’t all Ewing and company would have changed. “If this game took place in 1985,” Pendergast writes, “there would have been 15 bloody, mangled Chinese basketball players scattered unconscious on the floor with Ewing, Reggie Williams, David Wingate and Michael Graham all standing over them with their hands raised amidst a shower of jettisoned half full beers and sodas and debris.”
Courtesy of Wall Street Journal
Fallout From Georgetown’s ‘Great Brawl’
By Nando Di Fino
Charles Barkley’s elbowing of Angola’s Herlander Fernandes Coimbra in the Dream Team’s first Olympic game in 1992 stood for almost 20 years as the most famous example of United States rough-housing in international basketball. But Sir Charles has nothing on the violent brawl between the Georgetown University men’s basketball team and the Bayi Rockets during an exhibition game Thursday in China:Yes, those are chairs being tossed around. And yes, if you look closely, there is a fan wielding a stanchion. The melee happened just a day after Vice President Joe Biden, also in China, attended another Georgetown exhibition that went off without a hitch. And it came shortly after the university’s website posted a strangely prophetic headline about the exhibition tour.
This game got ugly fast. The Rockets had a distinct advantage in foul calls at halftime, and the fight was perhaps precipitated by a Bayi player yelling at Georgetown coach John Thompson III on the sideline earlier in the game. It was immediately precipitated by Bayi’s Hu Ke fouling Georgetown’s Jason Clark a little too hard for Clark’s liking. The argument escalated to shoving, which eventually devolved into the battle royale. After the brawling was over, Thompson decided to pull his team off the court and call it a night with over nine minutes left in the game and the score tied, 64-64. And that’s when the water bottles and debris started flying. “I was in great fear for everyone associated with Georgetown University,” Thompson told the Washington Post’s Gene Wang, who wrote a spectacular recap of the events. “If you look at it in terms of sheer numbers, we were very much outnumbered. Once all the skirmishes had ended, my only thought was to get our fans, our players, our family, our friends out of this building as soon as possible.”
Nathan Fenno of the Washington Times confirms that the final two games of the tour will be played, and that no players were injured in the fracas. Wang later tweeted that Thompson, along with Clark and Hollis Thompson, met with the Bayi coach and some players before departing for the second leg of Georgetown’s tour in Shanghai. Georgetown’s website, GUHoyas.com, reported that the meeting ended with an exchange of autographed basketballs and hopes that maybe some of the Chinese youth players could attend the Hoya summer basketball camp next summer. A Georgetown spokeswoman referred a WSJ request for comment to Thompson’s statement issued after the game, which said that it was unfortunate and that the school has great respect and admiration for China. “We sincerely regret,” Thompson says, “that this situation occurred.” Reaction in China was muted, too.
At the end of the day, though, it’s still a basketball game, and Sean Pendergast of the Houston Press took a uniquely refreshing view on the fight, casting aside all political and international worries for a solid analysis of the brawl. He blames NBA’s “don’t leave the bench during a fight” penalty, which likely caused Georgetown’s bench players, following that mindset, to hesitate in running to the floor to help their teammates. Pendergast also noticed the sparse crowd in the arena, something that never would have happened in the halcyon days of mid-80s Georgetown hoops, with Patrick Ewing pulling huge crowds at the height of Hoya Paranoia. And that wasn’t all Ewing and company would have changed. “If this game took place in 1985,” Pendergast writes, “there would have been 15 bloody, mangled Chinese basketball players scattered unconscious on the floor with Ewing, Reggie Williams, David Wingate and Michael Graham all standing over them with their hands raised amidst a shower of jettisoned half full beers and sodas and debris.”
