About this item
The wonderfully original story of a struggling Chinese basketball team and its quixotic, often comical attempt to right its fortunes by copying the American stars of the NBA—a season of cultural misunderstanding that transcends sports and reveals China’s ambivalent relationship with the West. When the Shanxi Brave Dragons, one of China’s worst professional basketball teams, hired former NBA coach Bob Weiss, the team’s owner, Boss Wang, promised that Weiss would be allowed to Americanize his players by teaching them “advanced basketball culture.” That promise would be broken from the moment Weiss landed in China. Desperate for his team to play like Americans, Wang—a peasant turned steel tycoon—nevertheless refused to allow his players the freedom and individual expression necessary to truly change their games.
About the Author
Jim Yardley was born in New York on June 18, 1964, but as an infant moved to North Carolina, where he attended public schools and later the University of North Carolina. He has worked as a journalist for more than 25 years, mostly with The New York Times as a foreign correspondent. He has won a Pulitzer prize, a George Polk award, a Gerald Loeb award and other honors for his overseas dispatches. He has reported from China, India, Bangladesh, Italy, the Vatican and more than two dozen other countries. He and his wife, Theo, live in Rome with their children: Olivia, George and Eddie.
