MANILA, Philipppines - The once mighty China looks vulnerable in the 2013 Manila FIBA Asia Men’s Basketball Championship.
The 2011 FIBA Asia champions have shown chinks in their armor with star Yi Jianlian sitting out the last two games in the preliminaries due to a nagging hamstring and groin injury he sustained in their run-up to the tournament.
“Yi has a little problem before coming here. But we want him to be healthy in the knockout games so we will try day by day,†China’s Greek coach Giannakis Panagiotis told reporters after the 70-51 drubbing they absorbed at the hands of Iran.
Panagiotis is taking a one step backward, two steps forward approach in the tournament especially with a young team that is relying heavily on the the ageless Whang Zhizhi inside the paint while Yi is resting.
The Greek coach nicknamed “Dragon†knows the international games too well that he is not afraid of risking losing games in the earlier round. After all, he was the coach of the Greece team that beat beat the US team led by LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade in the 2006 World Basketball Championships in Saitama, Japan.
The defending champions have lost two of their three games in the group stages, 59-63 to Korea then last night’s 19-point loss to Iran. But it didn’t really matter in the standings as China advanced to the second round along with Iran and Korea joining a relative weaker group D with Kazakhstan, Bahrain and India.
China will face Group D topnotcher Kazakhstan tomorrow (Monday) then is expected to breeze past through India and Bahrain on Tuesday and Wednesday to make it to the quarterfinals.
Panagiotis hopes that by the time the quarterfinal round starts, the 7-foot Yi is ready to rumble with the other giants in Asia.