Chinese men's basketball team starts naturalization: when Kyle Anderson becomes Li Kaier
The Chinese men's basketball team, which is training in Slovenia, is about to welcome a new member. On the morning of July 24, the Chinese Basketball Association announced that Kyle Anderson (Kyle Anderson) was officially naturalized. Immediately afterwards, his Chinese name "Li Kaier" appeared in the talent pool of the Chinese men's five-a-side basketball team. If there is no accident, the forward of the NBA Minnesota Timberwolves will be the only active NBA player in the national team to compete in the Men's Basketball World Cup that will open at the end of next month.
After several months of laying the groundwork and refusing rumors, Li Kaier was officially naturalized today. Judging from the reaction of outside public opinion, it didn't say it was too much of a sensation, it could only be regarded as a big event in the sports circle.
The outside world has this reaction, on the one hand, because the naturalization process takes a long time, and all parties are quite low-key before the naturalization, and are unwilling to disclose too much progress. During this period, many true and false news came out, which also consumed the fans’ excitement about this matter to a certain extent. On the other hand, before Li Kaier was naturalized, the Chinese men's football team had already had the experience of introducing naturalized players, and naturalized players such as Gu Ailing played in the Beijing Winter Olympics. Under the foreshadowing of this series of precedents, everyone is already familiar with operations such as athlete naturalization and naturalization, and their curiosity and expectations are relatively low.
In any case, such a player who can stably enter the rotation in the NBA is willing to join. It must be a strong supplement for the Chinese men's basketball team who urgently need to strive for good results in the Men's Basketball World Cup and get tickets for the Paris Olympics. Even, the reason for naturalizing Li Kaier is precisely to compete for this Olympic ticket.
1. Times call for heroes
On November 16, 2022, the Chinese Basketball Association announced that Serbian Alexander Djordjevic will be the head coach of the Chinese Men's Basketball Team. An insider revealed to Rilakkuma Sports that the well-known coach who has led the team to the finals of the Olympics, World Cup, and European Cup, is willing to take over the coach of the Chinese team. One of the conditions is to supplement naturalized players.
This is an understandable requirement. In 2019, the Chinese men's basketball team lost their Olympic tickets at home in a rather uncomfortable way. The record of 9 consecutive Olympic games was interrupted, and at the same time they lost the opportunity to perform on a high-level stage. No matter how the parties blame the cause of the failure, it is an undeniable fact that the Chinese men's basketball team has fallen into a trough after experiencing ten consecutive defeats in the Olympic Games from London to Rio, and then failed to enter Tokyo.
While its own strength is declining, the pattern of world basketball is changing. More and more international players are playing in the NBA. For example, the three teams in the same group as the Chinese team in this World Cup all have players who play in the NBA to choose from. With Zhou Qi leaving the Rockets in 2018, China has had no players who have been able to make it to the NBA for more than four years. At the same time, many countries have not even stopped the pace of naturalization. Ibaka to Spain and Embiid to France are typical cases of basketball powers hoping to continue to improve their lineup through naturalization.
In the case of being surrounded by powerful enemies, relying solely on the existing lineup to achieve the goal of breaking through, the difficulty of the game for the Chinese men's basketball team can be imagined. In the absence of NBA players to lead the team, naturalization has become the simplest and rude choice. On December 17, 2022, Yao Ming, who was re-elected as the chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association, revealed the manager's attitude towards naturalization in an interview with Xinhua News Agency. He mentioned that we must first consider the FIBA rules, secondly, whether it complies with Chinese laws and policies, and thirdly, whether the relevant players can bring improvement to the team.
There is no doubt that this is a public statement of the Basketball Association's willingness to promote naturalization. According to FIBA regulations, if a player does not obtain the nationality of the country before the age of 16, he will be regarded as a naturalized player. In a tournament, only one naturalized player is allowed to be registered in each national team list. This also means that the Chinese men's basketball team that needs immediate combat power can and can only bet on one person-this person is ultimately Li Kaier.
In short, Djordjevic should want to knead the internal and external lines of the Chinese men's basketball team into a more organic whole, emphasizing the fluency of the offensive end. And with Li Kaier, a full-size striker, his coping ability should become an important fulcrum for the Chinese men's basketball team to connect the inside and outside. When the back line is difficult to play due to height restrictions in the international arena, Li Kaier's coping ability at the free throw line can be used as another way to break the game. While liberating Zhou Qi and other inside players, it can also create more offensive opportunities for outside players.
2. It seems like a match made in heaven
In fact, the voice of naturalized Li Kell appeared as early as 2019. In 2012, Li Kaier, who was still studying at UCLA, came to China with the team to participate in a friendly match, and played directly against Tsinghua University, Peking University and the Shanghai Men's Basketball Team of the CBA. As the main force of the team, his excellent performance attracted the attention of fans. The fans also discovered at the time that he had one-eighth of Chinese ancestry.
It is worth mentioning that because of the death of his grandparents, Li Kaier's family lost contact with their relatives in China as early as the last century, but his mother Suzanne attached great importance to this blood relationship separated by oceans. According to Li Kaier's own statement on Weibo, Suzanne spent more than five years looking for relatives. Hard work pays off. In 2018, Li Kaier followed his mother to Xinmu New Village, Pinghu Street, Longgang District, Shenzhen, where he found his relatives in China. This incident had attracted media attention at the time, but it was only told as a touching story of NBA players looking for relatives. With the defeat of the 2019 Men's Basketball World Cup, naturalization has become a hot topic among fans. Li Kaier's blood relationship and relative search activities make him a popular candidate in the public opinion field.
At that time, the naturalization remarks were just a way for fans to vent their losses. The act of naturalization itself was also extremely controversial, so it was like a gust of wind blowing without causing any waves. Lanxiong Sports learned that Jeremy Lin originally wanted to be naturalized many years ago, but due to the immaturity of the time, the Chinese Basketball Association did not advance this matter, and it finally fell through.
However, in 2019, in addition to the Although naturalized players have not brought substantial performance improvements to the Chinese men's football team, at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, there will be naturalized players from multiple events participating in the Chinese delegation. In particular, Gu Ailing's strong performance has reduced the outside world's doubts about the use of naturalized athletes to a certain extent.
Therefore, the Chinese men's basketball team has a naturalized player in 2023, and the public opinion environment it faces is already different. This is also the essential reason why Yao Ming can directly respond to naturalization issues many times. For example, at the Chinese Basketball Media Day held on April 7, 2023, he bluntly stated that naturalization requires cultural identity, the higher the level, the better, and he never refused. At this time, the matter of naturalizing Li Kaier seems to have been put on the agenda. According to Lanxiong Sports, the Chinese Basketball Association has started to go through internal procedures as early as the beginning of this year. For this reason, it has made a detailed feasibility report to the General Administration of Sports. The candidates who meet the above three conditions of Yao Ming are very limited, and Li Kaier is almost the only one.
On April 26, South China Morning Post reporter Mike Chan reported that Li Kaier may represent the Chinese team in FIBA. At the same time, Li Kaier, who has just finished the playoffs, is rumored to be waiting for his eye injury to recover, and then he will immediately fly to China to prepare for the Men's Basketball World Cup. In the next three months, there were many reports on social media that the nationality had been completed, but each time the rumors were refuted by his management team until the official announcement.
