By Rigas Dardalis/ dardalis@eurohoops.net
The first Greek basketball pioneer in Asia was coach Steve Yatzoglou who led Anyang KGC to the Korean championship for the first time in team’s history. This season, Mike Kalavros will try to continue this tradition as a member of the coaching stuff of Dan Panaggio at Shanghai Sharks! “Basketball is an international sport and Shanghai an international city that has place for everything”, says the Greek coach who spoke to Eurohoops just after the start of the CBA season. “It’s an other world. It’s a big metropolis with above average quality of life where there is always something to do. And of course, that applies also to basketball, there are many interesting elements”.
– Like?
“There is a lot of talent in the young ages. You see kids from 15 to 18 years old with incredible bodies, really tall and lean. There look like clones of Yi Jianlian, there are lots of them. Of course, they don’t have the same quality as basketball players, so they need a lot of work. Also the lague that started its season on the 24th of November has a lot of games in a relatively small time frame and that makes it really interesting”.
– What makes Shanghai special as a city?
“It’s expensive, but on the same time it’s also rich. It’s image is not the classic of China, that at least not what we have in our minds in Europe. It’s a vibrant city that lives around the clock for 24 hours and there are many thing to see. You go to a small neighborhood (at least for this city standards) and you see 70 and 80 storey buildings! How else could you house 24 million people? There are also homeless people who sell their stuff on a tricycle, but in total there is an image of luxury in the city. There are many big malls, maybe the biggest in the world, the one just next to the other. The malls in Greece have two or three levels, here they have 12 each. There is some kind of exaggeration”.
– Is there interest about basketball?
“There is lots of interest! We opened the season against the champions Beijing Ducks of Stephon Marbury and the game was watched by 500 million people in television! And also the NBA is insanely popular. When Kobe came in the summer there was panic, the same happened with the Clippers‘ Caron Butler who is not exactly the biggest star of the league. It’s by far the number 1 team sport in the country”.
– Yao Ming, the owner of Shanghai Sharks, remains popular, even after his retirement?
“I will tell you only one thing. He is the most famous Chinese person, after Mao. I will give you an example. We played a pre-season game against UCLA, there were 9.000 fans in the gym and their main chant was: “We want Yao”. They cheer for him in every possible occasion”.
– Have you met him?
“We have talked face to face a couple of time and the impressive think about him is how humble he is. Everyone in the team and in the front office can assure you that he is simple and discreet. And he also has a lot of interest about the youngest players. He comes to practices, asks about them and known details about each one of them. He seems to know everything, even for players of our junior team. That’s not easy for a man who is also the owner of ten big companies. The Sharks are one of them”.
– What’s your first impressions about Gilbert Arenas?
“He really knows basketball. He understands the game in a unique way and he explained me how he tried to beat his man in the NBA, using his abilities to surprise his opponents. I don’t think that he is over 1,90 m. tall and considering his size, he is a miracle worker. He is a very serious pro, he is the first to come in practice and he has a daily routine. He is also a very simple person, not a NBA primadona”.
– And Marbury who beat you in the season opener?
“He wasn’t impressive in the pre-season as he didn’t do much. But it was obvious that he puts on the second gear after the start of the season. He is still really quick in the fast break and he is an incredible passer in the open court. He is also a good reader of the pick-and-roll situations, so it’s really hard or even impossible to stop him”.