The NBA over the last several years has become an increasingly more diverse league consisting of players from various parts of the world outside of the United States.
However, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is quite frustrated with the fact that there are no Chinese players currently playing in the league, according to Yahoo! Sports.
Article Continues Below“It frustrates me that there are no Chinese players in the NBA right now,” he told reporters prior to Game One of the NBA Finals in Oakland on Thursday.
“There's probably more basketball being played in China than anywhere else in the world. And more NBA basketball is being watched in China than anywhere else in the world,” he said.
There were two taken in last year's draft in Zhou Qi by the Houston Rockets and Wang Zhelin by the Memphis Grizzlies. This is surprising given that it is a country in which the game of basketball is wildly popular and played more than anywhere else in the world.
The last Chinese player in the NBA was Yi Jianlian, who last played for the Los Angeles Lakers in the preseason last year but was cut just prior to the start of regular season. Aside from that, Hall of Famer Yao Ming was one of two representatives of his country alongside Jianlian before he was forced to medically retire in 2011.
All of this signals a need for some major alterations across the board in China in the Chinese Basketball Association in order to get players back in the NBA. With Silver voicing his strong displeasure with the issue, there could be much change ahead in that regard in the near future.