By PAI WAI
Xenophobia Correspondent

CBA viewers can look forward to seeing more weird shit like this

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – The Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) today announced an unusual new requirement for next season’s overseas players – blindfolds.

The rule, which applies only to players who are black, can dunk or are just way better than the Chinese, is expected to affect all foreign players.

“We must focus on developing domestic Chinese basketball stars by creating a fair playing environment,” said Zhang Xiong, the CBA’s director of operations. “This regulation will encourage coaches to use Chinese players, rather than relying on expensive, talented and all-around better imports.”

Currently, CBA teams are allowed to have two overseas players; Hong Kong and Taiwanese players are considered Chinese. These players can play a combined six quarters per game or five when playing the Chinese PLA  team, the Bayi Rockets.

Despite these restrictions, and the fact that most top players choose to play in the NBA or Europe, overseas players have enjoyed tremendous success in the CBA.

NBA benchwarmer Andre Emmett, who played a total of 71 minutes in 14 NBA games, holds the CBA record for points in a game after dropping 71 on the Jiangsu Dragons in 2010. Dominican professional player Garth Joseph racked up a total of 2 rebounds in his NBA career before joining the Shaanxi Kylins, where he pulled down 38 boards in one game, obliterating the previous CBA record.

The press release was greeted with enthusiasm on the Chinese side. Shanghai Sharks and national team guard Liu Wei told reporters, “If this rule had been implemented earlier, I might have been a starter at the All-Star game, instead of that guy who looks like Obama” – a clear reference to New York Knicks player JR Smith.

But some were sceptical about how big an impact the ‘blindfold rule’ would actually make. Former USA Dream Team guard Stephon Marbury, who recently led the Beijing Ducks to championship victory, predicted any effects would be temporary.

“The first coupla games are going to be tough, adjusting to zero visibility,” Marbury admitted. “But after that, I’m sure I’ll get used to it and go back to slappin’ bitches around.”

The rule comes as ex-NBA superstar Marbury basks in the success of a CBA victory before 18,000 fans in the first-ever Chinese championship last Friday, scoring 41 points, while fellow American Randolph Morris sealed the victory with two free throws.

Fans immediately began an online petition to have a statue built in honour of Marbury; officials have cautiously agreed to the plan, with the condition that the bronze star has a large bag placed over its head.

In response, the CBA has indicated further restrictions may also be considered should blindfolds prove unsuccessful. Options under discussion include heavier shoes, leg irons, tying one arm behind the back and a “no shooting” rule for imports.

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By LIN ANE
Health Correspondent

According to Ms Wilson, Jeremy Lin is 'such a nice young man' but never calls

CHARLOTTE (China Daily Show) –A woman in the terminal stages of Alzheimer’s disease has surprised doctors with a newfound enthusiasm  for NBA player Jeremy Lin.

Sarah Mae Wilson, 69, had long been considered a lost cause at the Carolinas Medical Center (CMC) in Charlotte, and her family had been making preparations to transfer her into full-time care.

But that was until last Tuesday night. According to eyewitnesses in the CMC community room, the New York Knicks’ Lin had just made a three-point jump shot to give his team a 90-87 win over the Toronto Raptors when a normally sedate Ms Wilson unexpectedly reacted with a series of expletive-filled remarks.

Since then, Ms Wilson’s intimate knowledge of the Asian-American point guard has shattered almost everything the medical community believes it knows about a disease that claims nearly 30 million sufferers worldwide.

“In her condition, there’s no expectation of even basic motor skills, much less the cognitive plasticity to take a word like ‘winning’ and combine it with the surname ‘Lin,’ to form the neologism ‘Linning,’” explained Dr Frank Jeffries, head of the geriatrics ward at CMC.

Indeed, perhaps even more inexplicable than Ms Wilson’s recovery is her enthusiastic embrace of the bizarre phenomenon known as ‘Lin-guistics’ – the relentless quest for puns on Jeremy Lin’s name.

“Super Lintendo –she claims to have coined that one,”said duty nurse Elizabeth Madison, who has been looking after Ms Wilson the last four years. “Her newborn enthusiasm and love of wordplay is both incredibly inspiring and highly irritating.”

Ms Wilson’s improvement has reportedly been as rapid, and just as dramatic, as Lin’s own rise to superstardom. The morning after the Raptors game, she reportedly asked a nurse, to open a “Lindow” and at lunch that day asked fellow diners to pass the “condlinments.”

“That one maybe wasn’t so good,” admitted Nurse Madison. “But to give her  credit, when Sarah saw me struggling with another patient yesterday, she called out, ‘Betty, don’t be so goddam Linient! Just shove those pills down her throat.’ I laughed so hard, I nearly dropped my armlock.”

There’s even evidence to suggest Ms Wilson may not be alone in having suddenly heard of Jeremy Lin. Professor Karl Snieder, a longtime Alzheimer’s researcher, says he learned about the curious case of Sarah Mae Wilson last Thursday. Failing to find any medical literature to explain her revival, he visited other patients he knew to be New York basketball fans.

Sure enough, some had also shown marked improvements.

“Lin’s dunk against the Washington Wizards last week has prompted a remarkable response from several otherwise-senile Knicks fans,” Professor Snieder told China Daily Show.

He cited Anthony Scagnetti, 82, an Alzheimer’s sufferer for 15 years. “The doctors were ready to pull the plug on him – the last rites had been administered by the family priest – when he suddenly asked them to ‘turn up the damned TV.’”

Apparently Lin’s dunk had made Scagnetti remember a fifty-dollar bet he had on the game.

Medical professionals in San Francisco, Chicago and St. Louis have also reported  improvements in patients, all with late-stage Alzheimer’s and almost all of them white.

Ms Wilson reacts to news that Jeremy Lin has never heard of her

“It’s as if Jeremy Lin has awaken something primal, something primitive in the human brain,” Professor Snieder said. “What these cases demonstrate is that the medical community, despite billions spent on research, really knows very little about the way the mind works. If a sport can rescue lost souls and allow them to wallow in infantilism, injecting them with purpose, what can’t be accomplished? ‘Linpossible is nothing,’ if you will.”

It remains to be seen whether these improvements have staying power. So far, however, the evidence is mixed. Ms Wilson, for example, remains unable to recall the names or recognize the faces of anyone in her immediate family.

Worse still, a day after the Knicks lost to the New Orleans Hornets, Ms Wilson told fellow residents they “can’t Lin ‘em all.”  Doctors say they didn’t have the heart to tell her the phrase was now utterly devoid of originality, having been used twice that morning in an Associated Press lede.

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