Today's entry: 9/12/2011
Much has changed since this interview in August 2008 with World Hoop Blog, which, I believe, is no longer online. That's unfortunate, though, because the site placed great interest in all basketball leagues around the globe.
The interviewer, Paul Miles, submitted these questions to me via email. i think the answers offer some valuable insight on the bj-league's history, looking ahead to season No. 4 (2008-09).
***
Edward Odeven, sports editor for the Japan Times, thanks for taking some time out to talk with me today. Let's start at the logical beginning. According to your bio (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/sports_columns.html) you're originally from the Bronx. So how does a kid from New York City end
up in Japan covering basketball and baseball?
Though I was born in the Bronx, raised in New Jersey, relocated to Arizona at age 15 after my freshman year of high school, I always felt like a New Yorker, the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I write. New York feels more like home than any place I've been. I also spent a lot of time in the city as a kid, visiting family, going to sporting events, taking business trips with my dad.
Professionally, I made the big jump from a small paper in northern Arizona, the Arizona Daily Sun, in Flagstaff to The Japan Times. I got here in Tokyo about seven weeks before the 2006 FIBA World Championship. Perfect timing. Lots of great basketball was played at the 24-nation tournament. I was delighted -- and honored and humbled -- to have FIBA include a column/haiku I wrote in a special book it published after the tournament.
The BJL was founded only a couple of years ago and is fighting baseball, soccer and sumo for the sports fans' attention. How is the
league doing?
No one said starting a professional league would be easy. There will be growing pains and there will plenty of mistakes along the way. But enthusiasm, a willingness to try new things and a never-wavering commitment to make basketball more relevant in Japan are building blocks for the bj-league. Commissioner Kawachi and his supporting cast, as well as the teams and fans (routinely called boosters in Japan) have embraced the notion that basketball can compete side by side with the aforementioned sports here.
The basketball season started on Oct. 11 and will end in late April before the playoffs start. It occupies another part of the sporting calendar, taking up a big chunk of time when baseball is wrapping up to when baseball is still early on in the regular season.
The league's rapid expansion is a sign of success.
Another is this: increased local and national TV coverage.
There is still work to be done, of course. I think eventually players will need to be offered more than one-year contracts. A players' union would help raise concerns the players have as well and provide a unified forum for the foreign players and Japanese athletes.
Sun Ming Ming recently signed to play for the expansion Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix team. Have you had a chance to see him play,
what's the scouting report on him?
I attended Sun Ming Ming's first regular-season game on Oct. 18. He is well ... huge. I really needed to raise my left hand to hold my mini-recorded closer to him as he spoke in a quiet voice after the game.
He is not quick by any stretch of the imagination, but he has solid basketball instincts, positions himself well on both ends of the floor, passes well, uses his arms effectively to limit shooters' field of vision, can dunk on his tiptoes, has become more aggressive in the rebounding department, including a season-best 14 in the team's third game of the season on Oct. 25. With Sun, the team is 3-1, a good start for any team.
His movement laterally -- or side to side -- needs work. But he can be an asset for the team in the high post, in the paint, setting picks. I have not seen him shoot with his left hand, but if he could develop a hook with both hands that would be an upgrade. He does have soft hands and average foot work.
I will have a better assessment of his play in another month or so.
Let's just say that he is a classic "project" center, but he has raw talent as well. It will be interesting to see how consistent he will be in this league.
There are rumors coming out of Australia that there may be an Asian competition similar to Euroleague in the works. What are your thoughts on having BJL teams compete in a Champions League style tournament?
In the past few years, the bj-league has had its champion (the Osaka Evessa, winner of all three league titles) face the winner of the Korean Basketball League in a two-game exhibition series, with one game in each nation. It's a nice event, giving fans in both nations a chance to see another league's talent. It would be even better if the teams could play AFTER their respective seasons.
That said, it is nice to report also that after last season the Takamatsu Five Arrows, who were the 2006-07 runnerup in their first season in the bj-league, faced the Shanghai Sharks in an exhibition game in May in Takamatsu. Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets and former NBA player David Benoit, now the coach of the bj-league's Saitama Broncos (who are 4-0 through Oct. 26) previously played for the Sharks.
Again, exhibitions and goodwill tours are a nice things. Heated competition is even better. I think FIBA Asia and the NBA could help co-sponsor an Asian tournament of club teams. I think it's best to think big but build gradually. Japan, South Korea, China and the Philippines in the east and Lebanon and others in western Asia could field tournament teams.
There are plenty of opportunities to showcase these games on TV, too.
Where does the NBA fit into the Japanese basketball scene? Does it stand on its own? Or will it need a hoops equivalent to Hideo Nomo
to put the Association into the average Japanese family's living room?
The NBA does have a following here, but the average sports fan probably only knows the big names -- Kobe, Jordan, Magic, Shaq, etc. Iverson and 'Melo Anthony jerseys have also sold well here. Some games are televised on satellite and some are replayed here with commentators providing insight in Japanese. The more games are shown, the better following the NBA can get here. Like in China, I would say Kobe has a super following here.
Kobe's father, Joe Bryant, by the way, coaches the Tokyo Apache, last season's bj-league runnerup.
In regards to Hideo Nomo, you cannot compare him to Yuta Tabuse, the first Japanese to play in the NBA. His NBA career has been limited to four games so far, though he has also spent time in the NBDL. This season, he is back in Japan, playing for the Link Tochigi Brex, a team in the JBL, the bj-league's rival. In short, the JBL is a former corporation-only owned structure for teams. Toyota, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, etc. have fielded teams, but fan bases for teams have been largely comprised of company workers and their associates, acquaintances, etc. Sure, diehard fans attend these games, as the league has been around for 40 years, but it is easier to identify with a hometown team than a company team. It's a distinction that is hard to explain without a person getting a chance to see it with their own eyes.
The bj-league was founded with a modern focus: hometown support for teams, and a combination of sports and entertainment.
For example, DJs/P.A. announcers call the action on the court in animated, enthused tones.
If Tabuse can return to the NBA at some point and last for 5-10 seasons, that would be a big deal. But his "cup of coffee" in the NBA was too short to make a big impact here. It has, however, made Japanese people proud and younger players have certainly been motivated to follow in his footsteps.
Perhaps another guy will get a shot at the NBA in the next 10 years and hopefully he can make the starting lineup and become an All-Star. That would certainly make him a bigger presence in the media as well as in a marketing standpoint -- train billboards, endorsements, TV talk show appearances in the offseason.
To get back to the BJL, I know that baseball games in Japan have a very unique flavor. What are basketball games like compared to the States?
One way the Japanese game has a unique flavor is four 10-minute quarters, and a sport court rather than a hardwood floor. Also, there are one-and-ones like in college or many states' high school leagues.
In the playoffs, the system is similar to Euroleague or March Madness, with single-game eliminations, not best-of-seven formats.
Example: This season, eight teams will make the playoffs, and the Final Four will be in Tokyo to determine the winner.
The league conducted summer tryouts last summer in Las Vegas and also brought selected players there for games. Good experience for them.
After games, the host team's coach will make a series of comments near halfcourt, and in the case of Benoit, Bryant, John Neumann (Rizing Fukuoka's coach; he led the NCAA in scoring in 1970-7１ with 40.1 ppg for Ole Miss) and Bob Pierce (the expansion Shiga Lakestars coach, a former Asia-based scout for the Cleveland Cavaliers), those comments will be then translated into Japanese. The home team's players will all bow and acknowledge the fans after each game, too.
There will be some words, too, that are shortened into Janglish -- Japanese English -- or simply altered and then that way becomes conventional, such as Broncos cheerleaders is shortened to Broncos cheer.
Slam dunks are often called dunk shots.
The league has doubled in four years. Are there more teams in the future? Or will the BJL follow the J-League's lead and transition into a promotion/relegation system?
The JBL has a second division and one team, the Link Tochigi Brex, moved up to the top flight after last season, but not because of relegation/promotion system. Instead, the Brex took over a spot vacated by the OSG Phoenix (now Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix), who defected for the bj-league.
The Osaka Evessa, Niigata Albirex BB and Saitama Broncos were charter members of the new league in 2005-06, joined by the expansion Tokyo Apache, Sendai 89ers and Oita HeatDevils.
A 13th team, from Kyoto, will be added next season. There's talk of a 14th team, as each phase of expansion has involved two teams per year, but as of two weeks ago, Commissioner Kawachi said he's still in talks with potential expansion teams' ownership groups.
This year, the league's teams will each play 52 games, an increase of eight from last season. The goal is for an 82-game season in the future. The league has talked of wanting to have a team in each of Japan's 47 prefectures, a wildly ambitious plan at this time.
Final thoughts?
This generation of Japanese basketball players has a chance to establish a tradition of excellence. It is both exciting to see and a great responsibility that is unfolding before our eyes here in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Sure, foreign players will make their mark here, too, like former Indiana University standout Jeff Newton, a power forward for the Ryukyu Golden Kings in Okinawa, but guys like Ryukyu point guard Naoto Takushi, Broncos small forward Kazuhiro Shoji and Five Arrows shooting guard Yu Okada will be the ones who make the greater impact in terms of being role models for the next generaton of Japanese players to emulate.
Much has changed since this interview in August 2008 with World Hoop Blog, which, I believe, is no longer online. That's unfortunate, though, because the site placed great interest in all basketball leagues around the globe.
The interviewer, Paul Miles, submitted these questions to me via email. i think the answers offer some valuable insight on the bj-league's history, looking ahead to season No. 4 (2008-09).
***
Edward Odeven, sports editor for the Japan Times, thanks for taking some time out to talk with me today. Let's start at the logical beginning. According to your bio (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/sports_columns.html) you're originally from the Bronx. So how does a kid from New York City end
up in Japan covering basketball and baseball?
Though I was born in the Bronx, raised in New Jersey, relocated to Arizona at age 15 after my freshman year of high school, I always felt like a New Yorker, the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I write. New York feels more like home than any place I've been. I also spent a lot of time in the city as a kid, visiting family, going to sporting events, taking business trips with my dad.
Professionally, I made the big jump from a small paper in northern Arizona, the Arizona Daily Sun, in Flagstaff to The Japan Times. I got here in Tokyo about seven weeks before the 2006 FIBA World Championship. Perfect timing. Lots of great basketball was played at the 24-nation tournament. I was delighted -- and honored and humbled -- to have FIBA include a column/haiku I wrote in a special book it published after the tournament.
The BJL was founded only a couple of years ago and is fighting baseball, soccer and sumo for the sports fans' attention. How is the
league doing?
No one said starting a professional league would be easy. There will be growing pains and there will plenty of mistakes along the way. But enthusiasm, a willingness to try new things and a never-wavering commitment to make basketball more relevant in Japan are building blocks for the bj-league. Commissioner Kawachi and his supporting cast, as well as the teams and fans (routinely called boosters in Japan) have embraced the notion that basketball can compete side by side with the aforementioned sports here.
The basketball season started on Oct. 11 and will end in late April before the playoffs start. It occupies another part of the sporting calendar, taking up a big chunk of time when baseball is wrapping up to when baseball is still early on in the regular season.
The league's rapid expansion is a sign of success.
Another is this: increased local and national TV coverage.
There is still work to be done, of course. I think eventually players will need to be offered more than one-year contracts. A players' union would help raise concerns the players have as well and provide a unified forum for the foreign players and Japanese athletes.
Sun Ming Ming recently signed to play for the expansion Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix team. Have you had a chance to see him play,
what's the scouting report on him?
I attended Sun Ming Ming's first regular-season game on Oct. 18. He is well ... huge. I really needed to raise my left hand to hold my mini-recorded closer to him as he spoke in a quiet voice after the game.
He is not quick by any stretch of the imagination, but he has solid basketball instincts, positions himself well on both ends of the floor, passes well, uses his arms effectively to limit shooters' field of vision, can dunk on his tiptoes, has become more aggressive in the rebounding department, including a season-best 14 in the team's third game of the season on Oct. 25. With Sun, the team is 3-1, a good start for any team.
His movement laterally -- or side to side -- needs work. But he can be an asset for the team in the high post, in the paint, setting picks. I have not seen him shoot with his left hand, but if he could develop a hook with both hands that would be an upgrade. He does have soft hands and average foot work.
I will have a better assessment of his play in another month or so.
Let's just say that he is a classic "project" center, but he has raw talent as well. It will be interesting to see how consistent he will be in this league.
There are rumors coming out of Australia that there may be an Asian competition similar to Euroleague in the works. What are your thoughts on having BJL teams compete in a Champions League style tournament?
In the past few years, the bj-league has had its champion (the Osaka Evessa, winner of all three league titles) face the winner of the Korean Basketball League in a two-game exhibition series, with one game in each nation. It's a nice event, giving fans in both nations a chance to see another league's talent. It would be even better if the teams could play AFTER their respective seasons.
That said, it is nice to report also that after last season the Takamatsu Five Arrows, who were the 2006-07 runnerup in their first season in the bj-league, faced the Shanghai Sharks in an exhibition game in May in Takamatsu. Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets and former NBA player David Benoit, now the coach of the bj-league's Saitama Broncos (who are 4-0 through Oct. 26) previously played for the Sharks.
Again, exhibitions and goodwill tours are a nice things. Heated competition is even better. I think FIBA Asia and the NBA could help co-sponsor an Asian tournament of club teams. I think it's best to think big but build gradually. Japan, South Korea, China and the Philippines in the east and Lebanon and others in western Asia could field tournament teams.
There are plenty of opportunities to showcase these games on TV, too.
Where does the NBA fit into the Japanese basketball scene? Does it stand on its own? Or will it need a hoops equivalent to Hideo Nomo
to put the Association into the average Japanese family's living room?
The NBA does have a following here, but the average sports fan probably only knows the big names -- Kobe, Jordan, Magic, Shaq, etc. Iverson and 'Melo Anthony jerseys have also sold well here. Some games are televised on satellite and some are replayed here with commentators providing insight in Japanese. The more games are shown, the better following the NBA can get here. Like in China, I would say Kobe has a super following here.
Kobe's father, Joe Bryant, by the way, coaches the Tokyo Apache, last season's bj-league runnerup.
In regards to Hideo Nomo, you cannot compare him to Yuta Tabuse, the first Japanese to play in the NBA. His NBA career has been limited to four games so far, though he has also spent time in the NBDL. This season, he is back in Japan, playing for the Link Tochigi Brex, a team in the JBL, the bj-league's rival. In short, the JBL is a former corporation-only owned structure for teams. Toyota, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, etc. have fielded teams, but fan bases for teams have been largely comprised of company workers and their associates, acquaintances, etc. Sure, diehard fans attend these games, as the league has been around for 40 years, but it is easier to identify with a hometown team than a company team. It's a distinction that is hard to explain without a person getting a chance to see it with their own eyes.
The bj-league was founded with a modern focus: hometown support for teams, and a combination of sports and entertainment.
For example, DJs/P.A. announcers call the action on the court in animated, enthused tones.
If Tabuse can return to the NBA at some point and last for 5-10 seasons, that would be a big deal. But his "cup of coffee" in the NBA was too short to make a big impact here. It has, however, made Japanese people proud and younger players have certainly been motivated to follow in his footsteps.
Perhaps another guy will get a shot at the NBA in the next 10 years and hopefully he can make the starting lineup and become an All-Star. That would certainly make him a bigger presence in the media as well as in a marketing standpoint -- train billboards, endorsements, TV talk show appearances in the offseason.
To get back to the BJL, I know that baseball games in Japan have a very unique flavor. What are basketball games like compared to the States?
One way the Japanese game has a unique flavor is four 10-minute quarters, and a sport court rather than a hardwood floor. Also, there are one-and-ones like in college or many states' high school leagues.
In the playoffs, the system is similar to Euroleague or March Madness, with single-game eliminations, not best-of-seven formats.
Example: This season, eight teams will make the playoffs, and the Final Four will be in Tokyo to determine the winner.
The league conducted summer tryouts last summer in Las Vegas and also brought selected players there for games. Good experience for them.
After games, the host team's coach will make a series of comments near halfcourt, and in the case of Benoit, Bryant, John Neumann (Rizing Fukuoka's coach; he led the NCAA in scoring in 1970-7１ with 40.1 ppg for Ole Miss) and Bob Pierce (the expansion Shiga Lakestars coach, a former Asia-based scout for the Cleveland Cavaliers), those comments will be then translated into Japanese. The home team's players will all bow and acknowledge the fans after each game, too.
There will be some words, too, that are shortened into Janglish -- Japanese English -- or simply altered and then that way becomes conventional, such as Broncos cheerleaders is shortened to Broncos cheer.
Slam dunks are often called dunk shots.
The league has doubled in four years. Are there more teams in the future? Or will the BJL follow the J-League's lead and transition into a promotion/relegation system?
The JBL has a second division and one team, the Link Tochigi Brex, moved up to the top flight after last season, but not because of relegation/promotion system. Instead, the Brex took over a spot vacated by the OSG Phoenix (now Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix), who defected for the bj-league.
The Osaka Evessa, Niigata Albirex BB and Saitama Broncos were charter members of the new league in 2005-06, joined by the expansion Tokyo Apache, Sendai 89ers and Oita HeatDevils.
A 13th team, from Kyoto, will be added next season. There's talk of a 14th team, as each phase of expansion has involved two teams per year, but as of two weeks ago, Commissioner Kawachi said he's still in talks with potential expansion teams' ownership groups.
This year, the league's teams will each play 52 games, an increase of eight from last season. The goal is for an 82-game season in the future. The league has talked of wanting to have a team in each of Japan's 47 prefectures, a wildly ambitious plan at this time.
Final thoughts?
This generation of Japanese basketball players has a chance to establish a tradition of excellence. It is both exciting to see and a great responsibility that is unfolding before our eyes here in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Sure, foreign players will make their mark here, too, like former Indiana University standout Jeff Newton, a power forward for the Ryukyu Golden Kings in Okinawa, but guys like Ryukyu point guard Naoto Takushi, Broncos small forward Kazuhiro Shoji and Five Arrows shooting guard Yu Okada will be the ones who make the greater impact in terms of being role models for the next generaton of Japanese players to emulate.
