China suffers night of shame at basketball cup
By Zhao Rui (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-07-30 07:26

After several minutes of fighting on and off the court, plastic bottles, drinks, and popcorn rained down on the Puerto Rican players, and with three thousand fans chanting abuse the South Americans made their way to the locker room.

The gym announcer told the crowd the game had been abandoned and pleaded with fans not to throw things.

Although a regular post-match news conference was cancelled, the technical committee of the tournament announced that China won the game 91-80 more than two hours later.

"We accepted the result but we should say sorry to all the fans," an official from the China Basketball association said afterwards.

Many fans were very disappointed about what happened.

"It's a nightmare for me and my wife," said Wang. "I felt so sorry the game had to end this way."

The brawl started when China's Yi went in for a layup and was fouled hard by Puerto Rico centre Manuel Narvaez Events escalated when Li and Mo stormed the court from the bench -sparking violence from both sets of players.

The melee, which badly hurt the growing reputation of Chinese basketball, is sadly not a first time for the team. They were involved in a brawl during a game against Lebanon in the group stages of the Asian Championships in Shanghai in 2001.

The unreasonable acts also squandered China's sparkling performance throughout the night as the host team dominated the court from the tip-off with Zhu Fangyu nailing a game-high 25 points and Yi scoring 17.

After finishing the first half 47-43, China extended their lead to as much as 12 points in the fourth quarter thanks to a physical Yi and newcomer Sun Yue, who fuelled a 9-0 run with seven minutes left on the clock.