Oh Sun Yue!

Practice with Chinese National Team or play for your NBA life. Is it such a hard decision?

The Lakers would like rookie Sun Yue to play on their Summer League team in Las Vegas this July before making a decision on whether to retain him for next season, but are in discussions with Chinese officials who want him to train with their national team before they compete in the FIBA Asia Championship in Tianjin on Aug. 6-16.

"I don't know yet, they've got to communicate with each other," Sun said. "I'll let them talk to each other and let me know what works best. ... It's a hard choice."

24 days ago Scott Schroeder Comment 4 comments 0 recs |

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The Chinese are even more peculiar about playing for their national team than most international team players. I know in some sports (e.g. biathlon) they take their athletes out of the running world cup to have them compete in some national or Asian championships that they dominate but the rest of the world in the sport doesn’t give a fart about. It would have been a national catastrophe if Yao or Yi had said no to playing in the Beijing Olympics (understandable).

by Norsktroll on Jun 21, 2025 12:03 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

That I understand

But it doesn’t make sense to me if the decision is to practice or play in the NBA.
If it was either playing in the FIBA games and repping his country or playing to maybe stay in the NBA, I could probably understand.

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by Scott Schroeder on Jun 21, 2025 2:03 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs