NBA Players Join Adidas for Basketball Camp at BSU

China's best 15- to 18-year-old ballers have gathered this week at Beijing Sport University in Haidian for the adidas Nations basketball camp, a five-day event involving NBA personnel and five current Chinese Basketball Association coaches. The camp, which began Tuesday, features 47 players from five countries, though the vast majority of the participants are Chinese. They are split into one of four teams, each led by an American with NBA connections: Eric Musselman, former head coach of the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors; Marc Iavaroni, former head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies; Paul Silas, former head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers; and Eddie Johnson, former player for the Phoenix Suns. Fourteen or 15 of the best players will be selected to participate in a larger event in Dallas this August.

The camp's purpose is twofold: to identify young talent and to increase adidas's exposure in China, which is the German corporation's largest non-U.S. market. While most of the Chinese players at the camp are associated with development teams in the CBA, opportunities like this are few and far between. This is their chance to make it big. It was at an adidas summer camp in 2002, after all, that Yi Jianlian established himself as a household name, at least in the houses of NBA scouts. He was drafted sixth overall by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2007.

To increase the camp's appeal, adidas flew in current NBA players Devin Harris and Brook Lopez -- both of the New Jersey Nets, which is Yi's current team -- to hang out with and mentor the players.

"The people here are a bit taller than I expected," Lopez says.

"The players you mean?"

"No I’m just talking about in general. As I was walking around, I guess I was expecting them to be a bit…" -- he pauses and says the next part with a laugh -- "shorter when I came here."

In a country with an estimated 300 million basketball fans -- most of whom follow the NBA more than their domestic league -- it's no surprise that Harris and Lopez were the crowd favorites. The camp isn't open to the public, but the select people who were allowed to spectate seemed to cluster around the headliners. With the NBAers participating in a shooting drill with Silas on the second day, a couple drifters from outside pressed their faces against the gym's windows and asked those inside to take pictures with their phones.

"I’m not surprised by the amount of people that love the game," Harris says. "You can tell (how important basketball is) by when we played the Rockets, Yi played against Yao (Ming), how many people tuned in to the game. So I’m not surprised at all."