Interview: Yao Ming urges calm despite women's basketball success

CANBERRA, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Basketball Association president Yao Ming urged people not to get carried away with China's better-than-expected results at the FIBA Women's World Cup.

At the World Cup, China played a total of eight matches, winning six of them. They entered the final of a major international competition for the first time in almost three decades, before losing to defending champions the United States to finish runners-up for the second time in history.

Yao Ming told Xinhua afterwards that that result could not have been achieved without ten years of hard work.

"It is better than expected, but growth of a team cannot be within just a short period," he said, noting that Li Meng, the 27-year-old shooting guard and leading scorer, was selected as the most valuable player at the 2010 FIBA Under-17 World Championship.

"So we really have to thank all the people who helped us along the path, including the older generation who paved the way for us," he said.

Discussing China's young players, Yao, who himself spent years playing in the NBA, said that the Chinese Basketball Association has always encouraged them to go abroad.

He noted that seasons of the WNBA and WCBA are different, and there are also basketball players in other countries who play in the United States in summer and in their own countries in winter. But when the national team needs the players, they should decide and a plan should be made, he added.

China's performance at the tournament received a great deal of attention from Chinese people both at home and abroad, especially as the final coincided with the country's National Day. Chinese flags were waved in the Sydney Superdome while the national anthem resonated in the stadium, giving people an illusion that the team was playing on their home court.

According to Yao, such positive exposure of the team would be good for development of basketball at home.

"What we should do is to take advantage of such social attention, and put forward a plan for our future growth," he said.

Yao added that China should review and analyse their performances, summarizing both their experience and the problems shown in the matches.

"We should see that we are at similar level with Australia, and France are also close to us. There are also some strong teams in Europe who are not here, so we really need to calm down," Yao said.