So this happened on Saturday night in Shanghai - Yunshan Stadium is a thirty minute cab ride from my apartment. I had free tickets, so I threw on my Sean Lampley jersey and headed over to watch two Cal players go against each other (Max Zhang and Roger Moute A Bidas) along with a lot of other Pac-12 players I had never heard of. (No seriously, the only ones I knew were Andrew Andrews from UW and Devonte Lacy from WSU).
The game began - and Max was dominant. I am not kidding. He's gotten a lot bigger than when he was at Cal - and he's not exactly athletic, but he's strong and he's very agile, especially considering his 7'3" size. He was killing the Pac-12 centers in the post, and then catching the ball at the high post and attacking (yes attacking) the rim. In the second half, he even threw in a combination over the head cross over Euro-step to draw a foul. He had 23 points and was the second leading scorer for the Shanghai team. Despite what the media releases said, it wasn't exactly the Shanghai Sharks - it was the Shanghai team. The members of which are also the Shanghai Sharks, except no foreigners (or a foreign coach). This is the team that represents Shanghai during the National Games.*
*This is a cool concept where each of the provinces plays in an Olympic style games against each other. Of course in the US, it'd be all Texas, California, Florida dominated, but I think the idea is interesting.
It was difficult to get too much of a handle of Roger Moute A Bidas and his game - he's super athletic and made a couple of nice shots (scored 8 points) but the Shanghai team was really bad at defending, wasn't very athletic and had some terrible fundamentals - no one boxed out and the Pac-12 came from slightly behind to win because they (especially Jordan Loveridge) were relentless on the offensive boards. Moute A Bidas looked athletic and smooth and composed on the ball and running the break and he missed a huge alley-oop due to some sketchy defending from the Shanghai team.
Here's some photos. I don't know the players well enough to tell you who is who, but Roger Moute A Bidas is 5 and Max Zhang is 23 on the Shanghai team.
Here's the box score.
As to the actual impact the Pac-12 is having here in China, I remain highly dubious. There may have been 2000 people in the gym . . . maybe. It was being webcast, but I don't think there's just that much interest in US Collegiate athletics in the US. From my understanding, Chinese basketball fans want to watch Lebron, Kobe, Derrick Rose, Steph Curry, etc. They can't even be mussed to show interest in say Joe Johnson, Bradley Beal, Andre Drummond, or Kemba Walker - all of whom are measurably better than anyone in the Pac-12 (right now). If actual pro games can't generate interest, I'm not sure* that college basketball can - especially for fans with no geographic or alma mater rooting interest.