CBA Draft first overall pick is NCAA Division I Player Ray Chen

In any professional basketball league drafts, the top selection almost always possesses a promising track record in college or in the amateur ranks that make it look like they absolutely deserve being taken first. At first glance, that doesn’t seem to be case in this year’s Chinese Basketball Association Draft, where a former US Division I hooper, who once averaged fewer than two points in a season was selected as the first overall pick.  That would be Taiwan-native Ray Chen, who’s also known as Ying-Chun Chen when referred to by his Taiwanese name.

As pointed by Redditor tangowhiskey33, Chen put up a paltry 1.7 points per game as part of the 2016-17 season roster of the Liberty Flames, a member of the NCAA Division I Big South Conference. That was Chen’s college senior season, as he spent his first four years of eligibility playing for Division II school Glen Abbey College, where had a better career average of 13.21 points per contest.

That a player who barely made noise in the US was viewed as the best prospect among all the applicants in the CBA Draft could come as a surprise for some but in all fairness to Chen, he could really play based on the video highlights we’ve culled online.

Here’s a montage of his select plays in the recently concluded William Jones Cup in Taiwan, where he led the tournament in scoring with 20.38 points per contest.

 

Source: CBA Draft first overall pick is a player who averaged 1.7 points in US NCAA Division I