WATCH: Fanbo Zeng NBA G-League Debut with 7 pts, 8 reb, 20 mins. He’s being called the next Yao Ming. Meet the internet-famous Chinese basketball player with ‘off-the-chart skill level’
Fanbo Zeng made his NBA G-league debut with the Ignite in Des Moines against the Iowa Wolves. Zeng played 20 minutes and scored 7 points on 3/8 shooting. 1/3 from 3-point. Also had 8 rebounds and 2 block shots. Had a +9 point differential, highest among his team.
The future of Chinese basketball speaks near-flawless English, devours Chick-fil-A spicy chicken sandwiches whenever he gets the chance, and doesn’t want to hear arguments about why Michael Jordan was better than LeBron James.
“LeBron is the GOAT,” said Fanbo Zeng, a 6-foot-11, 197-pound combo forward who recently de-committed from Gonzaga to sign with NBA G League Ignite — a developmental team created last year to provide elite prospects an alternative to college basketball.
On a sunny Thursday afternoon at Ignite’s Walnut Creek headquarters, Zeng had just finished shooting a video with a website that specializes in luxury sneakers. One of Ignite’s big draws is the increased marketing opportunities that come with being a professional.
Though Zeng isn’t as prized by NBA scouts as teammates Jaden Hardy, Michael Foster, Scoot Henderson and Dyson Daniels, he might have a bigger following. Zeng’s Instagram inbox is filled with messages from Chinese fans who hope he can become the next Yao Ming. Still three months shy of his 19th birthday, Zeng is poised to announce a lucrative shoe deal.
China-based companies hardly care that the COVID-19 pandemic has kept him from playing a competitive game in nearly two years. In the more than decade since Yao retired, China — the NBA’s top overseas market — has been desperate for someone, anyone, to replace Yao as a global name.
An estimated 300 million people play basketball in China, but just six Chinese players have reached the NBA, with Yao the only one to have carved out a notable career. Zhou Qi, a second-round pick by the Rockets in 2016, is the lone Chinese-born player drafted since Yao retired. A 7-foot-1 center who lacked strength, Qi looked overwhelmed in 19 games with Yao’s old team before he returned home.
Unlike Princepal Singh, who was on Ignite last season largely for the media attention he brought the NBA’s efforts in his native India, Zeng is a top prospect. With a 6-11 wingspan, soft touch around the rim, smooth shooting motion and impressive vertical leap, he was a four-star recruit at Windermere Prep outside Orlando before he flew back to China when the school shut down in March 2020 because of the pandemic.
Zeng’s dunks have received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Ignite head coach Jason Hart has barely watched him practice with the team, but he saw enough from Zeng in individual workouts to reserve a significant rotation role for him.
“He’s extremely talented,” Hart said of Zeng, who arrived in Walnut Creek less than three weeks ago. “He’s a multi-skilled forward with an unbelievable shooting touch. He has an off-the-chart skill level. I’m very excited.”
NBA officials are, too. China has been a top priority for the league since at least 1987, when then-Commissioner David Stern offered to let China Central Television broadcast games for free. In ensuing decades, China blossomed into the NBA’s most important revenue source outside the U.S., with more than 200 employees in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.
This fruitful relationship plunged into crisis two years ago, when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver refused to fire then-Rockets general manager Daryl Morey after Morey tweeted in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. By producing another Yao-level star, China would help ease any lingering tensions between it and the NBA.
Many Chinese people acknowledge that their country relied too long on Yao’s legacy, overlooking issues with a state sports system that hurt its basketball development.
Unlike the U.S., where players are weeded out in youth teams, high school leagues and colleges, China has athletic schools that recruit players as young as age 4. Officials long chose children based almost exclusively on size, but height doesn’t predict basketball greatness — especially in an era when the top professional leagues are trending toward a position-less style that emphasizes speed and skill.
At the Olympic qualifying tournament in Victoria, Canada, in July, the Chinese national men’s basketball team lost to Canada and Greece by a combined 55 points despite a distinct height advantage over both opponents. Chinese fans hope that Zeng, who attended high school stateside instead of continuing his youth program in Beijing, offers a model the country’s other top young players can follow.
Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
The only child of two former professional basketball players, Zeng grew up idolizing Yao in Harbin — a city in northeast China known more for winter tourism than sports. At age 11, he moved by himself more than 750 miles southwest to Beijing, where he shared a dorm room with a teammate and trained with the youth clubs of the Chinese Basketball Association’s Beijing Ducks.
After three years there, Zeng was among a small group of Chinese teenagers selected to attend the United States Basketball Academy — a program that allows Asian-born players to study English while acclimating to America’s grassroots system. For the next 12 months, Zeng learned the nuances of help-side defense and off-ball movement in a rural central Oregon gym that had a banner of his role model, Yao, hanging over it.
One of USBA’s directors connected Zeng with Windermere Prep, a school in Lake Butler, Fla., that houses about 100 Chinese boarding students. As a 15-year-old freshman, Zeng spoke little English, second-guessed his on-court decisions and struggled with opponents’ physicality.
But as the months passed, he began to feel more comfortable. Friends met with Zeng at a breakfast spot each Saturday morning to discuss classes, movies and basketball. When Zeng felt homesick, Windermere Prep head coach Brian Hoff consoled him.
“The pressure on him as a teenage kid is unlike anything that any of us have probably experienced,” Hoff said. “It’s a little bit unfair. But at the same time, Fanbo is a very mentally strong kid. Every time I talk to him, I encourage him to just continue working on his game and block out the noise.”
By Zeng’s sophomore year, he was one of Florida’s top players — a versatile forward who shot 47% from 3-point range, averaged 2.6 blocks per game and stockpiled offers from college basketball’s blueblood programs. When the pandemic forced Windermere Prep to shut down that spring, Zeng, like many of the Chinese boarders, headed home.
What was supposed to be a month-long visit became a year-and-a-half stay. Unable to fly back stateside because of travel restrictions, Zeng completed his high school coursework online, communicated with college coaches over email and trained with the Chinese national team.
Though he verbally committed to Gonzaga in November, he began to reconsider when assistant coach Tommy Lloyd, the Bulldogs’ primary recruiter for him, became Arizona’s head coach in the spring. Zeng’s agent contacted NBA G League President Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a former Cal and NBA forward who offered Zeng a six-figure contract to reclassify to the 2021 class and sign with G League Ignite.
Many NBA scouts believe it was the right move for Zeng — not just because he can better capitalize on his global appeal as a pro, but because he’ll have a better shot at significant playing time. Gonzaga has perhaps the most loaded frontcourt in college basketball, and it viewed Zeng as a three- or four-year project. Ignite coaches consider it their job, however, to showcase Zeng and give him a chance to get drafted next year.
For that to happen, he must add considerable muscle and excel against grown men in the G League — all while shouldering the expectations of NBA officials and the world’s most populous country.
“I can’t represent all of China,” Zeng said when asked how it feels to be China’s next great basketball hope. “It’s too big for me.”
Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cletourneau@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @Con_Chron
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