15 May
Yi Jianlian Rumors
All NBA Players
#0
Yi Jianlian
Position: -
Born: 06/21/91
Height: 7-0 / 2.13
Weight:229 lbs. / 104.3 kg.
Earnings: $14,085,936 ($16,668,191*)
Born: 06/21/91
Height: 7-0 / 2.13
Weight:229 lbs. / 104.3 kg.
Earnings: $14,085,936 ($16,668,191*)
Search Google for “Yi Jianlian chair” and there are tens of thousands of results. The chair became a running joke in Bill Simmons’s writings and podcasts, and the then-ESPN columnist even went so far as to bestow Yi with a nickname that stuck: “Chairman Yi.”
The thing is, the chair workout almost certainly never happened, which means that the video almost certainly never existed. I’ve spoken with numerous scouts, execs, players, trainers, and media members, and not one remembers ever actually seeing the clip. I’ve obtained the broadcast-once, now-lost TV program in which the chair workout was allegedly aired, and it’s not there. No matter how sure you are you’ve seen the clip, you haven’t.
Even Larry Harris, the GM of the Milwaukee Bucks, was dubious of the video’s existence: “I had heard about it, but never followed up on it because I find it hard to believe that anyone in any NBA front office would not take a guy solely because he scored on a chair.”
Simmons claimed that he first saw the clip during the broadcast of an ESPN NBA Draft lottery show, but no one had been able to either locate that video in the subsequent years, and no footage of Yi posterizing a chair has ever surfaced. The footage’s disappearance has naturally spawned various conspiracy theories, including one that blamed the Chinese government for its removal.
Four basketball stars will lend a hand at Sunday’s Official Draw Ceremony for the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 Qualifiers taking place at the landmark Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China. Former USA and NBA superstar Scottie Pippen, Australian scoring machine Andrew Gaze, Russian great Andrei Kirilenko and China national team stalwart Yi Jianlian will help determine the fate of the 80 teams competing in four regional qualifiers played across 6 qualifying windows between November 2017 and February 2019.
09 Nov 16
