The Chinese Streetballer Who Can’t Stop Battling NBA Stars
In the US and Europe, knowledge about Chinese basketball can be boiled down to a few household names and age-old stereotypes: NBA All-Star Yao Ming, Jeremy Lin’s 30-game scoring onslaught (Linsanity), and videos of Chinese toddlers displaying insane dribbling skills while dancing to a corny Mandopop beat.
But for many average Chinese practitioners of the sport, 33-year old streetball legend MoreFree (aka 吴悠 Wu You) has long been a household name.
For the past fifteen years, the Beijing native has dedicated his heart and soul to bringing basketball to the people, organizing high-intensity streetball tournaments that deliberately stray from the format of a professional league basketball match; no over-priced ticket fee for the audience, which spills onto the four lines of the court, creating a doghouse-type atmosphere; games are short and snappy, with a high turnover of players, many selected from the audience; either MoreFree or some other smooth-tongue friend of his acts as the MC, riling up the crowd and providing comic relief when necessary; fouling, physical play, and trash-talking are all implicitly endorsed.
Throughout the year, MoreFree’s tournaments tour the nation but “Sunset Dongdan”, a weekend tournament held between May and July in east Beijing’s Dongdan Courts, is indisputably recognized as the best.
MoreFree’s 2017 Sunset Dongdan mixtape:
In short, these tournaments are incomparably more entertaining than a Chinese Basketball Association game, which many young Chinese tacitly boycott in favour of the NBA. MoreFree’s status as the face of the non-professional Chinese basketball world has made him a nation-wide celebrity, but also a source of controversy. A consummate student of the game, MoreFree is constantly striving to become a better basketball player, including challenging scores of NBA players to one-on-one matches – which most of the time he loses.
This has got him roasted by many netizens, who seem befuddled at MoreFree’s persistence in battling these heavyweights. Moreover, in a culture where modesty is held up on a pedestal with chengyu’s like “Modesty leads to progress, arrogance makes you drop behind”, many see MoreFree’s swagger as a sign that fame has gotten to his head. Some have even spread rumours about MoreFree being a fuerdai, or the spoilt son of a rich household.
Meanwhile, the past few years have seen an increasing number of international basketball tournaments and gurus linking up with MoreFree and the Chinese streetball culture that has grown in parallel to his own fame.
Take Paris’s Quai 54, an international streetball competition known for attracting the best talent from around the globe. In 2015, MoreFree led a team of Chinese streetballers in what was China’s first participation in the tournament. They got smacked by the experienced Spain, but China won the crowd. Go to 5:55 and 6:10 to see MoreFree whiz his way past two 7ft tall Spanish big men playing in the second-best league in the world, the Spanish ACB:
The next year, renowned basketball trainer and founder of the viral 10000HOURS basketball documentary series, Devin Williams, travelled with MoreFree to Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, looking for the most talented and hard-working streetball players. This 1-hour documentary is a testimony to the global power of basketball, as LA native Williams discovers China and its people by sharing with them his love for the game.
Meanwhile, MoreFree has delved into pockets of American streetball culture, which have also been poetically captured in long-form documentary:
With all these contrasting impressions, we decided to catch up with MoreFree after a workout to understand the man behind the Chinese grassroots basketball scene.
How did you become so passionate about basketball?
My father and grandfather are both soldiers, so our family lived inside a military compound, and we had our own backyard where my cousins put a makeshift basketball hoop. My father and all five of my older cousins were big fans of the sport, and when the military compound organized basketball tournaments they would participate as the “Wu Clan”.
In the beginning, I didn’t get their passion for the game; when I was watching cartoons, they’d switch channels to watch NBA, which annoyed me, I thought it was weird they liked watching black men jumping up and down on TV; every summer, they would put a sound system outside and hoop to the Michael Jackson tunes - it was really noisy and it scared me away. They didn’t really want to me to play anyway because I was so much shorter than everyone else, even the girls in my primary school class.
How did you discover streetball and bring it into China?
Unlike basketball, streetball was love at first sight. When I first saw Nike’s “Hip Hoop” freestyle basketball ad in 2001, it was like I a whole new world had opened up before my eyes; they were doing all these crazy tricks, it was surreal.
At the time, I thought my handles were pretty sick, but after seeing this ad, basketball suddenly seemed just as magical as the Wuxia novels I had read as a kid. That summer, when the “Hip Hoop” ad played every day at 6pm, I would glue my eyes on the screen, snapshot one trick with my memory (there were no iPhones or handy recording devices at the time) and immediately go off and practice it. By the end of the summer, I had mastered about 70-80% of the tricks and everyone in the military compound knew I was into this new thing called “streetball”, along with the music and fashion associated with it; hip-hop, long baggy shorts, low-top socks, shooting sleeves, headbands, etc.
When winter came, I participated in a basketball-spinning competition on Beijing TV’s Sports channel, Dreams Come True (梦想成真) and won first place (my finger hurt like hell though). After I won, the producers let me perform a streetball sequence for the crowd, which was lit; I showed off all the “Hip Hoop” moves I studied that summer to the sound of hip hop music. To most of the crowd and people watching at home, my performance represented their first encounter with streetball, let alone a Chinese streetballer.
I became a celebrity in school, not just because I had been on TV, but because my prize was a PC, an exotic luxury at the time. Now that I had the Internet, I quickly found a magazine that came with a Video CD of the Hip Hoop ad; I could now constantly replay the ad on my PC, even study it in slo-mo, which really helped my development.
But that winter, I was in for a second revelation: AND1 [MoreFree is referring to the American sneaker brand’s streetball tours that began in 1999. Every year, AND1 would put out a streetball summer mixtape featuring the best plays from the yearly tour around America ]
These hoopers weren’t simply streetball performers, they would use streetball to get past defenders in a game, humiliating them, breaking their ankles. I thought this was even cooler than the “Hip Hoop” ad. With all this inspiration from the US’s streetball movement, I worked out every day; that year my body and skills developed at its fastest rate ever.
The next year I participated in another TV show called The Road to Gold (金牌之路). This time, I was part of a seven-man basketball team selected from over 100 applicants from the country. All eyes were on me at the time; my other teammates weren’t as outspoken as me, plus I was the only one in the lineup representing streetball, so the crowd took a liking to me; there were also a lot of people who cursed me out.
But besides fame, the competition also helped my game. We mostly played 5 v 5 matches which helped me get used to playing in a more formal setting; it also got me noticed by the coaches of Beijing Sports University, which became a lifesaver because my gaokao score was pretty mediocre so there weren’t a lot of universities I could get into based on grades alone; that’s what happens when you play basketball all day.
Do you think your fame as a streetballer affected your chances of making it as a professional basketball player?
Definitely. During the ’90s and early 2000s, too many misinterpreted streetball. As soon as university classmates or coaches knew I was associated with streetball, they’d instantly profile me as someone incapable of passing, defending, or playing with any kind of fundamentals or strategy; streetballers were only into gimmicks and showboating, incompatible with professional basketball. If I weren’t labeled in this way back then, perhaps I would have made it into my university team, perhaps I would have made it onto a professional team, who knows.
Nowadays, this prejudice is slowly going away, partly because of my events’ 5×5 matches, known for their intensity, caliber, and bringing professional players onto the same court with the best amateur players or streetballers.
What are your thoughts on China’s basketball culture?
To be honest, I’ve always been leading this culture, Chinese basketball fans have always studied and imitated me; from my early days of mainly doing tricks and gimmicks, to my focus on working on fundamentals, to the concept of “elite training” I brought over from the States. This is why Yao Ming invited me to participate on the Chinese Basketball Association’s annual meeting; he understands China’s basketball culture. I’m hoping in the future my tournaments can involve the CBA in a way that creates a channel for street-ballers to build professional careers for themselves, something I didn’t have after graduating.
On a more general level, I think the way Chinese people look at basketball is still very superficial. In China, people seem to despise the underdog and worship the strong. In the States, I think it’s the opposite; over there, people would probably praise me on how someone of my height tried to compete with Chris Paul. Where I see bravery, Chinese people see an opportunity to ridicule.
In China, people just look at results rather than the actual process of becoming a basketball player. Many will look at videos of me doing high-intensity training with Devin Williams and ask “why is he doing all that if he’s not going to play in the CBA?” or “How much money can one make training like that?” With regards to these basketball fans who are unwilling to invest their time and energy into basketball, something that is so common in the United States, there is no point in me engaging with them; our mindsets are not on the same level.
I think pushing one’s limits for the sake of pushing is something more easily understood in the West than in China. I may fail to get into a professional basketball team, but why not try? At the end of the day, I don’t play basketball to make money, I play it because it allows me to appreciate life, enjoy the present, to better myself.
Do you think fellow Chinese streetballers are as passionate about basketball as you are?
I think no one in China comes close to loving the game as much as me. All the documentaries show us training really hard but the part where everyone goes off to the shopping mall and I continue train by myself has never been filmed. When we’re on tour basketball is all that I think about; the rest of my teammates will think of seeing the sights, buying stuff, that’s the difference between me and the rest of Chinese streetballers. They may be better players, but nobody loves basketball as much as I do.
Even in the States, only a few can match my degree of intensity, my thirst to win. Perhaps my understanding of basketball is different, but I always look at Kobe Bryant; he only became the Black Mamba by being as obsessive as he was about the game.
To read the full interview with MoreFree, please hit "Read more" at the bottom of this message.