

Wilson Chandler of the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions, currently averaging 33 points per game in the CBA.

Now with the NBA lockout tentatively resolved, training camp and free agency are just around the corner, scheduled to begin on December 9th. Which means the likes of Wilson Chandler, J.R. Smith, Kenyon Martin and Aaron Brooks are probably wracking their brains for ways out of their contracts harder than Kim Basinger after she signed up to do Boxing Helena.

Apparently it won’t be pretty. According to Yahoo! Sports, Chinese team officials aren’t going to let their under contract players return stateside without a fight:

“They can play, get paid [in China] and return to the NBA in March,” one Chinese team official said. “Or they can not get paid, and return to the NBA in March.”

“If they think that they’re going to make things difficult, not play, create problems, what’s going to happen is that the teams will not release their letters of clearance they’ll need to sign in the NBA,” a Chinese Basketball Association official told Yahoo! Sports. “There’s no way out.”

Since the Chinese Basketball Association is a member of FIBA (Fédération Internationale de Basketball, the basketball equivalent of FIFA), the NBA would need an official letter of clearance from Chinese teams before any players under contract can sign with any NBA team.

CBA teams risk facing the forfeiture of any wins that involved NBA players, if they somehow dodge their current contracts and end up with an NBA team before the Chinese basketball season ends in March.

None of the NBA players who would be itching to return to regularly scheduled Association action are rookies, so there’s no question that they should’ve understood all the ins and outs of the contracts they signed with Chinese teams.

We used to try and get out of important tests and homework due dates by trying to give ourselves a fever, which we tried to accomplish by taking an extremely cold shower. Which we don’t really recommend doing, since it never worked. Time to get creative, fellas!



