Chinese Team To Bucks: No Yi For You

In the immortal words of the late great Oliver Hardy “Well Stanley, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!” The Milwaukee Bucks find themselves in one heck of a “fine mess” after reports from the Beijing News came out on Monday stating that power forward Yi Jianlian will “definitely not” play for the Bucks in the upcoming NBA season. The quote came from Guangdong Tigers owner Chen Haitao the team that Yi played for in the Chinese Basketball Association. The team owner went on to say given a choice of whether Yi will play for the Bucks or remain in China, he would definitely stay and play in the Chinese Basketball Association. The Chinese Government repeatedly warned Milwaukee not to draft the power forward, in last month’s NBA Draft because they wanted him to play in a market that had a larger Asian population. The move weakens any bargaining power the Bucks may have had in engineering a trade. If the Chinese stand firm, and Milwaukee can not work out a satisfactory trade, then the Bucks could end up with a whole lot of nothing for the sixth pick in the 2007 NBA Draft.