Part of the reason that the Chinese Basketball Association has sought the reinforcements of imports so much in recent years - particularly Americans, and particularly American big men - is to try to improve the physical play of a league that wants to shake its reputation of being "soft".

The following 45 seconds are not soft.




That clip is taken from the final seconds of a CBA Finals game. In white are the Guandong Southern Tigers, last year's champions, winners of five of the last six championships, and winners of the regular season title, led by former NBA players Smush Parker and David Harrison. In blue are the Xinjiang Flying Tigers, regular season runners up, led by former Bucks and Spurs signee (and D-League stalwart) Charles Gaines. As can be seen on the mercifully English language scoreboard, the Tigers (Guandong) had just beaten the Tigers (Xinjiang) 85-80 to take a two-nil lead in the series, two games away from repeating as champions.

But rather than be happy about this, Guandong forward Du Feng decides to use these final seconds of celebration to object to Charles Gaines's battling for rebounding position. After a few seconds of flirting under the basket, Feng stands up to Gaines, who stands up for himself in turn, and a man sized face-off (and near kiss) ensues.

Being stronger, Gaines is able to get Feng to back up slightly. But Feng fights back with a headbutt. It's not clear from the video if Feng made particularly painful contact, but it's clear that he did headbutt Gaines in the nose. And that was enough for Gaines to drop him to the floor.

Gaines doesn't have room to put the full force into his punch, but he clearly lands a sweet one. Du drops to the floor and looks kind of dead for several minutes. (He's not.) The court is stormed, the crowd throws bottles onto the court, Gaines is led out under police escort, and Feng escapes with only a concussion, a headache and his life. (Unless he was faking. Which is possible. He only hit his jaw.)

Gaines's punishment has yet to be determined, and will probably be severe. But are you not legally and morally justified to punch someone in the jaw if they headbutt you in the nose?


EDIT: This picture of the incident tells us two important things:

1) Gaines clearly open handed Feng's face, making it even more likely that he was faking. You don't get knocked out from pushes to the jaw.

2) Smush Parker has dreads now.