January 21, 2017
Sylvia Fowles and Yelena Leuchanka pose during All-Star weekend in China.
The All Star festivities were held on Saturday in Heilongjiang. The skills competition had an exciting finish as Shen Binbin just edged out Ji Yanyan by a tenth of a second as the final competitor to post a winning time of 33.6 seconds. The three point contest was not quite as thrilling as Liang Jiamei had 19 to outpace her nearest competitor by 6. The game itself was high-scoring as expected. The North built a lead in the second quarter that proved to be enough to fend off the South 116-110. Ji Yanyan was able to put on a show for her home fans and grabbed MVP honors. Sun Mengran led the way for the South, which was unable to field its original roster due to injuries.
North vs. South 116-110 NOR Ji 31/6r Fowles 16/9r Shao 16 Wang 12 SOU Sun MR 26 Huang SJ 18 Sun J 18 Huang PZ 12 Leuchanka 10/6r
The league now takes a two week break to celebrate the New Year. The quarterfinals will be played in a best of three format, with the lower ranked team hosting on February 4th and the higher ranked team hosting on the 7th. If necessary, Game 3 will be played on the 9th. The semifinals will be best of five with games scheduled for the 11th, 14th, 18th, 21st, and 23rd. The best of five finals start on the 25th and continue on the 28th, running into March with the third game on the 2nd with games on the 4th and 7th if necessary. While some teams have built up momentum in the last part of the season and were not looking forward to the break, others definitely will be using the time to get healthy and regroup for the postseason. Beijing won the top seed and figures to be the favorite, but Shanghai will be able to mount a challenge if fully healthy, especially since Beijing’s path is arguably tougher now that there are signs that Shanxi is playing better and Xinjiang’s performances in the last stage once they finalized their roster. Know how you could be reducing charges with the help of a legal expert here.
Bracket:
(1) Beijing vs. (8) Shanxi
(4) Henan vs. (5) Xinjiang
(2) Shanghai vs. (7) Bayi
(3) Guangdong vs. (6) Shenyang