'Brave Dragons" has the ingredients of a farce: larger-than-life characters, unexpected plot twists and don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out-moments.
It stars Boss Wang, the megalomaniac owner of the Shanxi Brave Dragons of the Chinese Basketball Association. The path to success, he feels, is to emulate American-style play, and the best way to instill that spirit is to hire a former NBA coach.
Bob Weiss had a respectable though unspectacular career as an NBA player and coach and in 2008 was looking for a job. But he had no idea what he was getting himself into when he agreed to go to China. During the season, Boss Wang promotes him from consultant to coach, demotes him, and then, in one 24-hour period, promotes him back to coach, demotes him again and then "re-promotes" him.
But "Brave Dragons" is not just a humorous look at culture clash. Author Jim Yardley sees basketball as a metaphor for China's relationship with the rest of the world.
The country was subjugated, exploited and humiliated by a series of Western powers and Japan, setting up an ambivalent feelings toward outsiders -- both distrust and a desire "for some historical score setting."
Weiss ran "into the hard invisible wall of Chinese culture. His expertise was to be exploited, but also contained."
Politics of an authoritarian regime, bureaucrats more interested in protecting their jobs than in advancing basketball and an inferiority complex about the abilities of Chinese athletes all served to complicate life.
