Action taken over China-Brazil basketball brawl
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The Chinese Basketball -Association yesterday suspended and fined national team coach Bob Donewald Jr, the manager and three -players for an on-court brawl with the Brazil national team during a friendly match.
Donewald was required to pay 50,000 yuan (US$7,500) while the team manager Zhang Xiong and player Zhu Fangyu had to pay 30,000 yuan respectively.
The team members, plus players Ding Jinhui and Su Wei, who were fined 20,000 yuan each, were also suspended from training.
The CBA has also sent a letter of apology to the Brazilian Basketball Association promising severe punishment for head coach Donewald and for the players involved.
The General Administration of Sport has instructed the CBA to apologize to the nation for the incident while the International Basketball Federation told the Oriental Morning Post that further penalties will be delivered after an investigation.
The men's national team suspended training on Wednesday while Donewald, who was on a leave in -Shanghai after the match, returned to Beijing to discuss the situation with CBA.
However, Donewald has said the match opponents were not the real Brazilian national team.
Chinese media has discovered that none of the team on court on Tuesday play in the United States' National Basketball Association, despite Brazil having exported a number of its top-tier players to the United States. These players usually play for the country's national team during international tournaments.
According to Xinmin Evening News, a business partner of the CBA invited a club team to play the warm-up on behalf of the country, allegedly with the approval of the BBA.
Reports claim the Brazilian team played aggressively from the start and Donewald says he considered the game as useless as a warm up and might have even led to Chinese players getting injured.
"We didn't want to pick a fight, but we had to protect ourselves," Donewald said on Sina.com. "One of our players was sent to hospital with concussion. Their (Brazil) -behavior is unprofessional, this is not a national side, only a club team."
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