There's only one reason Ma Jian is attending college in the United States, and that's to play basketball. An education? Fine, but he's got one, thank you. Basketball is what he really cares about, and he doesn't know enough to keep quiet about it; doesn't know that it's not politically correct to say his sport is more important than his schooling.
He's come halfway around the world from his home in China to play basketball, a game he learned from pictures in an American book. After years of delay, China's communist government set its 6-foot-71/2, 220-pound prodigy free last year to continue his education in basketball. This summer he is finishing his degree at Utah Valley State College, where he's majoring in English and hoops. Next fall he will enter the University of Utah."My dream," he says. "Want to play best basketball. Want to play NBA. Just work hard."
It hasn't been easy to pursue his dream. UCLA coach Jim Harrick spotted Ma first, and it took five years of wrestling with the Chinese government before Ma was allowed to leave the country. Because of his poor English, Ma wasn't admitted to UCLA, so Harrick tucked him away at UVSC, hoping to get him back in the future. It didn't work out that way.
Ma, who is completing his junior college degree in one year - half the normal time - hoped to sign with UCLA this spring but couldn't meet the admission requirements in time. He turned to Utah but almost wasn't admitted there, either. The Utes offered him a scholarship, but on June 3 the NCAA ruled him ineligible. Twenty days later the NCAA called back to say he was eligible after all.
Ma will have two years of eligiblity at Utah, where he should fit in nicely. Aside from the Clinton administration, there has been no greater equal-opportunity employer than the Utes, whose lineup in recent years has included inner-city blacks, Utah farm boys, a Canadian-Jamaican, a Tongan, an ex-convict, a fatman, a little man, Prop. 42s, junior-college transfers and former church missionaries.
And now they have a 23-year-old student from Shijiazhuang, China. Ute coaches say they are forbidden by NCAA rules to discuss Ma, but here's what is known about him so far. At UVSC last season, he averaged 17.9 points, 5 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game and shot 81.6 percent from the foul line - and to listen to him you'd think he barely broke a sweat doing it.
"Easy," he says of his year at UVSC. "My score, my rebound, my pass - team leader. Really not work hard. So relaxed."
Confidence is not a problem here.
Defense, rebounding and intensity are other matters.
"He had a tough time with the competitive style of play in this country," said one UVSC official. "In China, there are no leagues, no championships. Winning and losing are not factors. It's just not real competitive. It's just for fun."
Imagine that.
"It's been interesting to see their concept of basketball," says UVSC assistant Scott Pace. "In China, it's not important to play defense. And it didn't matter who lost."
Other considerations have seemed to matter more to Ma. In one game last season, he had 27 points with several minutes still remaining in the first half and UVSC ahead by 12 points. Then a teammate told him to pass the ball. Ma thought he was being perceived as selfish and that his teammates were mad at him. He took only a couple of shots the rest of the night and scored just one more point. The Wolverines lost.
"We begged him to shoot in the second half," says Pace. "He said, `No. Pass the ball. I no shoot.' He was more concerned about feelings."
Ma's one and only season of American basketball was made all the more difficult by the language barrier. His English was so spotty that the Wolverines required an interpreter on their bench for half the season.
"It was a problem, getting him to understand what we wanted him to do," says Pace. "We had an interpreter, but that loses something in the translation."
Sometimes the interpreter would relay a message from coaches to Ma on the court, only to have Ma yell back, "Coach, he (the interpreter) doesn't know what he's talking about." There simply were no Chinese translations for screening down.
On another occasion, coach Duke Reid yelled to Ma to spread the offense. Ma obeyed: He called timeout.
If he's a little rough around the edges, Ma is certainly no project. Big and strong, he is blessed with exceptional quickness and athletic ability. He can leap, run, shoot from anywhere on the court and handle the ball. Ma played part of last season at point guard and some at off-guard, but was moved to forward because he lacked the knowledge of the game to play outside.
"He'll help Utah," says Reid. "We were the ones who took the gamble. He didn't understand the game. There were times when I had to say, `Hey, Ma, we invented the game. We know how it's played.' He didn't realize how good the ball here was. I think he's competitive now, but not as much as others he deals with. But it may come out over a 30-game schedule."
"Thing I have to learn is work hard," says Ma. "Sometimes too easy, too relaxed."
That's probably because Ma rarely played against players of his size or ability in his homeland. When he was 8-years-old, his father gave him a basketball book. He couldn't read the text, but he could study the pictures, which is how he says he learned the fundamentals of shooting, dribbling and passing. At 13, he began playing organized basketball, and soon he was being groomed for China's national team and attending a sports school.
"Look like army," he says. "Sleep before 10. Wake up at 7. Sometimes no holiday. Just practice, practice, work hard."
Ma, who attended college for two years before coming to the U.S., played in the 1992 Olympic Games and then finally was allowed to leave China for the U.S.
"They (the government) don't like people to leave," says Ma. "They give me a chance to improve my basketball. Learn more things."
"There's a lot of pressure on him to be the first Chinese in the NBA," says Pace. "He's the Michael Jordan of China. Everyone knows who he is."
In the meantime, when he's not shooting hoops, Ma studies English and adjusts to life in America. He doesn't care for American TV (a waste of time) or American food ("I go to restaurants, or cook myself. I cook not very good, but I'm hungry."). But he's happy with the people and the freedom and the chance to go to bed and wake up as he pleases.
Ma says he misses his family, but that could be partly remedied in the future. His younger brother, Ma Ming, 21, is 6-foot-7 and he wants to come to the U.S. and play in the NBA . . . .