BEIJING, 18 June 2003 — Fresh from winning an NBA championship with the San Antonio Spurs, towering Chinese center Mengke Bateer is now hoping to keep his NBA career going when he becomes a free agent on July 1, his manager said yesterday.
Despite not playing in any of the Spurs playoff games or in the championship series against the New Jersey Nets, which the Spurs won on Sunday, Bateer, as Asia’s first-ever NBA champion, is eager to prove that he belongs in the world’s top basketball league.
“The Spurs have the right to give him an offer by July 1, so until then, Bateer’s future is still somewhat uncertain,” the center’s Beijing-based agent Xia Song told AFP.
If the Spurs re-sign the six-foot-eleven (2.11 meter) center to a new contract, Bateer hopes to play for the team during the NBA summer league, a league for lower-level players hoping to improve their skills, Xia said. Bateer appeared in 12 regular season games for the Spurs this year, averaging 0.8 points and 0.8 rebounds per game, but was not included on the team’s playoff roster.
If the Spurs do not sign him, it was likely that Bateer would seek to try out in the summer league with another NBA club, Xia said.
Like Houston Rocket center Yao Ming and Los Angeles Clipper Wang Zhizhi, China’s two other centers in the NBA, Bateer is committed to play for China’s national team, which is currently preparing for the Asian Basketball Championships in early September. “If Bateer plays in the Boston summer league from July 12-18, then he still can get back to China and train with the team for a month before the Asian championships,” Xia said.
