Chinese basketball fans will be following the NBA draft on Thursday night to see where Zhou Qi lands.
Zhou, who declared for the draft in April, is a 7-foot-2, 218-pound prospect who played in the Chinese Basketball Association this past season for Xinjiang. He averaged 15.8 points, 9.8 rebounds and 3.2 blocks per game.
While fans may be tempted to compare him to Yao Ming, another towering 7-footer who will soon join the Basketball Hall of Fame, Fran Fraschilla, a basketball analyst for ESPN and a former college coach, said he reminds him more of Yi Jianlian, who was drafted in the first round (sixth overall) by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2007. Yi played for four NBA teams before returning to the Guangdong Southern Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association in 2012.
"Yao was big and physically developed at 7-foot-6 and weighing over 300 pounds. Zhou is just not as developed," Fraschilla said. "A better comparison would be Jianlian. When Zhou physically matures, he can become a productive role player in the NBA."
Fraschilla said Zhou's strengths include his shooting skills. "He has above-average agility for someone his size, and his wingspan gives him a defensive presence," noted Fraschilla. "He can shoot well to about 18 feet out (from the basket), and that's always impressive for a big man."
Zhou's slight build provides a dilemma for NBA teams, said Fraschilla. "He has a thin and underdeveloped body, and that poses the question of whether he can hold up for what is a long NBA season," he said.
Still, Fraschilla said most NBA talent evaluators have looked at Zhou, who played on China's national team. Although some media outlets have speculated Zhou could be drafted late in the first round, Fraschilla sees him going to a team in the second round.
"He is what we call a projection pick. You are not taking him for where is now, but where he can be in four or five years," Fraschilla said.
Fraschilla said the success that the New York Knicks had with Kristaps Porzingis, a young (20), tall (7-foot-3), lanky Eastern European (Latvia) who was the fourth overall pick in last year's NBA draft, bodes well for Zhou.
"Porzingis has a similar body type to Zhou, and yet he held up in his rookie season. This is someone that Zhou can model himself after," Fraschilla said.
Porzingis appeared in 72 games and played about 28 minutes a game for the Knicks while averaging 14.3 points per contest.
China's most successful NBA player has offered Zhou some advice.
"We have been in touch," Zhou said at the NBA Draft Combine, according to the Associated Press. "He shared a lot of his experience with me, mainly about training. I observed (what he did) when he came here back then; he told me of what he went through when he came, such as things to which to pay attention, and that the competition here can be tough."
