One-armed basketball kid is online wonder
Print Edition
NBA star Stephen Curry said yesterday that he wants to locate the one-armed Chinese boy whose dazzling basketball skills have gone viral online.
“Who is this kid? Help me find him! Keep doing you and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t,” the Golden State Warriors player wrote to his 4.5 million followers on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
The post was accompanied by footage of the boy bamboozling opponents with his dribbling, despite his disability.
The original clip of the 13-year-old Zhang Jiacheng has been viewed nearly 9 million times online in China — and rising fast.
“It’s the power of basketball. So impressive and inspirational!” a netizen wrote on Weibo.
Zhang later replied in a video to Curry: “I’m a big fan of you.”
Zhang’s dribbling skills, and the story behind it, became a trending topic on Weibo.
Born in Guangdong Province, Zhang lost his right arm in an accident at the age of 5, which was a tragedy for a little kid. But Zhang never surrendered to his fate as his love and passion for basketball grew stronger.
“Heart is always the strongest part of the body,” said Yi Jianlian, former player for NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, New Jersey Nets, Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks, and current Chinese Basketball Association’s all-time leading scorer.
“Your right hand has been taken away in a brutal way, but you have the best left hand. You are the real star in this game,” former CBA player Wang Jing said after watching the video clip.
Zhu Fangyu, general manager of defending champions the Guangdong Southeast Tigers, wrote on his Weibo account that the CBA powerhouse would like to invite Zhang to visit the team and watch home games.
“This is the best kid I have ever seen playing basketball,” Zhu said, noting that as soon as this season’s CBA reopens and audiences are allowed to come and watch games, they will invite the teenager.
Zhang opened an account on video-sharing app Douyin and released 15 short videos of him practicing and honing his basketball skills, which has earned him over 1 million likes in just a few days. Zhang is a fan of Kyrie Irving and he uses a poster of the dribbling master as the cover image of his Douyin account. “Give it a try, or give it up,” he wrote when releasing a video clip.
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