Bayi Men's Basketball Championship Edition jersey.

Image source: Osports All Sports Photo Agency

　　If we say that people will definitely learn something from history, it is that everything that happens in history will eventually inevitably enter history.

　　Today, the Bayi men's basketball team may in fact have entered the final chapter in their CBA history.

　　The "Bayi Team" and the eight-sided banner of the league championship that have already floated behind them may also be written into the history of the Chinese professional basketball league after today.

The letters of the Bayi men's basketball team were torn off on the playing field

　　On the 18th, the 2020/2021 season CBA League began the second match day.

According to the schedule, the Beijing Shougang Men's Basketball Team was scheduled to face the Bayi Men's Basketball team at 15:30, but due to the absence of the Bayi Men's Basketball Team, in accordance with the relevant CBA rules, the Beijing Shougang Men's Basketball Team was finally sentenced to a 20-0 victory.

　　Although there is still no official statement, people know in their hearts that in the CBA arena, the Bayi team may become a thing of the past.

　　This news doesn't sound too surprising now, because various theories about Bayi's withdrawal from the CBA have been circulating in the market months or even years ago.

　　In fact, since the end of the cooperation with Fubon Group in 2018 and the move to Nanchang, the Bayi Men’s Basketball Team has been participating in the “special invitation” way.

In recent years, the Bayi team no longer has the right to pick the draft.

　　This little bit of change, as well as the continuous sluggish record in recent years, make this Bayi team seem incompatible with the hot scene of the CBA league.

　　But in fact, 5 of the 12 teams in the first year of the China Basketball Professional League were military teams.

　　In addition to August 1st, there are also the Air Force, Jinan Military Region Team, Shenyang Military Region Team, and Nanjing Military Region Team.

If you count the avant-garde teams that belong to the public security system, it can be said that the military team "supported" the league stage in the early days of CBA.

　　It was the Bayi men's basketball team that opened the fans' reverie and pursuit of this league with 6 consecutive championships.

So that in 2002, after the Bayi Men's Basketball Team missed the championship for the first time, some fans gathered outside the Bayi team bus and cried: "August 1 will always be the champion, and Liu Yudong will always be the champion!"

Bayi men's basketball team has won 6 consecutive league championships

　　However, past experience tells us that when "champion" and "forever" are used together, it is always inevitable to be sad.

　　With the development of the Chinese Basketball Professional League and the beginning of marketization, the military teams gradually disappeared on this stage. Within three years after the start of the A League, the Qianwei, Nanjing Military Region and Air Force were relegated. , And then suffered dissolution.

　　The Jinan Army and the Shenyang Army were acquired by Qingdao Double Star and Zhejiang Guangsha in 2003 and 2005, thereby completing the transformation and appearing on the highest stage of the professional league in a way that is more in line with the attributes of the CBA league.

　　In this way, it is not easy for the Bayi Men's Basketball Team to be the only seedling of the military team to fight on the professional league stage.

In particular, the talent delivery system of the Bayi Men's Basketball Team has shrunk dramatically, and the symptoms of "malnutrition" have already appeared.

　　Once, in preparation for the 7th National Games in 1993, the Bayi team transferred Liu Yudong from the Nanjing army, Li Nan from the Beijing army, and Fan Bin from the Jinan army. At that time, Wang Zhizhi had just moved from the 8th National Games. A youth team enters the adult team.

　　Liu Yudong, Fan Bin, Li Nan, Wang Zhizhi, plus the original Zhang Jinsong, Ah Dejiang and others, this is the team that later dominated the league.

Former Bayi men's basketball players gathered

　　But these talents have almost become their last "family".

　　With the withdrawal of a large number of local military basketball teams and the impact of the marketization of professional leagues, the Bayi team's attractiveness to young talents is declining.

　　And as CBA is making great strides towards professionalization and marketization, capital, personnel flows, foreign aid, fans, and market operations have formed an inseparable whole.

The Bayi team's inability to enter the market and circulation seemed out of touch with the times.

　　And if the absence and loss of the Bayi men’s basketball team on this day are defined as "the day when the Bayi team’s professional league campaign history has actually ended", looking back, when did the erosion of the "Iron Army" traces begin?

　　Is it 2002?

This year is indeed an epoch-making year in the history of Chinese basketball.

In 2002, Yao Ming led the Shanghai team to beat Bayi to win the league championship

　　In the NBA Draft that year, Yao Ming was selected as the top pick, becoming the first foreign top pick in NBA history.

　　In this year, another record of Chinese basketball was also rewritten by the "little giant"-in the finals of the A League (the predecessor of the CBA), Yao Ming led the Shanghai team to defeat the Bayi Men's Basketball Team, which became the history of the league. The second championship team.

　　Before that, in the history of the Chinese Basketball Professional League, which was born in 1995, there was only one championship team, the Army Bayi.

From 1995 to 2001, in the six years, Bayi Men's Basketball achieved six consecutive championships in the professional league.

In 2002, it was the first season in Bayi team history that ended in failure.

　　In this sense, the undefeated myth of the Bayi Men's Basketball Team is broken, or it can be regarded as the prologue to their later fall.

But if only in terms of championship, the military team immediately regained the title in the next season.

　　Is it 2004?

This year can be regarded as a milestone in the professionalization of Chinese basketball.

Guangdong won the 2003-2004 CBA League Finals.

Image source: Osports All Sports Photo Agency

　　After 9 years of exploration and development, the "Polaris Project", a Chinese basketball reform with the connotation of building a league brand and cultivating league culture, was launched in 2004, which also brought Chinese basketball reform into a new stage. The Chinese Men's Basketball League has entered a new era.

　　In the same year, Guangdong Hongyuan Men's Basketball Team, the first private professional basketball club in China, defeated Bayi Team in the finals and became the first purely professional championship team in the history of Chinese professional basketball.

Starting with this season's victory, the Guangdong team opened the Hongyuan dynasty for three consecutive championships.

All this makes this year extremely symbolic.

　　Behind the gradual rise of professional basketball clubs represented by Guangdong Hongyuan and the strides forward in the professional development of the league are the backs and the last glory of the heroes of the Bayi men's basketball team.

In the future, the wave of professionalization of Chinese basketball will gradually grow stronger and the Bayi men's basketball team may have declined.

The Bayi Men’s Basketball Team has cooperated with Fubon Group for many years, but the team’s attributes have not changed. Data picture: Wang Zhizhi and Liu Zhankun

　　Despite this, Bayi had the opportunity to keep up with the development of the league in 2005.

　　In order to meet the requirement of the Basketball Management Center that the CBA team must be an independent registered legal person, Bayi Men's Basketball Team and Ningbo Fubon Group participated in the competition.

In this cooperation, Fubon Group invested 10.2 million, accounting for 51% of the shares.

However, Bayi, which has been on a downward trend, did not seize this opportunity to embrace the market, but cooperated by retaining personnel rights and transferring operating rights.

　　Perhaps the turning point is in 2018 again.

In this year, Bayi Team ended its 12-year cooperation with Fubon Group.

The Fubon Group has always held the right to participate in the CBA.

The Bayi team also gave up the "base camp" Ningbo, which has been rooted for many years, and the well-known "Blue Devils cheerleading team" here, and moved to Nanchang.

　　Perhaps since then, the former "Iron Army" has truly become the "duckweed" with a weak foundation in the professional league.

For the next two years, they have been "borrowing" the position of Fubon Group to participate in the competition, and it was almost only sooner or later that they quit.

　　But in the 2018-2019 season after that, under the leadership of coach Wang Zhizhi, Bayi, who had only won 3 games in the previous season, raised the number of wins to double digits for the first time in more than a year, which once again aroused people's expectations. .

　　But in the end, after nearly 10 years of struggle, the Bayi Men’s Basketball Team is likely to finally bid farewell to the professional arena in 2020.

Wang Zhizhi's Bayi team once made people see new hope.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Han Haidan

　　In this way, when you try to make a precise "pulse diagnosis" for the Bayi team's disappearance in the CBA arena, you will only find that they have no absolute "doing something wrong", but people's repeated hopes fall into the air, one step Step down to now.

　　And the root cause that killed them so far has been revealed in their years of struggle.

Perhaps this is the inevitable choice of the military team in the professional arena. Either completely change the attributes like CSKA Moscow, then the connection between this team and the "military" will only have one team name; or, like eight A team chose to stick to it until the end of fate.

　　Again, it's not that Bayi Men's Basketball did something wrong.

The name of the Bayi Women's Basketball Team was also erased from the WCBA schedule on the eve of the season.

Photo by Liu Zhankun

　　After all, as early as 2003, the Bayi Men’s Football team withdrew from the professional league stage, and in the year when the Bayi Men’s Basketball Team was finally out, the still strong Bayi Women’s Basketball Team had already been written in the schedule. erase;

　　At the same time, in the 2020 Women's Volleyball Championship and Men's Volleyball Championship, two military teams have also been absent;

　　Counting that the Bayi Women's Football Team, which has been competing in the Women's League, also withdrew before the start of the season. With the abstention of the Bayi Men's Basketball Team, there is no military presence in China's three major professional leagues.

　　Someone once wrote: "People in the rivers and lakes, in the end, have to use a way of downplaying themselves to disappear."

　　The collective withdrawal of the "August 1st team" in the professional league may be a choice that must be made in the development of the league, or it is more appropriate to be called "August 1st team retreat after completing their historical tasks". .

　　Whether it is taking the initiative to withdraw or being swept ashore in the wave of marketization, in the eyes of fans, what you see is the fading back of a generation of heroes.

Screenshot of Han Shuo's personal social media

　　Just dissipating out of thin air in such a quiet way, for the Bayi men's basketball team that has created countless glory and touches for CBA and basketball fans, it is a bit too lonely.

　　But for the fans, there is nothing more to do.

　　Perhaps we can only use the six words issued by Han Shuo, who left the team this summer, to make a resounding ending for the Bayi team:

　　"Thanks, gratitude, thanks!"