Get Yi Out of My House!

In a not-so-surprising move by Yi's former Chinese basketball team, they are attempting to block his move to the Milwaukee Bucks, which was threatened before the draft by both the team and his agent team, as I recall.  They stressed private workouts only in Los Angeles, and said that he could only go to the Bulls and Golden State.

Yi, taken by Milwaukee with the sixth selection in the NBA draft last month, would "definitely not" play for Milwaukee, Tuesday's Beijing News quoted Guangdong Tigers chief, Chen Haitao, as saying.

They cite the depth chart as the cause for concern, but truthfully it's likely the minute Asian-American community that really ruffles their feathers.

Chen expressed concern that Yi would have trouble getting playing time with the Bucks, whose squad boasts Australian 7-footer Andrew Bogut and a number of other tall young players.

The only way this relates to the Bulls is as a possible second or third team involved with moving him to a different squad.  I would be curious to know how much they would stick to their Bay Area or Chicago choice, but at this point those may not be options anymore.  Our frontcourt has a lot of depth, but if we traded Noah and someone else(Sweetney?) for Yi, then that could work out for his team officials, though in my mind Tyrus or he can never play Center, and so he's a backup unless he unseats Tyrus, which at the moment seems difficult to do.

I don't know much about the team's rights, but this is straight out of the Eli Manning bag of tricks, and that worked out poorly for the guy, so I can't imagine that they want him just anywhere else, they probably have someplace in mind.