Beijing's 8-0 Start Has a Star Guard Asking for More
The Beijing men’s basketball team has opened its Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) season with eight wins from eight games, the latest a 120-88 home rout of Ningbo. The scoreline suggests a team already in midseason form. The man running the offense says otherwise.
“I can’t say we’ve reached 100 percent or 90 percent, and I shouldn’t define it,” guard Barry Brown Jr. said after the win, according to a report on Hupu. “We’ve only played eight games. I know there’s still a lot of room to grow.”
The CBA is China’s top professional basketball league, and its season runs through the winter, with teams playing a long regular-season schedule before the playoffs. An 8-0 start is a strong statement, but it is also the kind of streak that invites a question: is Beijing genuinely better than the rest, or has it simply met the right opponents at the right time?
Brown’s answer leans toward the second. He described his own form as the product of repetition and support rather than a sudden leap. “I just keep practicing, plus the belief my teammates and coaches give me,” he said. “I think we really have done well. We have to keep supporting each other, keep playing, keep training, and it will get better and better.”
The win over Ningbo followed the pattern of a team that is comfortable but not complacent. Beijing built a large lead and never let the game tighten, yet the postgame talk was about habits rather than highlights. That tone matters in a league where a fast start can mask problems that only surface against stronger opponents.
For a global audience, the appeal of this story is not a single box score. It is the contrast between a perfect record and a player’s insistence that the record flatters the process. In a league that often struggles to explain itself to outsiders, that kind of honesty is a useful window into how a top team thinks about its own progress.
Brown also touched on the adjustment of playing in China, a theme that has become familiar among foreign players in the CBA. His message was less about culture shock than about routine: practice, trust and the slow accumulation of confidence. “We just have to keep doing what we’re doing,” he said.
The next test will come soon enough. Eight games is a small sample in a long season, and Beijing’s schedule will eventually bring tougher matchups and tighter margins. Until then, the team’s biggest asset may be the same thing Brown keeps repeating: a refusal to call eight wins a finished product.