Even with the shared name and the use of red, white, and blue basketballs, the new-fangled ABA has little in common with the rebel league of the '70s that gave us Julius Erving, Dan Issel, and the original incarnation of the Spurs. But you have to love a professional sports league that has, not one, but two teams from West Virginia.
On Sunday, SA's own Texas Fuel go international when they host Beijing Aoshen Olympian, a privately owned professional Chinese team that, oddly enough, successfully applied to become a member of the ABA (presumably so they could impress the fans back home by whipping up on a bunch of pro teams from the land of James Naismith.
To put things in context, Sun Yue made the jump to the Los Angeles Lakers after playing several years for the Beijing team, so you would expect these guys to have some skills. Perhaps wisely, the members of the Fuel organization are talking less about winning the game than simply giving a boost to Sino-American relations in South Texas.
The Texas Fuel take on Beijing Aoshen Olympian on Sunday, February 22 at Palo Alto College. Game time is 6 p.m.
