Michael Cheng won’t play a second of basketball over the next two weeks and isn’t a member of the New Orleans coaching staff either, but he may have the most difficult job of anyone affiliated with the Pelicans at NBA Summer League. That’s because Cheng is responsible for rapidly translating the English of coaches and teammates to Chinese forward He Tianju. Under the circumstances, it’s no easy task.
“If Coach (Alvin) Gentry was coaching (the Pelicans’ summer-league team), my job is easy, because he speaks at a normal speed,” explained a smiling Cheng, the assistant manager for He’s pro team in China, the Liaoning Flying Leopards. “But Coach (Darren) Erman speaks very quickly, lightning-quick! I’d say I can only translate 65 or 70 percent of what he says, because I don’t want to interrupt practice.”
Despite that obvious challenge, He is focused on picking up the Pelicans’ playbook, which the team has begun incorporating during the first three days of practice. He (his full name is pronounced Huh Tee-ahn-joo) and New Orleans will begin game action Friday vs. Milwaukee (5 p.m. Central, NBA.com), followed by Saturday and Monday games.
“He has a good basketball IQ and just learns by himself,” Cheng said. “So far I think it’s over 15 plays. Every play has an English name – there isn’t even necessarily a signal for all of the plays, like a fist for example – so it’s a lot to remember. But I think so far he’s done pretty well.”
“So far in scrimmages, he’s been playing OK and seems to know the spacing and positions out there on the floor, the offensive and defensive play-calling,” Pelicans summer point guard Larry Drew II said. “So he’s a quick learner… He seems to be picking it up pretty quickly, so there’s no issue there.”
“We had some guys on my college team who were really foreign, but they still spoke English,” said guard Jay Hook, a product of Tulane University. “This is the first time I’ve been with someone who needs a translator all the time. It’s neat, seeing what the professional level is like, because guys come from everywhere. It’s a cool experience, because he wants to play basketball. That’s his language, basketball.”
He is often described as an accurate-shooting forward, having made 40.7 percent of his three-pointers last season in the Chinese Basketball Association. After four practices, Drew called his new teammate “a stretch big, where he can shoot a little bit, put the ball on the floor a bit.”
Erman: “He’s been really good. He has a pretty good feel for the game. He’s a physical guy and wants to learn, is eager and asks a lot of questions.”
Cheng, who is responsible for relaying those queries in English, indicated that the adjustment from the CBA to the NBA is even bigger than one might expect, from the pace of the game to its physicality.
“The physical level is way different,” Cheng said. “But He says that it’s a friendly physical. And the speed (of play) is so fast. He doesn’t know how to express everything when talking to a teammate, but everyone is very friendly, even though they just met a couple days ago. Like (Pelicans summer forward) Drew Gordon gave him a couple suggestions, letting him know how to do something at practice.”
It’s uncertain how much He will play for the summer Pelicans, but one of his objectives is to soak up as much as he can from the unique experience and improve his overall game.
“Everybody wants to be an NBA player, but you can’t just say, ‘Hey, I want to be an NBA player right now,’ ” Cheng said. “He wants to hopefully make some progress, to catch the attention from the Pelicans and have them keep an eye on him. He wants to make progress. He says as long as I get better than I was yesterday, I achieved my goal.”