Wang Zhizhi has taken the post of Beijing women's basketball team's inside line coach on a voluntary basis to help young player Zhang Ziyu break her bottleneck for the 2026 World Cup.
Wang Zhizhi has been named head coach of the women’s national basketball team.
When the news broke, many longtime fans who’ve been following the sport for over a decade were initially taken aback—after all, he’s a figure they know all too well, and such a bombshell announcement would leave anyone needing a few seconds to process it.
This isn’t some nominal, pay-check-only position—Wang Zhizhi is the full-fledged head coach of the frontcourt at the Beijing Women’s Basketball Team’s training camp, specifically tasked with leading the team’s final preparations ahead of the 2026 World Cup.There had been absolutely no word about this beforehand; it wasn’t until the training camp roster was leaked that people in the basketball community belatedly realized what was going on.
Gong Luming personally arranged for this person to be brought in, with the primary goal of helping Zhang Ziyu overcome the current bottleneck he’s facing.This promising 19-year-old big man has just hit a bottleneck where his physical conditioning and technical skills aren’t yet in sync. With the World Cup’s grueling schedule ahead—and limited time even to adjust to time zone changes—any technical flaw, no matter how minor, will become a major weakness that opponents will target on the international stage.In China, aside from Wang Zhizhi, there is truly no one else who can refine a big man’s footwork and finishing touch with such meticulous precision.
Many longtime fans remember that this trailblazing Chinese big man—the first to play in the NBA—spent many years with the Bayi team,After the Bayi men’s basketball team disbanded, Wang Zhizhi has quietly remained within the youth development system all these years. He has never sought the limelight nor voiced a single complaint to the outside world, simply spending his days sitting on the sidelines watching the young players train.
He came this time to help out on a volunteer basis; his contract was only for six months, and his total compensation amounted to less than a fraction of the standard industry rate.Carrying an old tactical board he’d used for years, he dove right into the training gym. From controlling his center of gravity when receiving the ball in the low post to the key points of generating power when pivoting, he would drill each move dozens of times. He even dragged Zhang Ziyu along to review game footage during halftime breaks.
The stats from the recently concluded exhibition game don’t lie: Zhang Ziyu’s efficiency in finishing in the paint has improved by nearly 30 percent. He used to have a bad habit of hesitating whenever he faced defensive pressure, but now he’s able to confidently put the ball in the basket.
Veteran basketball players who have been lying low for years, young players giving their all on the front lines, and voluntary work done without pressure or coercion—it is always this quiet, down-to-earth dedication from the people behind the scenes that has kept Chinese basketball moving forward, step by step.
