Hangzhou Jingwei NBL: Fuyang Sports Center Home Debut

On the evening of December 18th, Hangzhou Jingwei Basketball Club held a departure ceremony for the new season NBL (National Men’s Basketball League) at the Zhejiang Basketball Association. In the future, they will share the home stadium of Fuyang Stadium with the Fuyang team. The professional league and amateur events have formed a dream linkage.

Hangzhou Jingwei is the fourth five-a-side professional men’s basketball team in Zhejiang Province after Chouzhou, Guangsha and Ningbo Men’s Basketball Team. Currently, the team has been formed – the head coach is Liang, a former member of Guangsha, and the biggest player is a former Shandong youth training player who won the CBA championship with the Liaoning team. Center Zhu Rongzhen, the team has also introduced a number of former CBA players, including former Guangsha team’s Reike, former Guangzhou Dragon-Lions team’s Si Kun, former Jiangsu Tongxi team’s Guo Kailun, former Shanghai Jiuji team’s Huang Xu and former Qingdao men’s basketball team Zhang Hao, etc., all have certain competitiveness.

In terms of foreign aid, Hangzhou Jingwei has signed Jordan Howard and KJ McDaniels. Howard, from Puerto Rico, was born in January 1996. He is 1.80 meters tall and was the 2018 NBA undrafted. In the CBA last season, he played for the Ningbo Men’s Basketball Team in 46 appearances, averaging 22.2 minutes per game, scoring 18.5 points, 2 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 0.6 steals, and his three-point shooting rate reached 40.1%. McDaniels was born in 1993 and once played for the NBA Houston Rockets. He is 1.98 meters tall and is a wing player with excellent athletic ability.

It is reported that the NBL is one of the four major national professional basketball leagues sponsored by the Chinese Basketball Association. Its predecessor is the Chinese Professional Basketball League (CNBA) established in 1996. Its competitive level is second only to the CBA. A total of 14 teams will participate in the 2025-2026 NBL season, which will last from December 20 to April 27 next year. The top eight teams in the regular season will enter the playoffs.

Hangzhou Jingwei’s first NBL game will be played at home in Fuyang on December 21, against the Yannan Suko Lions. Since the regular season adopts a double round-robin format, this means that the team will play at least 13 games at Fuyang’s home court.

Wang Zhigang, vice chairman and secretary-general of the Zhejiang Basketball Association, said that Hangzhou Jingwei is the only professional basketball team named after Hangzhou and the only NBL league team in Zhejiang Province. He hopes that the team will convert the scale of Jingwei into the accuracy of the court and show the new style of Zhejiang basketball in the new season.