Official CBA Imports 2021 Rank by Hoopschina

Hoopschina ranked the best CBA Imports 2021

The ranked is based on Player performances in the CBA this season with some influences from past seasons if players have been in China (CBA/NBL)

Marshon Brooks is the best player in the CBA and at 137 a lot higher than Yi Jianlian at his best in the CBA which is our 99 benchmark. We see a general trend that import bigs mostly don’t help teams in the CBA win as much as guard and wing players. This is because just like the rest of the world, guards and forwards dictate the offensive game and score more efficiently. There are some imports who are worse than the top Chinese players like Guo Ailun, Zhou Qi and Hu Jinqiu, but mostly are much better overall regardless of their salaries. Overall high usage scorers helps a team win more than anything in the CBA, this is because local scorers are much less efficient than the imports which therefore doesn’t contribute to winning even if their stat sheet looks good on the surface. The 3 lowest ranked imports are players that previously played in lower level leagues in Europe which only pay about $500 a month or less, but would be top 20 players if they where Chinese and would be candidates for the National team. Both of Fujians imports have been performing well and rank in the top 15, but with only one on the court at a time they cannot help the team win due to how bad the locals are performing. We can see that import player salaries and how good they are don’t necessarily align, there are many players paid a lot of money who are bad, and a lot paid much less that are better. Finding the right player and fit for the league is more important than their market value and previous/current pay. *

Players with logos heavily transparent are players that have already left the CBA and are no longer playing. All players who played over 100 minutes this season are listed.

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