According to the official news of the Taiwan Basketball League Kaohsiung Iron Man, the team is about to sign Zhou Yixiang. The announcement reads: Zhou Yixiang will fly directly from Beijing to Japan and meet with Chinese Taipei on the 22nd of this month to participate in the 2023 Basketball World Cup qualification tournament, and then return with the team. At present, Zhou Yixiang has reached a signing consensus with the Kaohsiung Steelers, but the specific details are still being discussed and negotiated.
This also means that Zhou Yixiang officially left the Beijing men's basketball team and bid farewell to the CBA League, and the CBA career basically ended in "dismal".
Zhou Yixiang was selected by Nanjing Tongxi with the second overall pick in the 2017 CBA Draft, and played 32 times and started 17 times in his first season with the CBA, averaging 3.5 points and 1.2 rebounds in 17.4 minutes per game. In the second season, he was loaned by Nanjing Tongxi to the Xinjiang men's basketball team to play 45 games, averaging 4.9 points, 1.5 rebounds and 1.2 assists in 20.5 minutes per game.
From the beginning of the 2019-20 season, Zhou Yixiang played for the Beijing men's basketball team. In the first two seasons of Shougang, Zhou Yixiang played 41 games in each season as a major rotation player, and averaged more than 16 minutes per game. This season, Zhou Yixiang's playing time has been severely compressed, only playing 7 times, averaging 6.3 minutes per game and not scoring 1 point.
Zhou Yixiang in Beijing team is gradually marginalized is not difficult to understand, after Shougang introduced Li Muhao and Fan Ziming's inner twin towers, the team paid more attention to the screening of small foreign aid in terms of foreign aid, and this season signed Jeremy Lin, Gibson and Brown three small foreign aides. Coupled with the local Fang Shuo, Liu Xiaoyu and other former national players, the joining of Raymond, Tian Yuxiang and others also occupied a lot of playing time, the Beijing team's defender line is slightly bloated, and Zhou Yixiang's playing time can only be continuously compressed.
Zhou Yixiang's departure also means that Beijing general manager Qin Xiaowen's signing three years ago ended in failure, when Zhou Yixiang had just reached the finals with Xinjiang in the 2018-19 season, averaging 10.8 minutes per playoff game, contributing 2.8 points, 0.5 rebounds and 0.9 assists. The Beijing team had hoped that Zhou Yixiang would play an increasingly important role in the team like Lin Zhijie, Liu Zheng and Chen Yingjun, but it turned out that Qin Xiaowen had made a mistake.
Now back in the Taiwan League, Zhou Yixiang is about to become a teammate with former NBA champion Bennett. I hope that in the Kaohsiung Iron Man, Zhou Yixiang can prove himself again, after all, he is only 31 years old now.