Ironically, the basketball team is staying at the same hotel in Guangzhou as the soccer squad, which is preparing for its opening 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifier against the Maldives on Sept 10.

The heavy reliance on ex-NBA players in China's domestic league, especially in playmaking positions, has failed to develop a world-class talent pool for the national program and there is no successor to Yao on the horizon.

The current team's backbone is 31-year-old forward Yi Jianlian, the only veteran of the 2008 class, who will likely end his international career if the squad fails to qualify for Tokyo.

Joining Yi in the paint as supposedly the team's twin pillars, 7-footers Zhou Qi and Wang Zhelin, who were selected by the Houston Rockets and Memphis Grizzlies respectively in the 2016 NBA Draft, have been huge disappointments-both overpowered by international rivals in the same position.

The only impressive performer in China's backcourt, young guard Guo Ailun, displayed his immaturity after getting fouled out in the defeat to Poland and scoring only one point against Venezuela.

Yao, an eight-time NBA All-Star and Basketball Hall of Famer, has been rolling out radical reforms to revamp the game's outdated governance, expanding the talent pipeline out of the State-run system while professionalizing the league operation since he took over the CBA leadership in early 2017.

"We have so much to do to make things right in every aspect of the game from the bottom up," said Su Qun, chief editor of Basketball Pioneer newspaper.

"Rather than condemning how bad they perform this time, we'd better get down to business to keep pushing the reforms on all fronts."