NBA Finals Viewing Party in Beijing

By Alan Paul

I wrote about the NBA’s Game 3 viewing party in Beijing for my NBC blog.

That pretty much tells the tale but I need to give a special shout-out to my man Xu Kai, an NBA fanatic who chose Wallace as his English name — because of Rasheed Wallace.

“You know him?” he asked me, pulling out his wallet, to display a Sheed Trail Blazers card.

“Do I know him?” I exclaimed. “Dude, I work for SLAM.”

“I love SLAM! You run many articles on Rasheed.”

“Yes, and I wrote some of them myself,” I said.

His eyes grew wide and we exchanged a somewhat awkward high five.

“Listen,” I said, “anyone who names themselves after Sheed deserves to be on Slamonline. You’re in!”

So a big thumbs up from the SLAM nation to Wallace Xu of Qingdao, China, currently studying anthropology in Beijing.