Players from the Guangdong (left) and Sichuan teams stand on the podium during the medal ceremony for the men's basketball final at the National Games on Nov 12. WEI XIAOHAO/CHINA DAILY

Club, city in unison

That steady flow of talent — whether toward universities, the CBA, or the national team — can ultimately be traced back to the same source, a city where the professional club and the grassroots system have grown side by side for decades.

"If you want to truly understand Chinese basketball, you must go to Dongguan," former Chinese Basketball Association vice-chairman Li Yuanwei once said in an interview. The city pairs one of China's most successful pro clubs with one of its most vibrant grassroots cultures.

Nearly every resident feels a sense of identity anchored to the sport, which has become woven into the city's fabric.

The Guangdong Southern Tigers, founded in 1993 by Dongguan entrepreneur Chen Lin as China's first privately owned professional basketball club, lie at the center of this rise.

Over three decades — and now playing in the NBA-standard Dongguan Basketball Center, which was completed in 2014 — the team has won 11 CBA titles, the most in the league's history.

"The growth of basketball in Dongguan has always paralleled the city's overall development," said Wang Chenzheng, who has spent more than a decade covering the Guangdong Southern Tigers for Dongguan Daily media outlet.

Dubbed the "world factory", Dongguan's rapid economic growth helped fuel its basketball boom. Conversely, without the club's national titles generating citywide excitement, the basketball culture might not have become so strong. "If there weren't grassroots fans who loved basketball this much, the club wouldn't have been able to take root here," Wang said.

From the start, the Southern Tigers recruited top young talent nationwide. As the pioneering generation retired, the club built a youth system in partnership with the Guangdong Provincial Sports Bureau. This structure produced stars such as Zhu Fangyu, Du Feng, and Yi Jianlian — names that define modern Chinese basketball.

"At the National Games, many players representing Guangdong may not have been born here, but almost all were developed here," Wang said.