HANGZHOU, China (AP) – Forty years ago, former basketball star Bill Walton made a decision he still regrets today. His UCLA college team was invited to play an exhibition game in China in 1973, the year it won its second national title with Walton, and he decided not to go. The rest of the team then stayed home, too.
“I said I didn’t want to come,” he said. “I didn’t know any better. I was wrong.”
On Saturday, the men’s basketball teams from the University of Washington and University of Texas will do what Walton chose not to: play a game in China, halfway around the world from their college campuses.
It won’t just be an exhibition, either. They’ll contest the first-ever regular season college basketball game in China, the first of perhaps many for U.S. university teams as they try to tap into a new market for their sports – and their schools – in the world’s second-biggest economy.
“The opportunity that these young people have to come to this country … (it’s) an opportunity that I sadly turned down,” said Walton, who will provide commentary for ESPN’s live broadcast of Saturday’s game in the U.S. “It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”