Former NBA All-Star D'Angelo Russell Signs with the Shanghai Sharks
Waived by Memphis ten days ago, the former All-Star guard has agreed to join the CBA's Shanghai Sharks — a signing that shows how quickly the league converts NBA castoffs into headliners.
The Shanghai Sharks have reached an agreement with D'Angelo Russell, the former NBA All-Star guard, according to a report from the team's beat reporter relayed by Sina News. Russell will play the coming CBA season in Shanghai — the league's biggest recent signing, completed while Chinese fans were still absorbing the rumor.
The path to Shanghai was fast. Memphis waived Russell on September 25, before its training camp opened, making him a free agent; ten days later he had a deal on the other side of the world. Last season he appeared in 26 games for the Dallas Mavericks, averaging 10.2 points, 2.3 rebounds and 4 assists. He was drafted second overall by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2015, made an All-Star team in Brooklyn, and turned 29 in December.
On Chinese platforms the news arrived the way transfer news now does: as a screenshot of a Hupu rumor-board post passed around on Weibo, then as a question on Zhihu asking what the signing means, then confirmation from beat reporters, and it charted on Baidu's hot board the same day. A player cut from an NBA roster on a Tuesday becoming a CBA headliner by Thursday captures the gap between the leagues' calendars — the CBA season opens as NBA camps break, so veterans on the fringe of NBA rosters look east precisely when contracts are scarce.
What the Sharks are buying is a name with genuine Chinese recognition: a one-time Lakers draft prize whose career — stardom in Brooklyn, trades, a revival in Minnesota, a stop in Dallas — has been followed in Chinese basketball communities for a decade. What they are getting, on last season's evidence, is a 29-year-old guard in decline by NBA standards but productive by CBA ones.
The club has already announced him in a white No. 1 Sharks jersey under a shark-fin backdrop and the Oriental Pearl Tower. Before he has played a minute in China, the poster is doing what imports are signed to do: putting the Shanghai Sharks at the top of the league conversation.