Live Bar, September 14 -chinese women’s basketball player Li Yuelu was interviewed and talked about the upcoming Women’s Basketball World Cup.
Q: After returning from WNBA and joining together with the national team, how is your joint training with the team?
A: For the first time this year, I went to WNBA to play games. The playing time was relatively small, and the training there was relatively small. So when I first came back, my physical condition was not particularly good. I am actually familiar with the techniques and tactics when I come back now, because everyone has been playing together for many years, just saying that my personal physical condition has been slowly recovering. So far, it has recovered a lot.
Q: During WNBA, did you pay attention to the training of women’s basketball and communicate with coaches and teammates?
A: Because we are actually synchronized, which is the day when I set off for America and the day when China started training women’s basketball. I have contact with several of my teammates and the coach. Maybe more contact with the coach is that the coach keeps me in good condition, no matter what the competition situation is, I also hope that I can show my most efficient performance in a short time. Then the communication with teammates may be more about what they have practiced recently and which step they have gone through now, and then they may tell me that the training technology is the main stage, at that stage, I found male players to accompany me, and then they would tell me how far the next stage went.
Q: How do you feel about getting the support of the national team to play in WNBA during the training preparation?
A: I think this opportunity this year is actually quite lucky. In the end, I was able to go to WNBA and catch the last bus of this year. I think this year is a very important year for me, because after I felt it, I had different insights and laid a foundation for me to play WNBA later. This year is more about adaptation, and next year you can better participate in the team’s culture and atmosphere, including the performance of the stadium. At present, the team particularly supports us, and everyone strongly supports us to go to this matter, including director Zheng, saying that we hope to learn, because she thought there would be more progress when we came back from learning.
Q: What help will the experience of WNBA bring to your participation in the World Cup?
A: I just watched some videos of the team some time ago, including listening to the teammates talking about the previous games. I think from the two competitions we two participated in, I feel that the team has made great progress at this stage, that is to solve some problems that existed before, and then constantly discover new problems. I think this is the current progress of our team. Then I think the difficulty we are facing is that when we are not here, our team is actually used to the off-line playing method, then after we come back, we will combine them into our two internal lines to fight. That is, the current time is still relatively short, and our conversion is not particularly good. There are some interruptions in the connection. But now the coach is also catching this problem.
Q: Will you meet your teammates or opponents in WNBA in the World Cup? What do you need to do in position 5?
A: When I was in the Sky team, I was in different positions with these two Belgian teammates, so we may not really match when playing Belgium. But because we were in a group with Belgium in the Olympic Games last year and this World Cup was in a group with them, the two sides actually knew a lot about each other, what we need to do is to firmly implement what we already know on the court and implement the coach’s intention. As for what help I can give to my teammates, I think the analysis given by the coach to the opposing players during the Olympics has been particularly comprehensive, which is more comprehensive than watching them play on the court when I was in the Sky team, at that time, I had already known deeply. We may see who will play better on the spot when the next World Cup matches.
Q: Did you set a small goal for yourself to participate in the World Cup this time?
A: The goal of the team is definitely to surpass us in the last session (we advanced to the top 8 in the 18th World Cup and finally won the 6th place), that is, we will certainly do better than the younger ones. My personal goal must be to play a higher competitive level, because it has been almost 4 months since I went to WNBA, I always felt that I didn’t really show my best performance. So I want to do what I can do well and show it to the world. I can actually do better.