Yi Jianlian ( ; born October 27, 1987) is a Chinese professional basketball player for the Guangdong Southern Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). He has also played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Milwaukee Bucks, the New Jersey Nets, the Washington Wizards, and the Dallas Mavericks. Yi joined the Guangdong Southern Tigers for the 2002–03 CBA season, and subsequently won the CBA Rookie of the Year award. In his first five years with Guangdong, the team won three CBA titles. In the 2007 NBA draft, he was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the sixth overall pick. Initially, Yi declined to sign with Milwaukee for several months before agreeing to a contract with them in August 2007. He later played for three other NBA teams until returning to the Guangdong Southern Tigers in 2012. Yi also plays for the Chinese national team, having represented his country at the Olympics in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, as well as the 2006 and 2010 FIBA World Championships. Yi played in the 2004 Olympics. Early life As a child, Yi's parents did not allow him to join a sports school, which is designed for children predicted to be future professional athletes. However, a sports school's basketball coach who noticed Yi's potential in playing street basketball persuaded Yi's family to allow him to train professionally. Hoping to sign Yi to an endorsement deal, Adidas invited him to attend the company's ABCD Camp in New Jersey in 2002, where he competed against all-American high school players. Age controversy In 2004, Yi was listed as being born in 1984 during the Four Nation Tournament, but Chinese officials said that it was probably a typographical error. Two years later, Fran Blinebury of The Houston Chronicle reported that Yi told Shane Battier he was 24 years old in an exhibition game before the 2006 FIBA World Championship, but the story was refuted by both Yi and Battier. Yi is not the first Chinese basketball player to come under scrutiny for age discrepancy, as former NBA player Wang Zhizhi had been listed as being born in both 1977 and 1979. In 2006, a senior Chinese official admitted that past youth squads had included players above the permitted age. In 2007 and 2008, Yi's date of birth was further scrutinized as being 27 October 1984, including a Chinese reporter discovering a high school enrollment form from