China\u2019s teenage centre Zhang Ziyu sparked a social media frenzy after making her Fiba Women\u2019s Basketball World Cup debut against the United States in Berlin on Friday.<\/p>\n
Viral images and clips of the 2.2-metre (7-foot-3) 19-year-old towering over WNBA superstars dominated online commentary, drawing praise from US stars while exposing deep tactical divisions among Chinese fans.<\/p>\n
In her 18 minutes off the bench, Zhang presented an unprecedented physical presence, recording a team-high 13 points, six rebounds and two blocks while making nine of 10 free throws, but the Americans still secured a 94-61 victory in their Group D opener at the Max-Schmeling-Halle arena.<\/p>\n
Standing more than 25 centimetres (10 inches) taller than the tallest American player, Aliyah Boston, photos of Zhang alongside WNBA stars Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers quickly went viral worldwide, with fans joking that the match-up resembled \u201cadults playing against children\u201d.<\/p>\n
Among the game\u2019s most celebrated post-match moments was a lighthearted interaction between Zhang and Dallas Wings guard Bueckers.<\/p>\n
Smiling widely, the 1.83-metre Bueckers walked up to Zhang and used her hand to gauge the 40cm height gap between them. Zhang responded warmly by leaning down slightly, though she still towered over Bueckers by more than half a head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s teenage centre Zhang Ziyu sparked a social media frenzy after making her Fiba Women\u2019s Basketball World Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2648,3691,8198,1760,144,7983,2834,204827,354492,105153,354493,2833,99,42270,21,434,197440],"class_list":["post-837201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aliyah-boston","tag-angel-reese","tag-berlin","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-china","tag-czech-republic","tag-dallas-wings","tag-fiba-womens-basketball-world-cup","tag-gong-luming","tag-kara-lawson","tag-max-schmeling-halle","tag-paige-bueckers","tag-sports","tag-team-usa","tag-united-states","tag-wnba","tag-zhang-ziyu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}