Former New York Knick Noah Vonleh took to Instagram to detail a disturbing overseas experience, one that ended with team management attempting to physically remove him from his hotel room.
Vonleh, the ninth overall pick of the 2014 draft, spent this past year with the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association. While it was a successful year on the floor (11.6 points, 5.9 rebounds in 14 appearances), Vonleh received anything but an All-Star treatment, particularly when it came to financials. Vonleh, for example, claimed that the Sharks had not paid his playoff bonus from the 2021-22 season.
"Shanghai Sharks are by far the worst organization I've ever been a part of in my career," said Vonleh, who played for the Knicks during the 2018-19 season.
Vonleh says that things started when an injury sidelined him longer than anticipated, which led to the team pushing doctors both within and outside the organization to convince him he was good to go. Even after Vonleh received second opinions from American-based doctors, the Sharks sought a way to terminate his fully guaranteed contract, doing so in late February.
With the injury claims rendered meaningless, the Sharks claimed that Vonleh was not showing up for practice. Vonleh was again vindicated when CBA representatives obtained security footage depicting him at the Shanghai facilities. With his contract nonetheless terminated went to the CBA All-Star Game in Xiamen, hoping to speak with the team's front office.
"I decided it was a good idea to go," Vonleh said. "The general manager of the Sharks was informed I was gonna be attending and was nervous and scared of what could happen. He called for a meeting at the All Star Hotel to try and get me back to the team, but the terms he presented were not in my best interest. He wanted to fly back to Shanghai together and go back with this Kumbaya story like everything was all good but I wasn't with it [sic]."
As the Sharks' season began to wind down, Vonleh continued to seek an audience with management, even planning to take less than what was due to him to create a quicker resolution. When the Shanghai front office kept avoiding him, Vonleh wound up taking in games with fans in the stands. After one such occasion, Vonleh said that the general manager sent men to his team-paid hotel room to get him to leave. He showcased one of the weapons the intruders forced through the room's peephole, an apparently adjusted coat hanger that would attempt to turn the door handle.
"The general manager tells the hotel to send people to my room to force me out of there. There’s six people coming to my room trying to break in and grab me out the room,” the 28-year-old wrote on Instagram. “They using weapons to try and break in and threatening me saying all kind of things. [sic]”
Considering his posting, Vonleh appears to be safe following his ordeal. The Indiana alum played his best NBA minutes with the Knicks, posting career-highs of 8.4 points and 7.8 rebounds during his lone tour of Manhattan. Vonleh's last NBA minutes came with the Boston Celtics in 2023 and he has also played for Charlotte, Portland, and Brooklyn.
The Sharks are perhaps best-known among American basketball fans as the team that gave rise to Chinese basketball sensation Yao Ming, the top pick of the 2002 draft.
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