Colorado Springs, Colorado(AP)-- The USA Men's Basketball National Team for the 2004 Olympics will have an unexpected new member. The USA Basketball announced today that 38-year-old Ju Bi-Sheng, a reporter fromTaiwan, will be named as the official team reporter. According to Jim Tooley, Executive Director of the USA Basketball, the appointment of Ju Bi-Sheng is "simply to increase our opportunity to win the gold medal, and nothing else." Tooley did not give further explanations about reasons of the appointment. Ju Bi-Sheng, a.k.a. Li Yi-Sheng, is currently a reporter of United Daily News, Taiwan. He is also a regular contributor of several other Taiwanese sports websites, including Roundballcity.com, yam.com, and NBA Taiwan (http://www.nba.com/taiwan/ ). However, Chris Wallace, former General Manager of the Boston Celtics , said that the appointment of 'Juyah', which is Bi-Sheng's nickname , is "due to Juyah's unprecedented magical power of jinx, way much stronger than the so-called Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx." " I think the only reason that the Celtics made it to the second round of 2003 Eastern Playoffs, was the prediction Juyah made right before the playoff -- he said that Pacers would win easily, but Pacers was 'jinxed' and eliminated 2-4," Wallace said. In addition, Wallace also pointed out that when Bi-Sheng praised Paul Pierce, Pierce would come up short in the very next game. "You have to admit that this Ju Bi-Sheng guy is really miraculous." It seems that Russ Granik, the Deputy Commisioner of NBA, shares the same feeling with Wallace. "Before the Final(of the Qualifying Games in Puerto Rico), my secretary showed me an English translation of an article of Bi-Sheng, in which he predicted that Argentine would have made our national team have a tough game. And you know what happened: our team won, with a huge margin of 33 points. I guess I can understand why Bi-Sheng is named as the official team reporter." Granik said. An anonymous source inside the USA Basketball said that the mission of Bi-Sheng is pretty simple: write columns praising USA's immediate opponents during the Olympic Games, and criticizing weaknesses of the USA team as harsh as possible. "With the addition of Bi-Sheng, we are confident that we will claim the gold medal again," the source said. The latest victims of Bi-Sheng's "miraculous jinx" could be Karl Malone and the Los Angeles Lakers. "Jim (assistant coach Cleamons) told me today that I should be careful about Kobe's on-court performance, because Jim was told that Bi-Sheng had just written a column commenting Kobe's game-winning shot against the Nuggets," Phil Jackson, head coach of the Lakers, said in the post-game press conference. "We took all the precautions, and told Kobe to be careful; but none of us could have forseen the knee injury happened to Karl(Malone)." Karl Malone sprained his right knee during the first quarter in the game against the Phoenix Suns. "It was in the halftime that we realized that Bi-Sheng had praised Karl's leadership in that Kobe article. So it's Karl who should have taken precautions, not Kobe. I think there are a lot of things Zen couldn't solve or explain, like Bi-Sheng's jinx." Jackson said. Due to the time zone difference, Ju Bi-Sheng cannot yet be reached for comments of his own appointment. --

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