The Chinese men's national basketball team won both of their first two games under head coach Aleksandar Djordjevic as they beat Kazakhstan 71-59 and Iran 86-74 in south China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region last week.

The results of the two games don't matter much to China, which already qualified for the FIBA Basketball World Cup. They are more meaningful to the team and the coach in the sense of testing their new squad and style of playing.

One of China's biggest problems in the past four years was the lack of size and physicality in the two forwards positions. Djordjevic tried to fix that by recruiting more forwards and had the team invest more efforts in enhancing their defensive aggressiveness, especially in pressuring the opponents' ball-movement.

This transition worked well in the competition against Kazakhstan as China limited their scoring to only 22 points in the first half. China had 11 steals and forced the opponents to commit 21 turnovers, which enabled China to score many easy points in fast break and lay the foundations for the victory.

However, Chinese players failed to extend their defensive intensity through out the game. As they grew slower in rotations from the third quarter, Kazakhstan had more open shots, especially from downtown, with simple extra passes. As a result, China were in an unfavorable situation in the final two quarters.

China's offensive flaws were also irritating. The team missed 36 of their 61 field goals (FGs), including going 6-for-23 at the 3-point line. Zhang Zhenlin, Zhou Peng, Zhu Xuhang and Zhu Junlong combined to shoot 1-for-15 behind the arc. When they couldn't space the floor like modern forwards do, they made it increasingly difficult for the team's guards and centers to work in the paint.

China's playmaking was very rough too. They only delivered 11 assists at the cost of 16 turnovers. Djordjevic's team builds their offense on screen plays between guards and big men. China's centers, Zhou Qi, Wang Zhelin and Hu Jinqiu, are not good at setting screens that can creat room for the ball-handler. Neither does Zhao Jiwei or Guo Ailun shoots to kill off the dribble at the 3-point line.

China did better on the offensive front against Iran as they shot better field goal (FG) and free throw rates. The team's ball-movement grew smoother as the players became more familiar both with each other and with the new system.

Nonetheless, the Chinese national team lost their defensive concentration. Iran didn't have a solid orchestrator, but the team kept stealing buckets with smart backdoor cut-ins. If it weren't for Zhao's explosion in the fourth quarter, China could have lost this game.

Djordjevic began coaching the team only three months ago. He hasn't had enough time to help players understand his concepts well yet. Judging by China's performances last week and the clips of their previous training sessions, players are trying to absorb the new knowledge and have made some progress.

However, what the team has done by now is far from enough from turning them into a group that is competitive enough to make a difference in the World Cup, which begins in six months. Djordjevic can recruit the right players for the team and tell them what are the right things to do on the court, but he can't make the players set screens in the right way, drain shots from the outside or make free throws. Those are fundamentals professional players have to master on their own.