Sept. 10: Guangdong Only Team Among 19 CBA Clubs Without Registered Foreign Players; Spanish League First-Team Forward Bozic Reportedly Set to Join

On September 1, 2026, the CBA official website updated the first batch of foreign player registration lists. Among the 19 teams, only one team had a blank foreign player section: Guangdong Southern Tigers.

With less than 40 days before the regular season begins, the team that has been among the title contenders for many years has still not finalized any foreign player for the new season. Three weeks later, European sports media Basketball Sphere released a report saying Liga ACB First Team forward Luka Bozic is set to join Guangdong.

The report, which has not been confirmed by the club, has almost redefined how the outside world views Guangdong’s entire offseason recruitment strategy.

The reason the news quickly sparked discussion in Chinese basketball circles is not only because of a new name, but because it points to a reality Guangdong has avoided for months: after targets including Morand, Brown, Yurtseven and Moses Johnson all failed to materialize, Guangdong has finally shifted its focus from a pure center position to another role.

Choosing Bozic means new head coach Nenad Jakovljevic’s tactical blueprint is becoming the key standard for recruitment.

Guangdong officially announced Jakovljevic as head coach on August 25, 2026. The Serbian coach, who has coaching experience with Red Star Belgrade and Virtus Bologna in Italy, later told European media: "I do not want a center who can just protect the rim, but a center who can pass and cut, adding a European team passing style on top of Guangdong’s existing identity."

Bozic averaged 16.2 points, 6.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists for Granada in Liga ACB during the 2025-26 season and was selected to the ACB First Team. His skills, including elbow playmaking, pick-and-roll passing and off-ball cutting, fit the forward profile required by a European passing system.

From this perspective, if Bozic ultimately joins, he would not only fill a foreign player slot, but also become the first concrete choice reflecting the new coach’s tactical intentions.

However, this path also has opposing signals. Guangdong finished fifth in the league with a 27-15 regular-season record last season and lost 1-2 to Beijing Shougang in the playoff quarterfinals, exiting in the top eight for the second consecutive season. In that series, Guangdong allowed 52.7 points per game in the paint, the highest figure in the past five seasons. The biggest weaknesses on both offense and defense pointed to the same area: center.

Against this background, signing a forward first rather than prioritizing the interior creates a clear debate over priorities. As of now, Guangdong has not released any official announcement regarding Bozic. All information comes only from European media reports, and the contract amount, medical progress and whether a deal has been officially signed cannot be confirmed.

Guangdong is not short of money. The club’s publicly disclosed annual net profit in 2025 reached 80 million yuan, and the new season’s foreign player salary cap corresponds to a 4.5 million US dollar allowance, leaving sufficient financial space. The bigger obstacle is more likely the rules. The 2026-27 CBA foreign player rules made major changes: the simultaneous registration limit for each team was reduced from four players to three, and the total number of registrations during the season was reduced from eight to six. Released foreign players cannot join other CBA or NBL teams during the same season.

This means Guangdong has no room to "sign first and test later." Every signing must be highly suitable, and a wrong choice would carry a much higher adjustment cost than in previous seasons. Team media previously quoted management as saying: "There is no rush to bring in foreign players for the new season; they must completely fit the new foreign coach’s system, and quality is more important than quantity."

Under the hard limit of six registration opportunities, this statement carries a completely different weight than before.

From the roster structure perspective, if Bozic arrives, the first chain reaction will occur on the wing. Guangdong’s current domestic wing rotation includes Cui Yongxi, Zhou Peng, Huang Mingyi, Zhang Hao and Zhang Haojia. Zhang Haojia scored only 8 points combined in two recent Guangdong-Shenzhen warm-up games and made 1 of 7 three-point attempts, exposing the shooting stability issue of the mid-generation wing group.

If Bozic takes a core wing rotation role, Zhang Hao and Zhang Haojia’s playing time will be directly reduced. With players under 25 accounting for more than 60% of the roster, this competitive pressure could accelerate internal reshuffling. Hu Mingxuan holds a D-type maximum contract and is the absolute core of the backcourt. Bozic’s playmaking ability could partly reduce the pressure on him when facing double teams, but there is currently no game data proving whether this partnership will work in official competition.

Compared with other teams’ pace, Guangdong’s recruitment progress appears particularly slow. Liaoning announced on August 28, 2026 that Cooper, Edwards and Chris had all arrived, giving the roster a head start in preparation. Meanwhile, during Guangdong’s 2025 offseason, all four foreign players were registered 30 days before the regular season began.

The difference in offseason pace essentially reflects a restructuring of the process after changes in the decision-making level, rather than simply a matter of negotiation speed.

Returning to Bozic himself, he started all 34 Liga ACB games in the 2025-26 season, averaging 29.1 minutes per game, with a 51.1% two-point shooting percentage, 81.7% free-throw percentage and a 24.3 efficiency rating among the league’s top performers. He played seven games for Croatia in European World Cup qualifiers, scoring in double figures six times and averaging 12.4 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.6 assists.

These numbers show he has produced consistently in top European leagues and international competitions, but Liga ACB and the CBA are completely different environments. There is no confirmed information in the available materials about whether his three-point shooting can adapt to CBA defensive intensity or whether he can maintain turnover control under high physical pressure.

The reality facing Guangdong is that according to team reporters, Samner’s contract extension negotiations have reached a definite result and he is likely to stay, meaning the small foreign guard position is basically secured. If Bozic is successfully registered, Guangdong’s three-foreign-player structure will begin to take shape, but whether the third player will continue to be a pure center remains unresolved. Names such as Thon Maker and Duop Reath have appeared in media reports, but none have been officially confirmed. With two of the six registration opportunities already used, Guangdong has little room to reverse course.

The key question in the entire event is whether the Bozic report represents real progress in recruitment or a routine agent move to raise a player’s market value by using Guangdong’s name. Evidence supporting the former includes Jakovljevic’s system needs, Guangdong’s urgency as the only team without registered foreign players, and the strong match between Bozic’s skills and the new coach’s style. Evidence supporting the latter includes the lack of official confirmation, missing contract details and Bozic being in a transfer window around a contract year.

Both possibilities exist. Before Guangdong releases an official announcement, any statement saying the deal is "already confirmed" goes beyond the current facts.

What can be confirmed is that Guangdong’s offseason is no longer the old model of "finding players while competing." The combination of a new management team, new foreign coaching staff and new rules has turned every foreign player decision into a system-level choice. Whether Bozic ultimately arrives or not, this clue has already put Guangdong’s tactical direction for the new season on the table: they do not just want foreign players who can score, but players who can make the entire team move.

The next clear milestone is the CBA Club Cup, where Guangdong will compete with its current domestic roster. It will be the first test of the new coach’s system integration. Three working days before the regular season begins, the foreign player registration window will officially close, and Guangdong’s three-foreign-player list will be revealed.

Before then, all discussions about Bozic can only remain within the limits allowed by the evidence.

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