Jiang Lizhang, the first-ever Chinese to own a stake in an NBA club, is planning to send homegrown basketball coaches and players to the US for training and development.

Jiang, who is also the owner of Spanish La Liga football club Granada CF, bought a five percent stake of the Minnesota Timberwolves in June, which made him the first owner of Chinese descent in the NBA. He also received minority in the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune.

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His spokesperson, Yu Yue, said that Jiang completed the ventures "out of his personal interest, as he has a strong passion for sports after working so many years in the sports marketing business in China".

"As a passionate sports fan, I'm excited to become a part of the Timberwolves and Lynx organization and honored to be the first Chinese citizen to have ownership in the NBA," said Jiang. "My goal is to bring China and this great league closer, and build the Timberwolves and Lynx fan base in our country."

After the purchases, the general manager of Shanghai Double-Edged Sports followed it up by launching a project dubbed as DEBA (Desports Basketball Alliance), which is said to be aimed to combine his "resources for the development of the hoop game" in the Far East nation.

"(The purchase of stake) is an experiment for me, a valuable experience," Jiang said, who is a well-known basketball fan in the country, as per Shanghai Daily. "NBA has a strict approval procedure."

Jiang disclosed that the idea to train coaches and players abroad came from Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor, which will become DEBA's maiden program. He also intends to familiarize the domestic teams to the Timberwolves' "talent scouting system", which he believes will become valuable in the future.

DEBA signed China's national youth team head coach Fan Bin as one of their consultants and the coach agreed the China is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to the sport of basketball.

"I watched the Olympics. Compared to Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi's era, the gap between China and other teams in the world has increased," Fan said. "I feel there is an urgent need for communication between coaches, players and their foreign counterparts. The first step is grooming domestic coaches. I'm happy to contribute to the effort."

TagsChina basketball, China basketball news, jiang lizhang, Minnesota Timberwolves, China basketball 2016