Mengke Bateer's Second Career Only Slightly More Absurd Than His First

If you picked one name you never thought you'd hear again, 90 percent of you would say Mengke Bateer. A short-lived NBA career has given way to an acting career. By "acting" we of course mean murder with coconuts.

Bodyguards and Assassins premiered last month, a big-budget Chinese epic about Sun Yat-sen's secret meeting to overthrow the last imperial dynasty. And when you need a seven-foot monk, who're you going to call but Bateer, he of the 3.4 ppg and 2.5 rpg?

Bateer makes his triumphant entrance at about 2:00 in this scene, killing a dude with his hat. After that it's just coconut after coconut, chucked at the head of the would-be assassins. Finally, a climactic coconut dunk. You get the feeling if the NBA used coconuts instead of basketballs, he'd still be there.

Eventually, he's stabbed about a million times, and must leave the court because of his open wound. But this is magical realism Chinese cinema, and it's not nearly enough to kill him.

Bateer's apparently racking up quite the acting resume in China, as the fine folks at ShamSports point out with helpful publicity shots. We couldn't be happier for him. We'll always have a soft spot for the man who averaged one block for every 100 minutes.

Mengke Bateer Is A Coconut Wielding Homicidal Badass [ShamSports]