China's top basketball league has disqualified two teams from its postseason amid allegations of match-fixing.
The ruling came after the Chinese Basketball Association determined that the Shanghai Sharks and Jiangsu Dragons engaged in unsportsmanlike conduct during a playoff series last week.
The league said in a statement Monday that the Sharks and Dragons showed a "lack of competitive effort" and were "negative in competition" during their best-of-three playoff series that concluded Friday.
The teams also will be fined the equivalent of $5 million and have their general managers and head coaches suspended from the league for up to five years.
The CBA, headed by NBA great Yao Ming, initially announced Saturday that it wanted reports from both teams on their conduct during the series. Yao said Monday in a statement that the situation was "quite saddening," but stressed that the disqualifications and other penalties were necessary to preserve the league's credibility.
Fan and media attention was drawn to a last-minute, come-from-behind win Friday in Game 3 by Shanghai, which capitalized on a series of questionable turnovers by Jiangsu to reach the quarterfinals.
The Dragons led the Sharks 100-96 with 1:36 remaining but committed five straight turnovers over the next minute that helped Shanghai gain a 10-point lead. The game ended in a 108-104 win for Shanghai and a 2-1 victory in the series.
The Sharks have multiple former NBA players on their roster, including former No. 2 draft pick Michael Beasley and Eric Bledsoe, who was serving a suspension for the series against the Dragons.
The league also accused the Sharks of "negative contention" in Game 2 of the series, a 97-90 victory by the Dragons. Shanghai allegedly lost the game intentionally to extend the series to Game 3 and allow Bledsoe, who was given a four-game suspension before the postseason started, to return earlier in the quarterfinals.
Bledsoe, a 12-year veteran who played for the LA Clippers last season, tweeted Monday: "I was suspended and couldn't play fam stop acting weird."
Beasley, who also did not play in the series, said Monday on social media that he "had no involvement in the recent allegations of game-fixing within the Shanghai Sharks organization."
Beasley, who has not played in the NBA since 2019, appeared in just four games with Shanghai this season because of an injury. He wrote on Instagram that he has left the Sharks in a "mutual and amicable decision" but also said the team "failed to provide me with the necessary assistance and accommodations to properly address my injury."
The CBA's investigation into the alleged match-fixing highlighted continuing suspicions about widespread corruption in Chinese professional sports, especially in soccer.
Basketball remains enormously popular in China, mostly because of Yao's storied NBA career. That's despite a yearlong ban on NBA games being shown in the country after a team executive angered Beijing with remarks supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.