The Beijing Ducks team headed for Qingdao, one of the two cities that will host the remainder of Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) league matches, on Monday with its players eager to return to games.

"We are grateful for the restart of CBA, we have been training so hard," said Beijing Ducks guard Jeremy Lin. "Let's keep fighting and do our best on the court."

"Qingdao, we are coming! It's so exciting that the CBA league is about to restart! We are ready!" Zhai Xiaochuan, Beijing Ducks forward, wrote on Weibo, a twitter-like platform in China.

With Ducks' head coach Yannis Christopoulos unable to return to Beijing due to current restrictions on international travel, Xie Libin, assistant coach of the team, will take charge of the Beijing Ducks for the rest of this season.

"During the preparation in the past four months, everyone was disciplined. We work together and keep training. Now we are ready to embrace the challenge," Xie said.

China's basketball league will resume on June 20 after nearly a five-month hiatus due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

To prevent the spread of the COVID-19, matches will be played behind closed doors in a championship format after the resumption.

Qingdao, in east China's Shandong province, and Dongguan, in the southern province of Guangdong, have been selected as the hosts for the remainder of the league.