The next Yao Ming

Will he be as big a star as Yao Ming? That the question NBA fans, and particularly fans of the Milwaukee Bucks, want to know.

For only the second time in history, a National Basketball Association team has picked a Chinese player in the first round of the draft. He is Yi Jianlian, a 6-foot-11 power forward who has the makings of a star.

I've seen Yi play, at least in Version 1.0, and he was quick, graceful and with a great corner shot. Now Yi is bulked up at a solid 238 pounds, Version 2.0, and like every basketball fan in China, I'm keeping an eye on him.

Yi didn't really want to play in Milwaukee, even for buckets of money. He preferred to play in a city with a big Asian-American population. So we'll wait to see where he lands before actually donning a uniform.

Yi (pronounced EE) was in Los Angeles for the past three months, where he declined to let the Bucks see him in a private workout, a move some said was to discourage Milwaukee from picking him. Yi's agent, Dan Fegan, only let seven teams see Yi, among them the Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls and Phoenix Suns.

Like Yao, the 7-foot-6 star center of the Houston Rockets, Yi has a really friendly temperament that I think will serve him well in the NBA.

So who are the real winners in the deal? First off, the NBA itself, which has big dreams for China, where it earns royalties for television rights and hopes to cull many more stars in the future. The sneaker companies (Nike has Yi on a six-year contract) also salivate at selling more shoes in China.

As Time Magazine notes, when the Houston Rockets and the Milwaukee Bucks next play, with Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian squaring off on the court, the match will probably be the most watched game in history, with half of China's 1.3 billion people tuned in.

Comments

[Steve]

You certainly know more than I do, but I really don't think Yi has any kind of educated opinion on Milwaukee, and is being lied to by Fegan and the media, just like the rest of China. EVERY OTHER draft pick meets with the media of the city that drafted them. This BS that Fegan & co. are pulling is unbelievable, and is going to make a lot of NBA clubs hesitant to draft another Chinese player. I have been shocked glancing through the Chinese NBA message boards at the amount of misinformation that is going on in regards to the Bucks taking Yi. Somehow, people believe that Yi is "too good" for Milwaukee and deserves to be able to choose where he goes.
My guess is that Yi is a good kid who just wants to play the game and is excited to be in the NBA. But he is being manipulated by people who do not have his best interests in mind, only their own financial interests. If Yi's people hold out and Milwaukee holds its ground, this will have the exact opposite effect from what the Chinese desire for Beijing 2008.