Why China's Yi counts in the NBA draft

NEW YORK - Yi Jianlian is going to be big. Really big.

Everyone is counting on it: the National Basketball Association, the Chinese Basketball Association, his agent Dan Fagen, and even the William Morris Agency.  Of course, the team that will draft the Chinese seven-footer Thursday night has a stake in his success as well.

It can be argued that no player in the draft, held at New York’s Madison Square Garden, is as big as Yi (pronounced “Ee”, as in “Big E”).  At a listed 7-feet-1-inch, he is as tall as anyone else in the draft, but that’s not the issue.  Others may be more talented, like Ohio State’s Greg Oden and Texas’ Kevin Durant, but none can affect the league’s long-term future as much.

How much?  On Friday morning China time, tens of millions of Chinese fans will be sitting in front of their television screens, watching the live feed of the NBA Draft on CCTV state television and no doubt talking about it later on the league’s Chinese language Web sites. 

David Yang, the NBA’s senior director of international operations and a Beijing native, thinks that the addition of Yi will be a big plus for a league already comfortably ensconced in the Chinese consciousness.

“Yi is a very prominent Chinese basketball player, who will have a positive impact on Chinese basketball as a sport and given the population, this will be a huge boost for the NBA,” said Yang, then adding in a bit of understatement, “I think it is very positive from the league’s perspective.”

It’s not as if the league needed a lot more help in China.  With a weekly TV audience of 32 million people, and 300 million Chinese playing basketball, Yi’s arrival is the latest manifestation of a wildly successful NBA marketing campaign.

Yi will be the fourth player from China to enter the NBA, but only the second with any marquee value.  The most successful, 7-foot-6-inch Yao Ming, was a no-brainer for NBA teams.  He had excelled on the international stage prior to joining the Houston Rockets in 2002. His height and his skill set as a traditional NBA center made him a very rare commodity.  Once the Rockets won the draft lottery that year and were guaranteed the first overall pick in the draft, Yao was the easy choice.

Yi, on the other hand, is more of a mystery.  He doesn’t have Yao’s talent or height, is only 19 and could be taken anywhere from No.3 by the Atlanta Hawks to No. 13 by the New Orleans Hornets.  Fegan, who has a reputation in the league as a skilled manipulator of  NBA general managers, has limited Yi’s exposure.  He has not allowed him to work out against other NBA prospects, only in controlled settings.  He has not allowed him to workout beyond the Home Depot Center in suburban Los Angeles — even forbidding him from playing pick-up games around Southern California.  And he has (mostly) limited Yi’s workouts to teams from cities with large Chinese and Asian populations.  Milwaukee, Memphis and Minnesota, all of which have high picks, can’t get in the door.

The Chinese government supposedly wants it that way. The decision to let Yi join the NBA was not an easy one.  He is the biggest star in the CBA by far. 

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