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Where EAST meets the Northwest
THE NEXT YAO? Yi Jianlian was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks as the sixth pick overall in the 2007 draft. Yi (#9) wrestles for position under the basket with Nick Collison of the Sonics. (AR Photo/Andrew J. Weber)
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #51 (December 18, 2007), page 9.
Chinese basketball star Yi Jianlian plays first game in Seattle
By Andrew J. Weber
Rising seven feet tall with a muscular and athletic build, Yi Jianlian stands out everywhere he goes. Even on a basketball court he draws an exceptional amount of attention, just as he did on the night of Friday, December 7, when the Chinese star played his first game in Seattle.
Yi has been remarkable for a long time, already reaching the height of 6’4" and towering over his friends and classmates when barely out of grade school. With two former athletes as parents, including a 6’5" father, he was a natural fit for basketball. A professional scout discovered him on a Shenzhen playground, and soon he was training with the Guangdong Southern Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association.
His career developed quickly and he earned Rookie of the Year honors in 2002-03. Through the next four years he led the Tigers to three championships, and by the time he left the league he held the all-time record for dunks by a Chinese player.
The young giant was attracting attention from NBA scouts across the Pacific as well, but bringing Yi to the U.S. was going to be complicated. Under current NBA rules, players must be at least 19 years old in the year they are drafted, but Yi’s official age was under dispute. Some credible evidence suggested he was several years older than his official biography claimed, a fabrication perpetrated by the Chinese to allow him to play as an international junior when he was actually too old. This only highlighted the difficulties dealing with Chinese authorities, who hold a tight rein over their athletes and would have to agree to any potential deal with an NBA team.
Nonetheless, Yi was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks as the sixth pick overall in the 2007 draft, the first international player chosen. After initial complications, including a stated desire not to play in Milwaukee, Yi eventually signed with the team.
His path to the NBA had been blazed in previous years by Yao Ming, the 7’6" center who joined the Houston Rockets as the first overall pick in the 2002 draft, as well as the largely-forgotten Wang Zhizhi, another seven-footer who signed with the Dallas Mavericks in 2001. Although Wang rarely played and soon went home after a short and mostly unremarkable career, Yao’s rise to fame as a perennial all-star is well-known worldwide. It is surely in his footsteps that Yi would like to tread.
At home in China, he’s already well on the way. Yao and Yi met in an NBA game for the first time on November 9, a monumental event for Chinese fans of the game. Although the NBA did not give an official estimate of the audience, most commentators believe that between 100 and 200 million Chinese viewers tuned in, a phenomenal number showing the vast potential market China represents for the NBA. For comparison purposes, the Super Bowl, generally considered the most-watched sporting event in the U.S., usually draws a TV audience of less than 100 million (Nielsen Media Research).
In the historic match up, Yao recorded 28 points and 10 rebounds, while Yi had 19 points and nine rebounds, his best performance of the season. Yet it was Yao’s Rockets who walked away with the victory, 104-88.
Yi surely hoped for a better outcome when he visited Seattle a month later for a game against the Sonics. Milwaukee had a pedestrian 8-9 record, although one that would be coveted by the struggling Sonics, who were only 4-15. An interesting subplot was that Seattle passed on selecting Yi with the fifth selection in the draft and took Jeff Green instead. Green is developing into a serviceable professional, but so far Yi had been the better player.
It was the Sonics’ emerging star Kevin Durant, however, who proved the player of the game, recording 35 points and leading the Sonics to a 104-98 victory. Yi played 30 minutes, scoring 13 points and grabbing four rebounds, average statistics for him but not enough to prevent the loss. Nonetheless, it was certainly a pleasing performance to all the fans who had come to see him play. He might be big at seven feet, but for this giant, bigger things are sure to come.