NBA begins expansion into China

October 12, 3:00 PMAsian-American Sports ExaminerMichael Street

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Yi Jianlian, the latest Chinese star/njnets.com

At halftime today in the game between the exhibition Nets-Heat game being played in London, David Stern wlll announce the NBA's first substantial step into China. The league and AEG--which owns the Beijing arena, along with London's O2 Center, the Staples Center, and more than 90 arenas around the world--will work together to design, build and run twelve arenas in China. 

This is the first step in creating an NBA-affiliated league in China, something the league has long looked to do, and a move that will capitalize on the game's growing popularity in China's rapidly expaning middle class.

The NBA is becoming a worldwide game, with European stars like Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli making the Spurs one of the league's greatest teams. Yao Ming's entrance into the NBA in 2003 signaled the newest basketball frontier, China.

Even in a global recession, the basketball market in China is booming, and the NBA had to capitalize on the excitement from the recent Beijing Games to make its announcement. The China-US Olympic basketball game was said to have had the largest television audience in history, and over 1.6 million Chinese fans watched the NBA last season on one of the 51 networks that carry its games.

Significantly, the announcement also comes three days before the NBA China Games, the basketball-themed sporting festival that will open with a preseason game between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Golden State Warriors. It will be the first sporting event in the arena that hosted the Olympics, and the first NBA game ever played in Guangzhou Province.

Of course, this matchup was meant to feature Yi, China's newest and second-greatest NBA star, but it was set up before the trade that sent Yi Jianlian to the New Jersey Nets. That the announcement about the new arenas is being made during Yi's overseas game in London, at an arena that is owned by AEG, is no coincidence. It's the closest that Yi will get to playing in his native China this year, and a stark reminder of how the league's best-laid plans can be undermined by the simple day-to-day operations of its constituent teams.

Such roster changes will no longer matter in an NBA-branded Chinese league where most, if not all, of its players will be Chinese, and where fans can follow local stars, hoping they develop to the level of Yao and Yi. It's an exciting time to be a Chinese basketball fan, and the twelve new arenas should be completed in the next two years, with games beginning soon afterwards.