Word: yao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...answer: high enough to ensure that Yi is the next big thing to emerge from China. The son of a couple of postal workers from Shenzhen, he is part of what Yao has wrought. His trail from gawky teenager growing up in southern China - he was 6'3"? by the time he was 12, when he played in his first basketball game - to the brink of stardom quietly delights the powers behind the global sports marketing machine that the NBA has become, because they helped get "The Big Yi"? (pronounced "E", a la the nickname of hall of fame forward...
...component of which is helping develop future stars, who can wear and promote the company's brands in a surging market. To the footwear companies, a player from China with the potential to play in the NBA is worth far more than his weight in gold, as Yao has shown...
That's why five years ago this month, as Yao prepared to become the NBA's number one pick, Yi Jianlian, then either 15 or 18, sweated through drills and games in a Shanghai gym, one of an elite group of players from all over east Asia. He was participating in an annual Adidas all star camp. He was a revelation, "the best player in the camp that year by far," says former NBA all star Detlef Schrempf, who now works for Adidas (which took over Reebok in 2005). These all star camps are "very important parts of our marketing...
...though, doesn't mean he's a lock to sign. The next year, in 2003, Nike invited Yi to its annual, one week "Big Man" camp, where again he impressed scouts who, as the NBA has gone ever more global, watch these camps with intense interest. Reebok had signed Yao - a huge coup in the global marketing war - but by the fall of 2003, Nike struck back and signed Yi to a six year promotional deal for an undisclosed...
...correct. Yi is the second first round pick from China in NBA history, but he won't be the last. And for the sneaker companies and the NBA, the more the merrier. Consider that when Yi squares off next year for the first time in an NBA game against Yao and the Rockets, that will likely be the single most watched basketball game in human history as it is beamed back to their home country. It's not for nothing that Adidas and Nike believe their commercial futures lay in China. It is, you might say, a slam dunk...