Word: yao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Maybe not. But Yi Jianlian had better get used to the lofty expectations. A lot of people on both sides of the Pacific are hoping that the talented 6-ft. 11-in. teenager will be the next Yao Ming. Ever since Yao electrified the National Basketball Association last season as a rookie fresh out of Shanghai, a slew of agents, scouts and shoe-company reps have been looking for a Chinese player who can follow the large--and lucrative--footsteps of one of the league's biggest draws. Yi wears size-18 shoes, just like Yao...
There are, of course, plenty of hidden treasures in the Middle Kingdom. Aside from Yao, two other Chinese hoopsters already play in the NBA: Mengke Bateer, a muscle-bound 6-ft. 11-in. reserve center with the Toronto Raptors, and Wang Zhizhi, a lithe, 7-ft. 1-in. sharpshooter with the Los Angeles Clippers. Another player, a rail-thin center named Xue Yuyang, 20, was chosen in the second round in June's NBA draft, but Beijing--rankled by his decision to enter the draft without official permission--has refused to let him test his mettle in America. So instead...
...seal the victory--and secure Guangdong's place atop the standings. Two weeks later, when Guangdong played the army team for the CBA championship, the stands were crawling with sports agents and shoe-company representatives, all fixated on the big kid on the bench. "It's partly the Yao Ming effect," said a shoe-company executive. "But Yi Jianlian is so promising we would have pursued him anyway." Yi played sparingly in the game, but he offered a fitting capstone to the season, stealing an inbounds pass in the final seconds for a breakaway jam. At the team's postgame...
...room with an uncomfortable silence, and his father smiles blankly without responding. Whatever the truth, it doesn't seem to bother Nike. The company recently beat out the competition and signed Yi to a six-figure, multiyear deal worth far more than his actual salary--and indeed more than Yao Ming's original Nike contract. Forget about that other guy for a minute. The klieg lights of stardom are already starting to shine on the kid from Shenzhen...
Then we experienced the pressure of totalitarianism. Conservative leaders in the party issued orders to expel me and two other student leaders. Fortunately, then-party leader Hu Yao Bang was an open-minded person and stopped the expulsion order. The 1989 Tiananmen Square movement was in some ways a continuation and an advancement of this first student movement, and it was not a coincidence that the June 4th movement began when students at Beijing University organized a large scale memorial service for the death of Hu Yao Bang. He had lost his leadership post for his perceived leniency toward students...