How the NBA Draft Looks From China
Friday, 27th June 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
Memphis' Derrick Rose (r) was drafted first by the Chicago Bulls. (Image: ESPN)
The second off-season week was a big one in the NBA, and China, where basketball and the U.S. league are hugely popular, was watching. Hours before the draft began, Guangdong-born forward Yi Jianlian was traded to the New Jersey Nets in a deal that sends Richard Jefferson to Milwaukee.
The trade looks good for Yi—he never wanted to go to Milwaukee in the first place and though the official line was that he had settled in happily, rumor had it that the rookie never got very comfortable in Wisconsin. On the other end, the Nets' new general manager Kiki Vandeweghe has been a vocal Yi fan.
When he was drafted last year, Yi initially demanded a trade, citing the lack of a Chinese community in Milwaukee. The New Jersey Nets play in the shadow of New York City, and in two years, the team is scheduled to change its name and move into a new arena in Brooklyn. New York City as a whole is home to 374,321 Chinese-Americans and the Chinese population in Brooklyn alone is 100 times that of Milwaukee's. The Nets' new arena is an easy subway ride across the East River from a Chinatown that the city's government claims is the nation's biggest. There doesn't seem to be much for Yi to complain about this time around.
But Chinese NBA fans' interest extends beyond their countrymen. To get some answers about what the draft and the Team USA announcement mean here, China Sports Today caught up with Xia Song in Beijing. Xia Song is president of sports marketing firm Starway Sports, one-time agent to former NBA players Wang Zhizhi and Mengke Bateer, and a jack-of-all-trades veteran of the China basketball scene.
Xia Song (l) with retired NBA coach Del Harris
CST: Of this draft class, who do you think has good China marketing potential?
Xia: Because of the relationship between Memphis and China, Derrick Rose [number one pick from University of Memphis] can be big here right away. No doubt he is going to be a star. And he's going to the Chicago Bulls which was the team that lit up the way for the NBA into China 15-20 years ago.
Another kid in this lottery is Joe Alexander [Milwaukee Bucks, number eight pick from West Virginia University], who played in Beijing. I knew him back in '99 when he was 13. His team, the International School of Beijing, was invited by Nike to play in the Beijing High School league [sponsored by Nike]. He was not supposed to play because he was too young, but they made an exception for him.
Joe Alexander, selected eighth by the Bucks (Image: nbadraft.net)
Xia: As I remember, not bad. He was real smart and a real hard working kid.
CST: Given that he's going to a small market and now won't be playing with Yi, does that hurt his marketing prospects in China?
Xia: There's going to be an effect, but Milwaukee has become a popular team in China. Even without Yi, it's still going to be a popular team in China. And if they have a player with a connection to China, that player is going to get attention here.
CST: Without a lottery pick, what can the Houston Rockets do to improve the supporting cast around Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady?
Xia: I don't think there was a rookie who could really help them. I think the key is to find a player who really wants to play with them as a team to win a championship.
CST: Let's talk Olympics for a minute. Does the USA's selection of a smaller team improve China's chances against them? [China plays the United States in the first game of the Olympic tournament.]
Xia:All of the USA's opponents are going to take that advantage of that. I think the small lineup is better for China to play. In China's group, everybody has a chance to get to the second round. I don't think the USA has a clear advantage to win the gold.
CST: Can US players on the Olympic team up their China marketing value during the games?
Xia: No, not really. That's a USA team. If they want to build their image, people will watch their regular season and playoffs performances more than the Olympics.
Related:
Joe Alexander to Play With Yi?
Yi, Jay-Z and LeBron?
An NBA Draft Prospect out of China... Sort of
Tags: basketball, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, Joe Alexander, marketing, Memphis, Milwaukee Bucks, New Jersey Nets, Team USA, Xia Song, Yi Jianlian
Yi, Jay-Z and Lebron?
Friday, 27th June 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
Yi will finally get the big market and bigger Asian population that he wanted last year. He joins a Nets team that includes Devin Harris at point guard and Vince Carter at shooting guard. The trade will clear up some salary money for the much-rumored acquisition of Lebron James by the Nets in 2010. The Nets are owned by hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and scheduled to move to his native Brooklyn by the 2010-11 season.
Image: NBA.com
Tags: Joe Alexander, NBA, Yi Jianlian
Joe Alexander to play with Yi?
Tuesday, 24th June 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
When we first mentioned basketball player Joe Alexander here, he was projected by ESPN's Chad Ford as the 13th pick in the NBA Draft, going to the Portland Trailblazers. One month and six mock drafts later, Ford has Alexander going eighth to the Milwaukee Bucks. What are they so excited about? Among other things, dunks like this one:The 6'8" small forward from West Virginia University spent most of his early basketball years in Beijing, Taiwan and Hong Kong before moving to the Maryland to finish high school. If he ends up playing with the Milwaukee Bucks, it would mean that Chinese player Yi Jianlian has a teammate with whom he can share more cultural common ground. And if rumors about Alexander's language skills are true, he'd also have a fellow Mandarin speaker on the team.
It would also mean huge endorsement potential for Alexander in China, should he begin to put together a solid NBA career. If Houston Rockets role player and non-Mandarin speaker Shane Battier can get a shoe deal here, what's the potential for an explosive young player who knows the country and the language?
As his draft prospects improve, Alexander is getting more media attention, and that attention is looking a little more closely at his years in China.
In an article on U.S. college sports Web site Rivals.com, Adrian Wojnarowski looks at what motivated Alexander in high school and college.
Of his habit of spending so much time in the WVU gym that he would sleep in the locker room, Alexander gave a response that would make any Chinese model worker proud:
"It wasn't like I was putting in 12 hours a day there," he said. "But it was really a product of my mentality toward what I'm doing in life. Why do I need to go home? What am I going to do there? Watch TV? I had nothing else going in my life. Nothing else mattered. At night, I just need someplace soft to sleep. And the couch in the locker room was fine."
He also said several things that indicated how different his perspective was from his American teammates', including this:
"I always felt over there that the idea wasn't to be good when you started, but work hard and become good eventually. Here, I get the sense that it's too much of, 'I'm not good at basketball, so that means I'm not going to be good.' That shouldn't be the mentality."
We can't wait to see how his nickname, "Vanilla Sky," translates into Mandarin. How about 香草天堂？
Tags: basketball, Joe Alexander, NBA, Yi Jianlian
An NBA Draft Prospect Out of China… Sort of
Wednesday, 21st May 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
With the NBA Draft Lottery taking place yesterday, talk is heating up about which players will go to which teams. While there's no Chinese prospect this year, one player who is getting some attention has a history in the Middle Kingdom. Joe Alexander, a junior who played at West Virginia University, was born in Taiwan and spent much of his youth in China due to his father's overseas job posting.In this run-down of a few emerging prospects, ESPN's Chad Ford says that Alexander could be "the sleeper in the 2008 NBA draft" and projects that he could easily be among the top three small forwards selected. Alexander averaged 17 points and 6.4 rebounds in his junior season and had some big-time performances, with back-to-back 32-point games against Connecticut and Pittsburgh.
Reports about how much time he spent in China range from six to eight years. Alexander returned to the United States at age 16 to play high school basketball in Maryland, Ford's report says. The fact that he spent so much time in China seems to have contributed to his under-the-radar, late-bloomer status. He has had the last five years to impress NBA scouts, but in the insane recruiting atmosphere of college basketball that has seen middle school players get scholarship offers, entering the system as a high school junior is pretty late.
Ford's first mock draft projected Alexander as the 13th pick, joining Greg Oden at the Portland Trailblazers. But there's a lot of maneuvering to happen between now and the actual draft.
Tags: basketball, Joe Alexander, NBA