China hearts the NBA

I play basketball a couple times a week with a local women's rec club. I might have more to say about that in another post, but for now it's just to explain that I've had ample opportunity to scope out the public basketball-court scene. We've been rained out a lot lately, but before the Olympics began (I'll be curious to see if things have changed post-Games), I took note of the sampling of jerseys on display: on any given day, there are usually a good number of NBA jerseys, perhaps a sprinkling of Team USA or Chinese-pro-team shirts, and once a clubmate pointed out a Chinese-university uniform (she also noted that it wasn't a very good university, though I'm not sure whether she meant for education or basketball).

No one wears a Yao Ming jersey.

No, really. I've seen Stackhouse (Wizards edition), Pierce, Iverson (Philly), several Jordans and Kobes, LeBron, some generic team uniforms featuring neither name nor number, and even a Bird. Bird!! I would wager that the guy wearing it could not have been school age when Bird was still playing, but there was big ol' number 33 on display on a Shanghai court. But no Yao Mings. Which I thought was funny, since they do seem to love him here. When I asked another clubmate about it, she laughed a little and confessed that she prefers Kobe, then conjectured that people might just not like Yao's playing style.

Poor Yao. You have a season-ending injury, and then your hometown fans (he's actually from Shanghai) don't want to buy your jersey. And somehow I doubt it'll be more prevalent after the Chinese team's Olympic flameout.