Volume 53, Number 16 · October 19, 2006
Court Favorite
By Jonathan Mirsky
Operation Yao Ming: The Chinese Sports Empire, American Big Business, and the Making of an NBA Superstar
by Brook Larmer
Gotham, 350 pp., $26.00
At seven feet six inches tall and about three hundred pounds, Yao Ming, the basketball superstar who plays for the Houston Rockets, is, for many Americans, the most famous living Chinese. In 2002 he was the number-one overall pick in the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s initial selection round—the first foreigner who had never played for an American university to be the first chosen. In April, when he broke his foot in his fourth year playing for Houston, it was global front-page news. His contract with Reebok alone (he is also sponsored by Pepsi-Cola, McDonald's, and other corporations) is worth tens of millions of dollars. These sponsors were probably pleased by Yao's superior performance last season: he averaged 22.6 points and 10.3 rebounds per game, statistics that put him in the top tier of NBA players today. As Brook Larmer observes in Operation Yao Ming, Yao has been a 'conduit for American business and sports coming to the Middle Kingdom.'
Review, 3866 words
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