The Center Of Attention

By Josh Tyrangiel/Houston

Tony Ronzone is basketball's premier frequent flyer. He has coached in Saudi Arabia, searched for a point guard in Montenegro, evaded Yugoslav border police to scout a power forward and twice visited North Korea to peek at a 7ft. 9-in. center. One September day in 1998, Ronzone was conducting a hoops clinic in Shanghai when he received an invitation to an 18th-birthday party. The birthday boy was quick, graceful--and 7 ft. 3 in. tall. Ronzone accepted. "The parents were there, maybe a few Chinese officials," Ronzone recalls. "We're all stuffed into this apartment the size of a room at the Courtyard Marriott--couldn't have been more than 400 square feet. There are cold foods and Shanghai duck, a very nice party. But I'm sitting there, and I can't stop myself from looking at this kid and thinking, 'He could be making millions of dollars a year, and he has no idea.'"

Yao Ming still has no idea how many millions are in his future. As the No. 1 pick in last year's National Basketball Association draft, Yao signed a four-year contract with the Houston Rockets for $17.8 million. A few rival NBA executives predicted the contract would run out before the Rockets saw a return on their investment. But after a rocky start, Yao--now 22 and 7 ft. 5 in.--has shown flashes of dominance. He has scored 20 points against the defending-champion Lakers, 27 against the Spurs and league MVP Tim Duncan, and 30 against the Western Conference--leading Dallas Mavericks. And most of Yao's points have been earned not on brutish, outta-my-way rampages to the hoop but rather with light-footed, elegant moves rarely seen from a man of his size. "He's special," says Philadelphia 76ers star Allen Iverson. "He's a gift from God."

The NBA bows to a different God than the rest of us do, but as Michael Jordan, 39, limps toward retirement (he swears he means it this time), Yao appears to be the answer to the league's prayers. You see, in addition to his vast potential as a player, Yao Ming has a personality--and an appealing one at that. Despite his temporary reliance on an interpreter, Yao's English already reveals a sly, self-deprecating sense of humor. He loves Starbucks, computer games, action movies and SUVs, and when his Great Wall of a face cracks a smile, arenas light up. Some 1.3 million NBA fans have already fallen for Yao--selecting him, in the balloting for this Sunday's All-Star game, over the Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal as the Western Conference's starting center. Yao isn't O'Neal's equal on the court, but he has surpassed Shaq in the estimation of blue-chip companies like Apple and Visa, which see Yao as the pitchman messiah who might finally open the wallets of China's 1.3 billion consumers. "Yao Ming is Tiger Woods," says Adam Silver, president of NBA Entertainment, the league's marketing, Internet, television and merchandising arm. "He's a much more sophisticated marketer than people give him credit for."

Yao was ready to start his global journey years ago. Chinese officials, however, were hesitant. "They knew he would play in the U.S. eventually," says Ronzone, now director of international scouting for the Detroit Pistons. "But you have to understand, they're a proud people, and he's a national treasure. They wanted him playing at home until they understood the American landscape." In 2001 the Chinese sports authorities allowed two accomplished but lesser players, Mengke Bateer and Wang Zhizhi, to test the NBA waters. Meanwhile, Chinese officials huddled with international scouts to determine whether Yao would be the top pick in the next NBA draft. "They wanted to know what city he would go to," says a scout, who adds that the officials preferred that Yao play for a strong team in a city with a sizable Asian community. They also wanted to know "how much he'd get paid and, most important, if he'd embarrass the Chinese people against NBA competition." And? "I told them he'd probably be a fair player."

Last May Houston--a city with 104,000 Asian residents--was awarded the first pick in the draft, and Chinese officials decided it was time to negotiate Yao's release. (The NBA may schedule Rockets preseason games in Beijing and Shanghai next year; the Rockets paid Yao's Chinese professional team a $350,000 transfer fee, and Yao will give at least 50% of his salary to various Chinese sporting bodies while continuing to play for the Chinese national team in international competitions like the Olympics.) When Rockets general manager Carroll Dawson finally met the future of his franchise in Shanghai, he was stunned: "Yao walked up to me and asked, 'Do you think I'm way behind because I didn't go to four years of college in America?' I thought, 'What the--? His English is better than mine!'"

National-team commitments kept Yao in China until nine days before the NBA's season opener. When he finally arrived in Houston in late October, Yao had little idea what his teammates were doing on the court. "In the first practice, we could see that he had a lot of skill," says Rockets forward Maurice Taylor, "but he was lost. Brand-new system, brand-new rules--he was a rookie, plain and simple."

Yao's first six games were a disaster. He averaged fewer than 4 points and was frequently out of position on defense. He made highlight films the world over when a crossover dribble by Phoenix Suns guard Stephon Marbury fooled him so badly that he crumpled to the floor like a shot giraffe. Then in a November game against the Lakers, Yao came alive. He hit all nine of his shots, scored 20 points and grabbed six rebounds. Shaquille O'Neal, with an injured toe, missed Yao's coming out, but Shaq was back by the time the Rockets and Lakers squared off again on Jan. 17, in what turned out to be the NBA's second-highest-rated regular-season game ever on cable. Yao blocked five of O'Neal's shots--almost half as many blocks as Shaq had suffered in the previous 26 games--and finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds. (Shaq scored 31 and was his usual unstoppable self, but the Rockets won the game in overtime.) "All I was hoping was that by Christmas, he'd be able to play 20 minutes a game," says Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich. "You could say I've been pleasantly surprised."

If it seems the bar for Yao was set low, it's because the modern NBA has seen a parade of giants from exotic corners of the world, and few have made the grade. A small number, like Lithuania's 7-ft. 3-in. Arvydas Sabonis, have made effective use of their height; most, like reedy 7-ft. 7-in. Sudanese Manute Bol and wobbly 7-ft. 7-in. Romanian Gheorghe Muresan, have stuck out like Giacometti statues in a gladiator ring. "Unlike Bol and Muresan," says Memphis Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown, "this guy is strong. And he's got great touch."

That's because, unlike many earlier imports, Yao grew up playing basketball. His 6ft. 3-in. mother, Fang Fengdi, a high-ranking official in the Chinese sports-research institute, was on the national team, as was his 6-ft. 7-in. father, Yao Zhiyuan, an engineer with the Shanghai harbor administration. "He's been taught well," says Pete Newell, who runs the respected Big Man Camp for college and professional giants in Honolulu. "He's very, very sound fundamentally." Still, no one, not even Yao, can explain why he suddenly started playing like an All-Star. "I don't know what happened," says Yao through his interpreter, Colin Pine. "It's a testament to my coaches and teammates. They've helped me very much."

Yao's parents are also helping. Unlike most other rookies, who must simultaneously cope with the rigors of the NBA's nonstop schedule and the novelty of living alone for the first time, Yao, an only child, shares a four-bedroom Houston manse with his mom, dad and Pine. ("I do have my own bedroom," jokes Pine, 29, a former U.S. government document translator.) "The fact that my parents are here," says Yao, "has made my adjustment to American life much easier, although, really, there hasn't been anything that difficult to get adjusted to."

Remove the language barrier, and Yao is your standard 22-year-old jock. He loves pizza, ribs, wings and Frappuccinos--in addition to his mother's soup and dumplings. He wears a bracelet from his basketball-playing girlfriend in China. He spends much of his free time sleeping and the rest jumping between gratuitously violent computer games and gratuitously violent action flicks. (A recent night in with Yao: watching The Bourne Identity on DVD while playing Counter-Strike. "He sat in the corner with his computer," says Pine, "and said, 'Just tell me when there's a fight.'") In Shanghai Yao rode a bike, but now he's practicing turns in a Toyota Sequoia.

Before Yao arrived in Houston, the Rockets--a young, inconsistent team fighting for a play-off spot--ranked 18th out of 29 teams in road attendance. Now they're seventh. Yao has packed the house in cities with large Chinese-American communities, like Oakland and Seattle, but he's attracting people of all origins everywhere, and they're coming not just to gawk. "There's something about the guy," says Tomjanovich. "He's got a warmness about him, a sense of humor." Yao is already one of the league's better quotes. Asked whether he can speak English better than he lets on, Yao turned to Pine and said in Mandarin, "I still don't understand a lot of things. If I did, you would have been fired a while ago."

Yao has even dealt deftly with his first media mini-controversy. Last summer Shaquille O'Neal asked a reporter to "tell Yao Ming, 'Ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh.'" In an Asian Week column early last month, the remarks were repeated, and Yao was asked for a response. Tongue in cheek, he said that Chinese was a hard language to learn. (To defuse any controversy, Yao had also sent Shaq a Christmas card, not a typical Chinese gesture.) Before the two played in Houston later in January, Shaq apologized, using the Mandarin dui bu qi. Yao invited Shaq to his home for dinner, and though O'Neal declined because of a family commitment, he congratulated Yao on his All-Star selection. Yao joked that he was relieved O'Neal couldn't come for dinner: "I was afraid my refrigerator wasn't big enough."

Where there is fame, charm and potential, money usually follows. The Rockets have seen single-game ticket sales rise 55% (group sales are up 100%) since Yao arrived. But the real windfall will come in October, when the team auctions off the naming rights to its new arena. The value of naming rights is usually determined by the number of media hits a team generates, and with Yao on board, a Rockets' study shows, the team's profile has doubled. So, presumably, will the value of the naming deal. The NBA, meanwhile, is beaming Yao's games into China to a potential 287 million homes.

Yao won't see a penny from naming or broadcast rights, but if he stays healthy and continues to improve his game, he should one day be rich enough to buy his own arena. In 2001 Yao made Erik Zhang, 28, a University of Chicago M.B.A. student (and a distant cousin by marriage), his official representative. Born in Shanghai, Zhang later moved to Wisconsin with his family. He envisions Yao at the lucrative nexus of American marketing dollars and Chinese consumers. "In five years," predicts Zhang, "he'll be way bigger than Tiger Woods. He'll be global."

To help turn Yao into an elite pitchman, Zhang recruited John Huizinga, deputy dean of faculty at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, sports agent Bill Duffy and a marketing director, Bill Sanders. In September Team Yao, as the group is known, commissioned a Chicago business-school class to prepare a marketing study on Yao. Students traveled to five Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, to conduct extensive polling and focus groups. In December the class presented Team Yao with a 500-page report about the core values of the 400 million urban Chinese consumers on whom they think Yao's marketers should focus. These Chinese, when asked which values were most important to them, "used words like hardworking, self-confidence, respect, talent, heroism and lightheartedness," says Sanders. Head to head, Yao outpolled all other Chinese celebrities on those qualities. "Yao was at the top--China's most popular celebrity, by far."

Market research is notoriously pliable, but even before Team Yao started mining the report, companies were at the door. "We chose him because we just thought he was hipper than other people around," says Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who cast Yao opposite Verne (Mini-Me) Troyer in an ad for the firm's new notebook computers. Visa built its Super Bowl ad around Yao's brief English-speaking debut ("Can I write a check?" he asks).

Team Yao has deals in China with cell-phone and gaming companies, and there is speculation about a global beverage deal. But the biggest haul could come at the end of the season, when Yao's sneaker contract expires. Nike must either negotiate a new deal or see a rival buy the entree that Yao can provide to an estimated 200 million hoops-playing, merchandise-buying Chinese.

His endorsement deals are being structured with an eye toward the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Yao should be reaching his basketball prime just as the world's attention is focused on him and his country. Yao doesn't really care. He just wants to endorse products he actually uses (he has an Apple laptop and says, "I've had Visa for four years") and appear in ads that make him look cool. Otherwise, he says, "I think it's all pretty boring. I'd much rather be playing basketball." --With reporting by Perry Bacon/Washington

With reporting by Perry Bacon/Washington