Juaquin Hawkins, one of Yao’s teammates on the Rockets, agreed. “It’s not just people thinking, I’m rooting for him because he’s African American, or I’m rooting for him because he’s white,” he told me. Hawkins was familiar with the outsider’s role. A native of Lynwood, California, he had failed to make the NBA in 1997, and the following year he wound up playing professionally in Chongqing, deep in the Chinese interior. I had lived in the same region, and Hawkins laughed when I mentioned the basketball slang there. If a player shoots an air ball, the fans shout “yangwei;” in the Sichuan dialect, it means “impotent.” To encourage the home team, they chant “xiongqi” (“erection”).
There are few foreigners in Chongqing, and even fewer blacks. I asked Hawkins how he had coped with being so different. “I always felt like I was representing my heritage,” he said. “Lynwood is next to Compton. There’s a lot of negative things said about that area, and that’s something I take with me wherever I go. But I had a good childhood. I was raised by my mother. I try to represent that.”
An uncle had introduced Hawkins to basketball as a child; he never met his father. “All I know is his first name, and the fact that he didn’t want to deal with having a family,” Hawkins said. He met his wife through basketball—both had played at Lynwood High School, and then at Long Beach State. In addition to Chongqing, Hawkins had played professional basketball in Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines. He had toured with the Harlem Globetrotters (“That was actually real beneficial”). In the summer of 2002, he tried one last time to make the NBA, attending the Rockets’ camp, where he established himself as a defensive specialist and beat out two other unsigned players for a roster spot. At twenty-nine, he was the oldest rookie in the league to make an opening-day lineup. When Hawkins learned that he was on the team, he telephoned his mother and wept.
Successful athletes are inevitably displaced—if you’re good, you leave home—and something is always lost in transition. Much of what Hawkins carried onto the court would have been invisible to Chongqing fans, who know nothing about Compton or American single-parent families. In Chongqing, Hawkins was simply an excellent player who looked completely different from everybody else in the city. When I lived in a nearby town, it was common for crowds of twenty or more to gather and gawk at me on the street. A local night club once hired an African dancer, knowing that his freakishness would draw customers.
Yao Ming had an excellent rookie season, and there were clear signs that eventually he’d develop into a dominant center. But the Rockets ran only about thirty plays a game to him; initially, his American fame resulted from his height and his off-court persona. He handled attention with remarkable humor and grace. He also appealed to the national missionary instinct: If Americans had failed to convert the Chinese to God and democracy, at least we were turning them into NBA fans. The American media portrayed Yao as a nonthreatening figure—a gentle giant.
But he entered another world whenever he dealt with the Chinese press. After a difficult defeat in Los Angeles, where Yao had fouled out for the first time in his NBA career, a Chinese reporter asked what it had been like to be dunked on by Kobe Bryant. Yao said evenly, “Please don’t ask me about an incident in which I have no face.” At an All-Star Game press conference, Yao showed up wearing an old Chinese national team sweatshirt, and a Chinese reporter asked why. “It’s comfortable, that’s all,” Yao said. Another reporter asked, “If you could say one sentence to all of the young Chinese players back home, what would you say?” Yao’s sentence: “I don’t believe that I can say very much with one sentence.”
Even as they idolized him, few people in China seemed to realize how different Yao was from the typical Chinese athlete. When he played, the joy was apparent on his face. He hit free throws in the clutch, and the Rockets learned to run plays to him at the end of close games. Often, he subtly deflected the patriotic questions of the Chinese media, as if sensing that such concerns were too heavy to bear on the court.
The Chinese motivation for sport is so specific and limited—the nationalism, the sports schools—that it rarely survives a transplant overseas. Athletics has meant little to most Chinese American communities, including the one in Houston, which has grown rapidly in the past decade. The city has an estimated fifty thousand Chinese, as well as large numbers of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. Houston’s Chinese tend to be highly educated, with an average annual household income of more than fifty thousand dollars—higher than the city’s average.
The largest Asian district in Houston is along Bellaire Boulevard—a six-mile strip-mall Chinatown. In February, I spent two afternoons driving along Bellaire, where some of the signs reminded me that locals were adjusting to a new culture (All Stars Defensive Driving); others reflected success (Charles Schwab, in Chinese characters); and some were distinctly Chinese (a lot of beauty parlors—the Chinese are meticulous about their hair).
But I couldn’t find anything having to do with basketball. Though everybody loved Yao Ming, people told me that the children in the community didn’t play sports much; they were too busy studying. I searched for hours before finding a single sporting-goods store—Sports Net International, in a mall called Dynasty Plaza—and they stocked gear only for racquet sports. “The Chinese are not so interested in basketball, because of their size,” David Chang, the owner, told me. “But if you’re interested in Yao Ming you should talk to the people at Anna Beauty Design. They cut his hair.”
Upstairs at the hair salon, a Taiwanese woman sat behind the receptionist’s desk. I asked if Yao Ming got his hair cut there.
“No,” she said. “Yao Ming does not get his hair cut here.”
I tried again. “Does somebody from Anna’s go to Yao Ming’s home to cut his hair?”
“That’s something I can’t answer,” she said coyly. A moment later, the manager walked in. “This guy’s a reporter,” she told him. “He wants to know if we cut Yao Ming’s hair.”
The manager shot me a dirty look. “Don’t tell him we do that,” he said.
The receptionist added, exactly five seconds too late, “He speaks Chinese.”
All told, I tracked down three defensive-driving schools, six banks, and fourteen beauty salons—but no lanqiu. In Houston’s Chinatown, it was easier to find Yao Ming’s barber than a basketball.
At the end of February, the Rockets embarked on a critical East Coast road trip. Their final game was against the Washington Wizards; both teams were fighting to make the playoffs in their respective conferences, and Yao Ming was in the running to be named Rookie of the Year. This would be the final meeting between Yao Ming and Michael Jordan, who was retiring in order to return to his position as president of the Wizards.
The night before the Washington game, the Chinese Embassy hosted a special reception for Yao. Chinese food and Yanjing beer were served—the Beijing-based brewery had signed a Rockets sponsorship after Yao Ming was drafted. The Embassy’s meeting room filled quickly: diplomats and émigrés, Sinophiles and market analysts. Scraps of conversation floated in the air.
“Yanjing paid six million dollars. Their distributor is Harbrew.”
“Who gives a sixty-year distribution contract? But you know, from the Chinese point of view, it’s a stream of production. They don’t understand the concept of branding.”
“He’s been in China fifteen years as a value-added player.”
“Actually, I’m with the White House press office.”
“You know, Anheuser-Busch owns twenty-seven percent of Tsing-tao.”
“There he is! Did you get a picture?”
“Imagine being that tall!”
A round of applause followed Yao into the room. Lan Lijun, the minister of the embassy, gave a short speech. He mentioned Ping-Pong diplomacy and “the unique role sports have played in bringing our countries together.” In closing, he said, “We have full confidence that China and the United States will work together to continue to improve our bilateral relations.”
Y
ao, in a gray suit, stooped to reach the microphone. Behind him, a display case held a ceramic horse from the Tang dynasty. Red lanterns hung from the ceiling. Yao spoke for less than a minute, and he didn’t say anything about Sino-American relations. “Seeing all these lanterns reminds me of home,” he said softly, in Chinese. “When I was growing up, my impression of the Chinese Embassy was like a fantasy, something you see on television and in the movies.”
There was a rush for autographs, and staff members hustled Yao into a back room. In the corner, a pretty Eurasian girl in a red dress was crying. Her parents said that Yao had walked past without signing her invitation. “He’s her favorite player,” the mother told me, adding that the girl had been adopted from Uzbekistan. A staff member took her invitation, promising to get an autograph.
Yao was at the embassy for nearly two hours. After he left, people stood around in groups, chatting and drinking Yanjing. We had reached the Sino-American witching hour—the Chinese guests, always prompt, were gone, but the Americans lingered, in the way that Americans do. I found myself standing next to Chen Xiaogong, the defense attaché. Chen was glassy-eyed; he kept touching his watch. “I’m surprised so many Americans know Yao Ming,” he said.
The next night, Kha Vo sings Francis Scott Key and Michael Jordan comes out hot. Four baskets in the first quarter: turnaround, jump shot, jump shot, turnaround. Ten days earlier, Jordan celebrated his fortieth birthday, and since then he’s been averaging nearly thirty points a game. Yao works against Brendan Haywood, the Wizards’ seven-foot center. Haywood looks short tonight. Six points for Yao in the first quarter; Rockets down by nine. Sold-out arena: twenty-thousand-plus. Lots of Asians—red flags in the upper levels.
Second quarter: Rudy Tomjanovich, the Rockets’ coach, plays a hunch and goes with Juaquin Hawkins, who rarely sees action. Hawkins nails a twenty-footer, then a three-pointer. He draws a charge and steals a pass. Hawkins looks hungry, as if he’d just escaped from Chongqing: He hasn’t scored in nine days. Moochie Norris runs the point for the Rockets. Moochie has cornrows, a barrel chest, and four Chinese characters tattooed on his left wrist: huan de huan shi. (“Never satisfied,” he told me, when I asked him what it meant, and then I crossed to the other side of the locker room and asked Yao. “It actually doesn’t have a very good meaning,” he said. “Basically, you’ll do whatever it takes to protect yourself.”) Yao doesn’t score in the second quarter. Jordan has eighteen. Rockets down by twenty. Halftime show: Chinese lion dance, followed by an announcement about Black History Month.
Houston sleepwalks through the third. At one point, they trail by twenty-four. In the final quarter, Maurice Taylor, a Rockets forward, starts to hit jumpers. With six minutes to go, Houston down by fourteen, Tomjanovich brings in Yao, and the game turns. Hawkins sinks a three, then knocks the ball loose from Tyronn Lue. The two players collide, and Lue falls, writhing in pain. Separated shoulder, cut eye: good night, Tyronn. Four straight baskets by the Rockets. In the final three minutes, Yao steps to the free-throw line four times, and nails everything. Haywood fouls out. Overtime.
Hawkins guards Jordan, and they trade baskets to start the extra period. Yao makes a baby hook to give the Rockets the lead. The Wizards feed Jordan every time down the court, and now, after playing for forty-five minutes, he suddenly finds new life. Turnaround jumper over Hawkins. Next possession: Jordan crossover dribble to his left; Hawkins freezes—dunk. Next possession: Jordan hard drive; Hawkins falls, no call—jumper. Next possession: Jordan drives; Hawkins lags, Yao goes for the block—goaltending. Jordan scores ten in overtime and finishes with thirty-five points and eleven rebounds. Yao has sixteen and eleven; Hawkins scores ten. In the final seconds, with the Rockets down by two, Yao gets a defensive rebound and, instead of calling a time-out, throws the outlet pass. Bad shot. Rockets lose.
After the game, in the Rockets’ locker room, Hawkins sat alone on a bench. “It was frustrating,” he told me, shaking his head. “He’s the greatest player ever.”
Yao sat in front of his locker, a towel wrapped around his waist; the Chinese media pressed close. He told them that he should have called the time-out.
In the Wizards’ locker room, I joined a group of reporters waiting for Jordan. After the other players had left, he appeared behind a lectern, dressed in a gray pin-striped suit. Somebody asked if the Wizards would make the playoffs. “I’ve never had a doubt that we would,” Jordan said.
Another reporter asked about the overtime period. Jordan talked about Hawkins: “I was going against a young kid who didn’t really know how to play, and he tried a couple of flops.”
Somebody asked about Yao. “You can sit here and talk about how good he eventually could be,” Jordan said. “But at some point he’s going to have to showcase what everybody expects.”
Jordan spoke with an athlete’s bluntness; on the court, it didn’t matter where the players had come from or where they were going. For fifty-three minutes, the competition was more important than everything that surrounded it. But, like so many games, this one receded into the essence of statistics—the meaningless points, the pointless minutes. In the end, neither the Wizards nor the Rockets made the playoffs. Michael Jordan never again collected thirty points and ten rebounds in a game, and in May, after retiring, he was forced out of the Wizards organization. Less than three weeks after the Washington game, Rudy Tomjanovich was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and he stepped down as coach. Yao Ming did not win Rookie of the Year. And this season Juaquin Hawkins, after failing to make an NBA team, rejoined the Harlem Globetrotters.
Although it is difficult for a Chinese athlete to come to America, it may be even harder for him to return home. The most troubled transition has been that of Wang Zhizhi, a seven-one center, who emerged in the late nineties, when the Communist Party was restructuring many of its sports bureaus into for-profit entities. The Chinese Basketball Association hoped to become self-sufficient, through corporate sponsorships and income from its professional league, known as the CBA. In this climate, the CBA has become a strange beast: Its sponsors include private companies, state-owned enterprises, and the People’s Liberation Army, which runs a team called the Bayi Rockets. Wang Zhizhi played for Bayi, and in 1999 the Dallas Mavericks selected him in the second round of the NBA draft. For nearly two years, Dallas courted Wang’s bosses, trying to convince them to let the player go. Wang was officially a regimental commander in the PLA.
In the spring of 2001, Dallas and Bayi finally came to an agreement, and Wang became the first Chinese to play in the NBA. He was twenty-three years old. In the off-season, Wang returned home, as promised, representing both the national team and Bayi. But after Wang’s second NBA season, in which he averaged about five points a game, he requested permission to delay his return to China so that he could play in the NBA’s summer league. He promised to join the national team in time for the World Championships, in August.
The Chinese national team is notorious for its grueling practice schedule—twice a day, six days a week. Fear shapes the routine; coaches know that they will be blamed if the squad loses, so they log countless hours and resist innovation. Before games, the Chinese men’s team warms up by conducting the same rudimentary ballhandling drills that I watched the third-grade girls perform in Shanghai.
In the summer of 2002, Chinese authorities refused Wang’s request and ordered him to return, but he stayed in the United States anyway. Dallas did not offer him a contract, reportedly in part because they did not want to ruin the good relationship that they had developed with the Chinese. In October, Wang signed a three-year, six-million-dollar contract with the Los Angeles Clippers. Since then, Clippers games have been banned from Chinese television (NBA broadcasts often draw as many as fourteen million viewers in China). The ban has turned Wang into a marketing liability—one NBA general manager told me that teams are wary of signing him in the future.
Wang, whose military passport has expired, reportedly received a green card last season. Over the summe
r, he tried to negotiate a return to China, asking for a new civilian passport and a guarantee that he could come back to the NBA after the Asian Championship. The chain of communication had grown so complicated that Wang relied heavily on a Chinese sportswriter named Su Qun to contact PLA leaders and basketball officials. “I know that as a journalist I should stay out of this,” Su, who writes for Beijing’s Titan Sports Daily, told me. “But I happen to be close to Wang. We have to save him, like saving Private Ryan.”
Wang, who declined my request for an interview, did not return to China. I spoke about him with Li Yuanwei, the secretary-general of the Chinese Basketball Association. “Wang has placed too much emphasis on his personal welfare,” Li said. “I assured him that there is no risk. The PLA also assured him. But he doesn’t believe us, and he keeps demanding conditions that are not necessary. It’s very sad.”
Wang’s problems formed a troubling backdrop to Yao Ming’s move to the NBA last year. Yao promised to fulfill his national-team commitments during the off-season, and he reportedly will pay the CBA 5 to 8 percent of his NBA salary for his entire career. He also will pay the Shanghai Sharks, his CBA team, a buyout that is estimated to be between eight million and fifteen million dollars, depending on his endorsements and the length of his career. Yao’s four-year contract with the Rockets is worth $17.8 million, and already his endorsement income is higher than his salary.
But even Yao’s sponsorship potential has been threatened by the irregularities of China’s sports industry. In May, Coca-Cola issued a special can in Shanghai decorated with the images of three national-team players, including that of Yao, who already had a contract with Pepsi. The basketball association had sold Yao’s image to Coca-Cola without his permission, taking advantage of an obscure sports commission regulation that grants the state the right to all “intangible assets” of a national-team player. The regulation appeared to be in direct conflict with Chinese civil law. Yao filed suit against Coca-Cola in Shanghai, demanding a public apology and one yuan—about twelve cents. The Chinese press interpreted the lawsuit as a direct challenge to the nation’s traditional control of athletes.
The Only Game in Town Page 56