Who do Chinese fans root for, other than the Rockets?
The Chinese often talk about the Lakers, and they like Kobe Bryant; it’s also common to hear people talk admiringly about Allen Iverson. Currently, the most frequently broadcast N.B.A. teams in China are Houston, Dallas, and Toronto. It’s partly a matter of personnel—Houston and Toronto each have a Chinese player—but it’s also slightly political. The Dallas Mavericks were the first team to sign a Chinese player, Wang Zhizhi, and they worked really hard to build good relations with the Chinese officials in charge of the basketball team for which Wang played. Once Wang’s relations with the Chinese authorities deteriorated, in 2002, partly because Wang had delayed his return to his team in China, Dallas didn’t re-sign him—and people around the N.B.A. and in China told me that it was, in part, because Dallas didn’t want to ruin its good relations with the Chinese. Since Wang signed with the Los Angeles Clippers, their games have been banned from China. Sometimes I wonder about how all of t
