China and Basketball

Travel east of the Forbidden City along the Chang'an main drag in Beijing, and you will find an outdoor schoolyard with about a half-dozen basketball courts. The courts are filled with people engaged in basketball games and you can easily imagine being in an American metropolis like Brooklyn. But right next door is a single soccer field, and it's always busy too, even during winter, when the basketball courts are empty.

The point is that while basketball is growing in popularity, it is in no way comparable to the love the mainland Chinese have for soccer.

In fact, it's almost the opposite of what you'll find in North America, where multitudes of kids play youth soccer, then give it up for hoops when they approach puberty. In China, young people are done with basketball once they become adults. It's definitely a teenage obsession, like the X-Box.

But that's not what you hear from the various American sports scribes who land in Shanghai, take a look around for 4-to-6 hours, and quickly crank out another story proclaiming "BASKETBALL MADNESS SWEEPS THE MIDDLE KINGDOM", before hopping on the next flight back to New York City.

In the words of another great Empire State wordsmith, John McEnroe, "You have got to be kidding."

While I'm not a big fan of soccer, I can tell you that "futbol" outstrips hoops for Chinese sports fans every time. Not to take away anything from Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian and what they've accomplished by becoming NBA talent, but basketball is and always will be the exception here. A basketball is easy enough to acquire in Beijing, but you still need a hoop, and a high ladder to install it. For soccer, you just need to find an object, preferably round, and kick it. That simple equation explains why soccer is the world's number one sport. Find two kids and a rock (a real rock, not The Rock), and you've got a soccer match. No ladder necessary.

The NBA is consumed by the same marketing insanity that hits anyone who discovers mainland China happens to enjoy your product. A dozen NBA stars make trips to Chinese cities every summer, allowing themselves to be treated like freaks as they earnestly open youth centers in the cities. But when they go to the countryside, they find that basketball is a luxury, and discover that the real heroes go by the names of Messi, Beckham, and Cristiano Ronaldo.

When the Chinese national soccer team lost two out of three games in the recent Asian Cup tournament, the country was plunged into a sports depression. I heard the term "national humiliation" more than once. It's proof enough for me that soccer rules in China, and second place is not even close.