The Center of Attention

ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

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."