Brick City

Profiting from Chinese basketball ought to be a slam dunk. The fans are there; attendance at Chinese Basketball Association games has been rising steadily and is on pace to break 600,000 this season. Valuable sponsors are eager to plaster their logos on team jerseys and arena signboards. Homegrown superstars are emerging, such as rangy prodigies Hu Weidong, a crowd-pleasing Jiangsu Dragons forward, and Yao Ming, a 2.23-m windmill who regulates the paint for the Shanghai Sharks. Showtime in the CBA has all the trappings of big-time hoops. It's becoming a credible entertainment replete with thunderjams, jiggly cheerleaders and thousands of screaming...

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