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Six players, including Yao, were taken in the first round of last year's draft, and 10 or more could go that high this year. Serbian seven-footer Darko Milicic, 17, is widely expected to be the second pick after LeBron James, the high school sensation from Akron, Ohio. It's no coincidence that the three best teams so far this season (and those with the best shot at dethroning the L.A. Lakers as NBA champs) are the Kings, Mavericks and Spurs, all aided by an abundance of foreign talent. (With Stojakovic and center Vlade Divac on the Kings, some fans have dubbed the team the Sacramento Serbs.)
None of this comes as much of a surprise to Commissioner Stern, who has been consciously building the NBA into a global brand since before the Dream Team made its debut at the Barcelona Olympics a decade ago. "These kids have grown up watching Michael Jordan," Stern says of the NBA's new foreign stars. "Basketball is a universal language, and it's about to bloom on a global basis." Stern is counting on that, especially at a time when the NBA's popularity, at least judging by TV ratings and attendance figures, seems to have reached its peak in the U.S.
The global appeal is filling the NBA's coffers. About 20% of all NBA merchandise--including NBA Cologne in Spain and NBA school supplies in Latin America--is now sold outside the U.S., providing an extra $430 million in annual revenue. And that doesn't include the countless knock-off jerseys with creative team names like the San Jose Bulls that fly off Third World shelves. The NBA is building an NBA City theme restaurant in the Dominican Republic (the other one is in Orlando, Fla.) and is thinking of opening freestanding NBA stores in Asia and Europe. Separate NBA boutiques exist in big department stores like El Corte Ingles in Spain. Nearly 15% of the league's $900 million in annual TV revenue (excluding local broadcasts) is now derived from its 148 television partners in 212 countries and territories. Some 40% of visitors to NBA.com (which includes sites in Spanish, Japanese and, since mid-January, Chinese) log on from outside the U.S., and a million fans pay $10 a month to listen to streaming English or Spanish audio of almost any game.
Gatorade, Lego and Adidas, among others, have signed on as the NBA's global marketing partners, spreading the basketball gospel through clinics, festivals and tournaments. In October another marketing partner, Reebok, launched Philadelphia star Allen Iverson's sneaker, the $130 Answer 6, across much of Western Europe. It sold out in six weeks. International markets now account for 30% of Reebok's sales, up from 10% two years ago. Thanks in large part to the Yao-inspired basketball craze in China, Spalding's international sales grew 44% in 2002. And Sprite has joined with players like Nowitzki, Stojakovic and Parker to help peddle the soft drink in their native lands.
The NBA's moves, however, aren't working on every court. In many foreign countries, pro athletes have less of a tradition of endorsing products than their American counterparts, and some of the league's newest stars aren't quite ready for their close-up.