The Next Yao Ming? NBA scouts are scouring China for another giant with the skills of last season's sensational rookie. This 6-ft. 11-in. teenager just might be the one By Brook Larmer (Time Magazine) The Chinese giant was so dazzled by the lights of Las Vegas that he didn't notice the furtive glances of the tourists gathering around him. Trying to unwind after a few days of intense training in August, the basketball sensation had just taken a ride on the roller coaster atop the Stratosphere towerhe was lucky there wasn't a maximum height limit to get onand now he was gazing out over the gaudiest stretch of urban landscape in America. He marveled at the brightly illuminated replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Manhattan skyline, the dazzling fountains of Rome. "Las Vegas is the most beautiful city in the world," he said, "especially at night." A red-faced American tourist broke the reverie. "Hey, Yao Ming!" the man shouted. "Yao Ming, you da man!" It was the last thing the Chinese athlete wanted to hear. He gave a tight smile and then, as politely as he could, he recited one of the few English phrases he has committed to memory: "I am not Yao Ming." Maybe not. But Yi Jianlian had better get used to the lofty expectations. A lot of people on both sides of the Pacific are hoping that the talented 6-ft. 11-in. teenager will be the next Yao Ming. Ever since Yao electrified the National Basketball Association last season as a rookie fresh out of Shanghai, a slew of agents, scouts and shoe-company reps have been looking for a Chinese player who can follow the largeand lucrativefootsteps of one of the league's biggest draws. Yi wears size-18 shoes, just like Yao. But it is the glimmer of his vast potentialthe explosive slam dunks, the boyish good looks, even the mystery surrounding his age (anywhere from 15 to 18, depending on whom you believe)that has catapulted Yi beyond where Yao stood at this point in his career. The attention is a bit overwhelming for a shy kid who started playing ball only four years ago. "I do feel a lot of pressure," says Yi (pronounced Ee). "But what I need most is to learn and to practicenot to get distracted by being famous." There are, of course, plenty of hidden treasures in the Middle Kingdom. Aside from Yao, two other Chinese hoopsters already play in the NBA: Mengke Bateer, a muscle-bound 6-ft. 11-in. reserve center with the Toronto Raptors, and Wang Zhizhi, a lithe, 7-ft. 1-in. sharpshooter with the Los Angeles Clippers. Another player, a rail-thin center named Xue Yuyang, 20, was chosen in the second round in June's NBA draft, but Beijingrankled by his decision to enter the draft without official permissionhas refused to let him test his mettle in America. So instead NBA scouts and agents are focusing on the crop of younger players, ranging from Tang Zhengdong, 19, a bruising 7-footer with an uncharacteristic taste for rough play, to prodigy Chen Jianghua, 14, a 6-ft. 1-in. ball handler whose gravity-defying 360 dunks look like something out of a Jet Li movie. Nobody, though, seems a safer bet than Yi Jianlian. The son of two former athleteshis 6-ft. 5-in. father and 5-ft. 8-in. mother were both forcibly recruited by the state to play an obscure sport known as team handballYi was discovered in 1999 on a playground in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen. Barely out of grade school, he was already 6 ft. 4 in. tall, a behemoth in a region known for its diminutive people. Yi's parents, however, were reluctant to let the Soviet-style sports school lay claim to their only son. "We had endured hardships ourselves," says Yi's mother, Mai Meiling, who like her husband works as a postal clerk. "We couldn't get good jobs when we retired because we didn't have a good education. We wanted more for our son." Dai Yixin, the school's veteran coach, finally convinced the parents their son wouldn't get lost because he had all the raw ingredients of a star: speed, flexibility, coordination, leaping ability, size. By measuring the gaps between the bones of his hand and tracking the growth of his genitalsa Chinese-honed indicator of heightDai predicted that the youngster would reach 6 ft. 8 in. or 6 ft. 9 in. Still, Yi's career almost ended before it began. Halfway through his first 400-m training run at the full-time sports school, Yi stopped abruptly, gasping for breath, tears rolling down his cheeks. "I wanted to quit," Yi says. "I had never lived away from home before, and I had no idea if I could make it as an athlete." But his body kept growing, and so did his determination to make the best of a difficult situation. Yi still preferred watching cartoons to NBA games, but by the time he joined Guangdong's professional Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) team last year, he was an astonishing 6 ft. 11 in.and he could leap and touch a spot more than 11 ft. 6 in. off the ground. (The basketball rim is 10 feet high.) As Yi mastered new skillsthe midrange jumper, the baby hook, the reverse slamhe attracted the attention of Adidas. Eager to loosen Nike's hold on Chinese basketball, the shoe company flew Yi to New Jersey for its ABCD Camp in the summer of 2002. He was the only Chinese player there. "It was an eye-opening experience for him," says Guangdong junior coach Zhang Zhenming. "He came back with a very clear vision of where he wanted to go: the NBA." Yi Jianlian is the first to admit he's not ready for prime time. "I'm too young and skinny," he says, his baggy denim shorts and triple-XL Nike shirt only reinforcing his point. Yi has played only one season, most of it riding the bench, in the CBA. But his final regular-season game last spring offered a tantalizing glimpse of the future. With the game heading into overtime, Yi came off the bench to score 13 points in five minutes to seal the victoryand secure Guangdong's place atop the standings. Two weeks later, when Guangdong played the army team for the CBA championship, the stands were crawling with sports agents and shoe-company representatives, all fixated on the big kid on the bench. "It's partly the Yao Ming effect," said a shoe-company executive. "But Yi Jianlian is so promising we would have pursued him anyway." Yi played sparingly in the game, but he offered a fitting capstone to the season, stealing an inbounds pass in the final seconds for a breakaway jam. At the team's postgame meal, agents and reps crowded around the teenager, toasting him with Tsingtao beer until his face turned beet red. So when might Yi Jianlian don an NBA uniform? That depends on the biggest mystery of all: his age. The national junior-team roster says Yi was born on Oct. 27, 1987, which would make him just 15and not eligible to enter the NBA draft independently as an international player until 2009. Several well-placed Chinese basketball experts say he is 17 or 18. Dates are manipulated, they claim, to give Yi more years of eligibility for junior competitions, which China counts on to increase its international prestige. (Age shaving is endemic in international junior competitions. It even affected the Clippers' Wang Zhizhi, who had NBA teams scrambling to verify his true age to make sure he was old enough for the draft.) Yi and his parents both say on the record that he was born in 1987. But when pressed on the issue, Yi turns away and fills the room with an uncomfortable silence, and his father smiles blankly without responding. Whatever the truth, it doesn't seem to bother Nike. The company recently beat out the competition and signed Yi to a six-figure, multiyear deal worth far more than his actual salaryand indeed more than Yao Ming's original Nike contract. Forget about that other guy for a minute. The klieg lights of stardom are already starting to shine on the kid from Shenzhen.
There is no way he can be like Yao Ming. He sounds like he's good but not ready yet. But there will be a lot of teams who will try to get him because of the stuff they have heard about him.
There was also an article in today's Philadelphia Daily News about him and those guys were also boggled about how old he is. I threw it out but I'm sure if you go to philly.com and click on the daily news section in sports you can find the article. But he is either 16 or 20 I think. LOL
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Ming637:</div><div class="quote_post">Only thing I wanna know if he was born on 1987 or 1984. The age is a mystery.</div> He's born in 1984. I posted a thread in this in the high school thread a while back because we were on the topic of the upcoming drafts.
What has the NBA come to when we look for the Next YAO MING??!! He isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, so why loook for the second coming so early?
This same article has been posted at least 3 times already. http://www.justbball.com/forums/showthread...light=jian+lian
I don't think he will have as bright a future as Yao. I have been reading about this guy for a while, and from what I have heard his optimistic outlook is Yao, and his pessimistic outlook is Wang Zhi Zhi(nobody wrote that, that was my idea). I'm not sure he is mature enough to play over hear yet. Nor will he be next year. But he could be a high quality player in the NBA if he develops his talents, and doesn't get caught in the hype and it seems like he won't, which is a good thing.
He's not event he next Yao. Just because he's Chinese doesn't mean mean he's like Yao. Their games are much difference. My personal Comparasion is a more agressive Dirk.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Trip:</div><div class="quote_post">This same article has been posted at least 3 times already. http://www.justbball.com/forums/showthread...light=jian+lian</div> Not a good of quality as my article with all the photos incorporated.
Please... Yao is a very rare player, not all tall chinese players will be the next Yao. Ever since Yao came into the L, I must have read 10 articles claiming some guy to be the next Yao, just because they're tall and Asian. Same with Lebron, I've read a dozen articles about different high-school players all claiming to be the next Lebron. Hell, even after Shaq, there were articles of the next Shaq, Baby Shaq, and what have you. Yao, Lebron, and Shaq are all great individual players, and players like that don't come around so easily. In fact, I remember specifically reading an article about Korean born Ha Seung-Jin, that he was going to be the next Yao. This was a year or two ago. Well, he was selected in the 2nd round, 43rd overall by Portland. Where was Yao drafted?
What's up with all these foreign players ages, we like never know until they're drafted. I'm starting to get mad.
I think the question marks surrounding his age are so weird. You think there woukd be some way to figure his age out.
it's just like the baseball players from the dom republic an stuff like that. They try to change stuff so they will get more money or atleast that's the motive I think is behind stuff like that.
Personally the kid sounds great and that isn't like Yao Ming. Yao isn't that great sure he is tall and can grab afew rebound but he lets some of the shorter people get them over him most of the time.
