The Washington Wizards have returned to Beijing, 30 years after becoming the first National Basketball Association (NBA) team to visit China and helping to usher in an era of basketball mania in the land of Yao Ming.
Only months after then US president Jimmy Carter normalized relations with China in 1979, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) invited the reigning NBA champions to visit, opening up an era of “basketball diplomacy.”
“It is very humbling and very rewarding to hear the words that 30 years ago we started to begin the process of friendship between our peoples,” former Washington center and NBA Hall of Famer Wes Unseld told reporters. “I take great relish and am very proud to have been a part of something like this.”
The Wizards, then known as the Washington Bullets, played three games in China — two in Beijing and one in Shanghai — and captured the imagination of the world’s most populous nation.
Today, basketball — both the NBA variety and the homegrown game — is wildly popular in China.
China has sent players such as Yao to the Houston Rockets and Yi Jianlian to the New Jersey Nets, said Xie Yuan, director of a Chinese friendship association that helped organize the 1979 games.
As many as 450 million Chinese regularly tune into television broadcasts of NBA games, he said, while dozens of US players play in China’s professional leagues.
“Ping-pong diplomacy was once very important for China-US relations,” Xie said, referring to an exchange of players from the two countries that paved the way for former US president Richard Nixon’s historic visit in 1972.
“Thirty years on, the Washington Wizards have returned to China not only to commemorate their first visit but to push forward sports exchanges and friendship through basketball diplomacy for the new century,” Xie said.
NBA stars now regularly tour China during the off-season, holding basketball clinics and making commercial appearances.
Kobe Bryant and LeBron James have recently visited, and Steve Nash played a pick-up game in disguise a week ago.
The NBA has staged seven preseason games in China since 2004, including two games between the Golden State Warriors and the Milwaukee Bucks in October last year.
Next month, the Denver Nuggets will meet the Indiana Pacers in Beijing after facing off in a first-ever NBA exhibition in Taiwan.
“The purpose of this trip is to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Bullets visit,” Wizards president Peter Biche said.
“Clearly basketball is growing in popularity here in China. I think there are reasons for our organization to continue this relationship with China, whether it is a business relationship or an athletic relationship,” he said.
The Wizards delegation — Unseld, current players Caron Butler and Randy Foye, and ex-center Gheorghe Muresan — will make stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou, running school clinics and staging charity events.
Unseld marveled at how Beijing has changed, saying: “I don’t recognize anything to be honest with you — the growth has just been unbelievable for someone viewing the city from 30 years ago.”
When asked about what he remembered most about his 1979 trip, he mentioned visits to the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square — and being on court with the father of NBA All-Star Yao.
“One interesting fact is that Yao Ming’s father was on the team I played against in Shanghai,” Unseld said. “So if you have any more Yao Mings ... send them to the Washington Wizards.”
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