Cup of Cha
This is China

If you want to make a lot of money, you should become an NBA player. If you’re already an NBA player, and you want to make more money, demand a trade the Rockets. Mr. Yao Ming has made a good chunk of change for a couple teammates. In short, it pays to live in Houston, if you’re a basketball player, anyway.

Tracy McGrady, already making a big payday, saw his fortunes increase considerably when he got traded to the Rockets a few years ago. His jersey sales promptly went through the roof , led by the Chinese market. Since then he has consistently remained at the top of the pack, ahead of Yao.

Even more interesting than that is the story of Shane Battier. I was in his graduating class at Duke in ‘01, so I have followed his career fairly carefully, and quite frankly he’s been on some entertaining teams. Anyway, he is a very solid player, but not a superstar like McGrady is, by any means. My first year China when my students asked me about Duke I told them that there a number of famous basketball players to come from my Alma Mater. However, Shane was not one of the ones they knew (Elton Brand, also my year, was better known).

Fast-forward six years, and most Chinese people know who Battier is. In fact, I had the bizarre experience a few of seeing his face on several billboards in tiny towns around Henan, and even Xinjiang. Shane had suddenly elevated from super-obscure guy in China, to a spokesman for China Peak, a sneaker company. Needless to say, this rise the prominence in central and western China coincided with a trade to–that’s right–Houston. Battier’s is now the face of the shoe company, accompanied with the concise, and slightly baffling, slogan, ‘I can play,’ which sounds more like a kid trying to convince his older brother than an NBA player telling adoring fans.

(By the way, while I was writing this post an advertisement for Peak featuring Shane Battier literally came across my TV. If this were the webcast version of Cup of Cha it would have been a fantastic moment. Instead a shirtless Josh is thinking how cool that was and typing it into his computer, which quite frankly, is not that cool.)

So, the message here is clearly: become a member of the Houston Rockets. And Shane, if you’re out there reading this, and I know you are, I’d love to do a podcast interview with you some time. You’ll be out here next August for the Olympics anyway, so it would be silly if you didn’t do one. You must remember me. We had calculus together in Ben’s class. Remember him? He’s the guy who once canceled the lesson because he ran out of chalk. You used to say ‘hi’ to me on the bus. You’ve probably just lost my email address. Right?

Tags: basketball, shane battier, yao ming
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