When I look back at the history of the National Basketball Association’s global expansion, one player stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of cultural and commercial impact: Yao Ming . His arrival in the NBA in 2002 wasn’t just the debut of a dominant 7-foot-6 center, it was the opening of a colossal new market and the forging of a powerful, if sometimes complicated, relationship between American professional basketball and the world’s most populous nation, China. My career as a writer has allowed me to observe countless sporting phenomena, but the “Yao Ming Effect” remains one of the most astonishing examples of a single athlete transcending sport to become a diplomatic and economic force.

The Dawn of the ‘Ming Dynasty’

Yao Ming’s journey began in Shanghai, playing for

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