I was just watching an interview with an expert on international basketball, and he said that, aside from Asian players, by far the three most popular NBA players in Japan are Vince Carter, Alan Iverson, and Steve Francis. Not huge news, but it's interesting, and makes you wonder what the criteria is. Anyways, just a tidbit, but thought y'all ( heh) would want to know...
Since the Japanese and Chinese have never really gotten along, maybe they figure these are the least likely players to pass to Yao Ming. *rimshot*
From what I hear, players with hip/hop style/attitude and "street cred" are among the most popular with Japanese fans, particularly younger ones, as hip hop is immensely popular there. So it makes sense that Stevie fits the bill, though I don't know why Viince Carter is in there. FWIW, I've also heard that IV is far and away the most popular player there too.
Vince Carter, Alan Iverson, and Steve Francis are obviously going to be more popular than yao ming in japan. for one thing, japanese and chinese are not the same. 2nd, what japanese players do japanese fans have to cheer for? none. out of all asian countries, only china has some players in the league. 3rd, japanese hate chinese with a passion. some japanese politician even made a comment about how chinese have filthy criminal dna or whatever in their blood and they've made many other offensive comments toward chinese there. and actually even in china, allen iverson and tracy mcgrady are more popular than yao ming. their jerseys sell better from what i heard.
Is this any different from the US? Vince got into the all star voting last year with very little playing time last year. Francis and Yao (as much as I love them) were starters even though others may have played better. Iverson would probably get the same treatment like Vince did if he was injured. my 5 cents,
i know macbeth probably thought the japanese would be fans of yao's, so he said besides asian players. to be more specific, there are only chinese players. no other asians in the nba yet besides chinese.
No, the guy mentioned a couple of Japanense players with whom he compared thse guys' popularity. Re: Carter not street cred; there may be two reasons. 1) He is the most popular player in the NBA, and 2) He did a promo tour of Japan last year. So the street cred might explain why Stevie and the Answer.
ok, but tell me what japanese players are actually in the nba? NONE. so there is nobody to really compete with their popularity.
Oh yeah, you're right, he did that Nike promo tour thing w/Yao if I recall correctly in a bunch of places in Asian.
not surprising, in china, the most popular players are kobe, iverson and carter. francis is up there too. yao is only liked for nationalistic reasons. believe it or not, skills and flash go over more than race. also, believe it or not, yao did not win by a landslide over shaq in the all star ballots in china either.
actually, believe it or not, yao had beaten shaq in the United States ballots, had more votes than shaq in the US and the majority of his votes came from the US. that's the real reason he got into the all star game. chinese are not as nationalistic as some people make them out to be. other asians like koreans are much more nationalistic than chinese are.
I know the Japanese hate Americans because of the war, and Chinese hate the Japanese for the same reason. I didn't know the Japanese have problem with Chinese.
the japanese hate americans for all sorts of reasons, sending them to concentration camps, depicting them as spies, dropping an atomic bomb on their country. things like that will obviously make somebody hate somebody. chinese hate japanese because of well the nanjing massacre, and some of the sick things they did during that massacre, even worse than the holocaust and chinese in china depict japanese as nazi looking stupid villains in their movies to remind people of the war crimes they committed. japanese also refuse to admit to any of their war crimes and they cover it up in their history books and even portray those psychotic lunatics as heroes and if you've read some of the articles in japan, they make it very clear how they look down on chinese as being inferior. japanese hate chinese more than any other race from what i've heard.
amazing the types of generalizations being thrown around in here...what's next, "Mexicans hate Italians"?
