Yao's new fans are lovin' it live at NBA arenas By Kevin Yamamura -- Bee Capitol Bureau Published 2:15 a.m. PST Sunday, March 23, 2003 OAKLAND -- Yao Ming has awakened fans from decades of basketball hibernation. Wen-Hsaio Tien, 88, had her last encounter with the sport 70 years ago, when she was a college cheerleader in northern China. Chris Chew, a Danville telecom manager, hadn't been to a Golden State Warriors game since watching Hall of Famer Rick Barry play in 1974. Both came to the Arena in Oakland on Friday, when the 7-foot-6 rookie and his Houston Rockets beat the Warriors 117-107 before heading to Sacramento for tonight's game against the Kings. "He's like our national hero," said Chew, munching on garlic fries and wearing a $45 gray Yao jersey so newly purchased, the NBA tag was still attached. "Who else do we have?" Sure, Wang Zhizhi and Mengke Bateer preceded Yao in the NBA, but Chew scoffs at those names. Yao, he says, is an All-Star. An icon. Other Chinese American fans here called the 22-year-old from Shanghai a role model, giving Asian kids hope that maybe someday they can play in the NBA. They see Yao as a cultural ambassador. In fact, so great a draw was Yao that the Bay Area's sizable Chinese American community helped the Warriors set a home attendance record of 20,193 -- though that could have been as much a product of Golden State vying with Houston for the Western Conference's eighth playoff spot. Tien, the grandmother who sat 30 rows above the court with her family, said she has been following Yao on television and in Chinese-language newspapers. Her granddaughter has partial season tickets and cheers for the Warriors, but Tien didn't come for Adonal Foyle or Antawn Jamison. "I just wanted to see Yao," she said. Golden State sold 3,400 tickets to groups, about half of those to Asian American organizations, said Kevin Terry, the Warriors' executive director of sales and services. An additional 1,500 fans purchased Yao Ming packs -- a series of three Golden State games bundled with the Friday contest. Yao touched the ball two minutes into the game, sending "oohs" and "ahhs" throughout the building. Yao blocked an Erick Dampier shot and drew cheers. He also received his share of boos from the Warriors faithful, perhaps another sign that he has reached icon status. Warriors fans and Yao fans traded boos and cheers all night, particularly when he went to the free-throw line. Sopana Sakya, a San Francisco-based documentarian of Asian American issues, said that many people -- even non-sports fans such as herself -- hope Yao can break stereotypes about Asian Americans, even if he's a Chinese citizen. Friday's game was Sakya's first live NBA experience. "I think Asian Americans have always been in the background -- you never see them in the face of anything," she said. "We've sort of been pigeon-holed as engineers or mathematicians when it's just not true." Yao, for his part, shrugs off suggestions that he represents the Asian American community. Asked how he feels about hundreds of Asian fans coming to see him, Yao sighed, then responded, "Every fan is important to me." After a solid performance of 23 points, 14 rebounds and four blocked shots, a wearier Yao said, "I think the greatest pressure comes from other people's hopes and expectations of me." While he doesn't talk much about his Asian American fans, the Warriors and Rockets are aggressively wooing them. The Rockets have an hour-long radio show in Mandarin that airs in the Houston area. The team also has provided an online broadcast on its Web site, boosting traffic by 300 percent, said team spokesman Nelson Luis. The Warriors, who unlike the Kings depend on a large number of ticket sales for individual games, employed a "Got Yao?" campaign, putting the slogan on billboards and in Chinese media broadcasts and publications. Besides the Warriors selling out Friday's game, Terry said the team has cultivated new Warriors fans by using Yao as a draw. That's been the case for Kevin Hsieh, who runs the Web site www.sanfranciscochinatown.com. Hsieh barely paid attention to the NBA before he went to an Asian American convention last summer. There, he found Warriors staff promoting last August's United States-China exhibition game in Oakland featuring Yao. Hsieh made sure to see that exhibition, and he has been hooked ever since. He has been to half of the Warriors' home games since then and considers himself a big Golden State fan. The team also considers Hsieh one of its liaisons to the Chinese American community, as he sold more than 500 tickets to Friday's game through his Web site. By game time, he found himself straddling his two loyalties -- the player who triggered his interest in basketball and the team he's grown to love. "It's tough," he said. "I'm rooting for the Warriors, but I'm rooting for Yao, too, because he's my boy." The first thing Hsieh did Friday was buy one of the $45 Yao jerseys the Warriors stocked just for Friday's game. Across the stadium, Micah Chen clutched an authentic Yao jersey he bought online just for this night. He wanted Yao's autograph but didn't find much success before the game. Chen, raised in Los Angeles, said he roots for the Lakers and grew up with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. So, what was he doing in Oakland with a Yao jersey and digital camera in hand? "I'm Chinese, too," he said. "It makes me proud to see an Asian face out there, you know?" Tien knows, too. She says the modern game is different from what she saw as a teen in China. But she likes the NBA and even waved her arms when free pizza was handed out. And Chew says he couldn't even fathom a Chinese player when he saw Barry in Oakland years ago, couldn't even really grasp it, in fact, until he saw Yao on television in the All-Star Game. "We saw that and said, 'We have to be there to see Yao,' " Chew said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About the Writer The Bee's Kevin Yamamura can be reached at (916) 321-1179 or kyamamura@sacbee.com.
