Ginormous

Every so often you read an article that makes you go 'wow!' Here's the Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen, Yikes! Yao vs. Yi is huge:

Tonight will bring the first NBA meeting of Yao and the player expected to be the next Chinese NBA star, Yi Jianlian, an occasion that could draw the largest global audience to see an NBA game. ...

"Here we have two gentlemen, from different regions, Shanghai (Yao) and the Guandong Province (Yi), and who mean so much to this enormous country, with an enormous television market and enormous love for basketball," [NBA Commissioner David] Stern said. "Now we have the exclamation point."

The game will be on 19 networks in China, including CCTV-5, Guangdong TV, Guangzhou TV, and ESPN Star Sports in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It also will be available live through two Webcasters.

Though ratings estimates in China are difficult and vary widely, today's game is said to be certain to draw 150 million viewers and could reach 250 million. CCTV-5 alone is available in 210 million households.

Yao's first game against Shaquille O'Neal in 2002 drew an estimated audience of 220 million and the largest cable television ratings in the United States for a regular-season game since the 1995 comeback of Magic Johnson.

"I heard there were close to 200 million people that watched," Yao said. "But come on, in our country, we have (1.3) billion. That's still a small part of it." ...

When the Indianapolis Colts played the New England Patriots last Sunday, the average audience during the game was 33.8 million; 66.4 million saw at least a six-minute portion.

The average audience for Super Bowl XLI was 93 million, with 139.8 million seeing at least six minutes. There have been estimates Super Bowls draw a global audience of roughly 150 million.

The audience for tonight's Rockets game, starting on a Saturday morning in China, could exceed the Super Bowl, Colts-Patriots game and the Friday ESPN NBA games combined.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Michael Hunt weighs in as well, Young star puts Bucks on global market:

Almost as many people in a faraway land will watch an NBA game as the number of number of people who exist in the country that invented basketball. Such a staggering notion probably wasn't on Dr. Naismith's mind as he drove home that final nail in the peach basket.

Here's another thing to consider: It wasn't that long ago when the Bucks were happy to get a couple of people in outer Waukesha County to watch them play. To think that someone in Inner Mongolia is going to know that our little team even exists seems almost as implausible as Jake Voskuhl dunking on Yao.

That was one of the reasons the Bucks took Yi with the sixth pick in the draft. The most important reason, the one that is making the Bucks look smarter every day, is that Yi is going to be a tremendous player in this league. You can tell after four games, but more on that in a moment.

"I think there were 100 million (Chinese viewers) for our Bulls game," Bucks coach Larry Krystkowiak said. "As long as they're not in my ear yelling at me, it makes it pretty easy.

"It's exciting for us. It's one of the elements of being involved in this. It raises the level of awareness in a lot of ways. I think our guys know they're being watched a little bit closer and it doesn't hurt our effort at all. It creates more of a sense of urgency and accountability for all of us."

Krystkowiak's quote points to the ultimate effect China whill have on all of 'us'--they're so big that for the first time since the end of the Cold War, Americans are becoming aware that there's another country looming behind us.

We're no longer autarchists, competing against the best in each other--we're back in a race again, with a very different opponent; one in which we have a huge lead, but where the other competitor can't help but gain.

How we handle this--whether we use China as a worthy competitor pushing us to our best, whether we turn surly, whether we ignore reality, whether we lose sight of why we're running--will determine whether the 21st century ends with Americans still free to play our own game under our rules, or just another runner jockeying for oxygen.

Although you wonder with numbers like that, how long until the NBA buys into a Chinese network and starts scheduling Rockets and Bucks game for 9 a.m. EST?

AP photo of Yao and Yi by Darko Vojinovic via MSNBC