Yao Mania

It didn’t take much to make 23-year-old Wang Huan feel as if she were having a spiritual experience Sunday at the exhibition game here involving the Houston Rockets and Sacramento Kings.

All she had to do was walk into the arena and see such stars as Yao Ming of the Rockets and Peja Stojakovic of the Kings warming up. In person.

“For the common people, they’re like the gods!” said Wang, who was upbeat despite the fact she had paid the twice face value for a ticket, then wound up in a seat where half her view was blocked by rows of temporary press seats. “I think this is encouraging me to have a better life. I also have a dream -- a dream to go to America and watch the real games.”

But for once, the real game came to Wang and 17,902 other screaming, thunder-stick slapping fans who crammed into Beijing’s Capital Gymnasium. And the last of two NBA exhibition games held in China this week turned out to be a 91-89 squeaker, with the Kings winning on a 15-foot baseline jump shot by guard Bobby Jackson with 6.7 seconds left.

It proved to be a bittersweet ending to a poignant homecoming for Yao. He had led the Rockets to an 88-86 win Thursday in his hometown of Shanghai.

Neither game will count in the 2004-2005 standings, of course. Yet their historic cultural significance wasn’t lost on the throngs of basketball-crazed fans here.

The games were the first involving two NBA teams on Chinese soil, but not the NBA’s first venture outside the states. Since the late 1980s, it has held exhibition and regular-season games in various European cities and Tokyo.

This NBA tour, though, has hit a nerve. China was introduced to basketball more than 100 years ago, and it has been primed for the Western-style pro game through overseas telecasts, brand endorsements and the phenomenon of Yao-mania.

Interest in athletics, both generally and as an expression of national pride, also has picked up since Beijing won the bid to play host to the 2008 Olympics and the nation’s Olympic squad bagged 32 gold medals in the Athens Games.

That zeitgeist gave the scene here at Capital Gymnasium the feel of an American sports venue at playoff time -- but with a Chinese twist.

Among the throng was Ren Zhe, who covered his emotional bets by wearing a Sacramento King necklace medallion over a No. 11 Yao jersey.

Near giddiness, Ren pronounced the scene “very exciting” and summed up the reason why he was so eager to get to the game. “McGrady slam dunks very good,” he said, referring to Rocket guard Tracy McGrady.

His friend Yang Yu said he felt very lucky to get tickets, even after waiting five hours in line. There was lots of interest in this contest because “in China, many, many people like to play basketball because of Yao Ming, but before Yao Ming, I liked the NBA,” he said.

Still, most Chinese are just in the “beginning stage” of becoming sports fans, said Ma Jian, a former player for the Chinese national team who retired last year from the Beijing Ocean of the Chinese Basketball League.

“Americans, they’re true sports fans,” said Ma, 35, who played college ball at the University of Utah in the mid-1990s. “They understand the game. But here, they think they understand but they don’t.”

Inside the arena, however, it sure seemed as if they did.

The crowd went nuts over a team of acrobats who jumped off trampolines to dunk. It greeted like old friends a number of former NBA greats, such as Bill Russell and Patrick Ewing, who were brought to center court.

Yet the largest roar was reserved for the undisputed guest of honor -- Yao himself, whom publicity-sly NBA officials arranged to be called last during pregame introductions. The place shook with a force that could have cracked the Great Wall.

Olympic gold medal-winning diver Guo Jingjing pronounced it all good. Sitting in a blue VIP box at courtside, she said Chinese fans need to be exposed to Western-style basketball so “people can really feel what it’s like.”

In the opposite corner, from her obstructed view seat, Wang pronounced herself “satisfied” and said the peak moment was the beginning of the game, when “everybody was so excited to see so many stars before their eyes. It’s true. It’s real.”

But as the game wore on, the stars started to fade a bit and she showed the eagle eye of a seasoned fan.

“I don’t think the players play well, or even try their best,” she said, “because it’s preseason.”