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Twenty-five years after the league partnered with state broadcaster CCTV, the audience for NBA games on television and online has risen 39 percent this year over the last season, the NBA says. The league also claims 41 million followers on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging service, including many who pay for its premium service, along with 25,000 points of sale in shops and online.
Despite that, the league is struggling to get jerseys into stores to satisfy demand for all things Lin, whose followers on Weibo have soared this week from 150,000 to 1.4 million by Friday.
Lin, who was ignored by every Division I college team except Harvard and was cut by two teams before joining the Knicks, wasn't on many fans' radar before this month, but Shoemaker said the NBA in China had been keeping an eye on him for a while. Still, the "Linsanity" phenomenon has been as breathtaking to him as to anyone.
"We're caught up witnessing what we see globally as a passion for sport, really a love of the underdog story and the global appeal for the NBA and that's all come through in spades in a short period of time, in about 10 days," he said.
Lin's exploits also have riveted Taiwan, with reporters staking out the apartment where his grandmother and an uncle live.
Lin's success in both sports and academics again raises questions about China's state-run system of sports academies that has produced scores of Olympic gold medal winners by relentlessly training athletes from an early age, while offering them little chance of a normal childhood or proper education, said Jin Can, an expert at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences Sports Culture Research Institute.
"Lin's case tells us that the regular education system can produce an excellent athlete, and a first-rate player can come out from a world-class university. I think our sport authorities should pay more attention on this question," Jin said.
[Associated Press;
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