James is personal friends with the performer Jay-Z, who owns a small piece of the Nets, but James said that relationship would play no role in whether he decides to leave Cleveland -- either when his contract expires in 2011, or if he exercises his opt-out in 2010.

The Knicks have also made clear that their No. 1 priority is to clear cap space for the summer of 2010 when James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade can all become unrestricted free agents. But they'll have to move Zach Randolph and at least one other player already under contract through 2010-11 -- Jamal Crawford, Eddy Curry and Jared Jeffries -- in order to get far enough below the cap to make James a max offer.

If James waits until 2011 to become a free agent, the Knicks are positioned to have enough room to make a max offer.

"They have a right to dream about it, and I can't take that away from them. My friendship was way before Jay was part-owner of the Nets, and I loved the Garden way before I got to the NBA," James said. "For some reason when I get to the Garden I always play well, so they want me to do it 41 games instead of just two nights a year."

But when we take off our tin foil hat and put on our accountant’s green eyeshade, we see something else afoot, something that has value whether the team gets Lebron or not: Richard Jefferson wasn’t traded for a player or two. He was traded for a country…China.

It’s not that the two ideas are mutually exclusive, but Yi, if handled right, presents the Nets with a golden opportunity. Prior to last year’s draft, Ed Stefanski flew to Shanghai and made a pitch for Brooklyn and the Nets to Yi’s handlers, including the Chinese Basketball Association and Team Yi. Eleven teams had been invited. Every team made that pitch understood the value of Yi.

New York has the biggest Chinese population in the United States—and Chinatown is one subway stop away from the site of the Barclays Center. The United States in turn has the largest overseas Chinese population in the world. Chinese and Chinese-American culture is thriving. In Brooklyn alone, there are about 250,000 native-born Chinese, from the Peoples’ Republic, Taiwan and Hong Kong. A full nine percent of the borough’s population was born in China, the largest foreign-born contingent. About 40% of the borough’s population is foreign-born, 949,000 according to the latest census data. How do I know all this? Because it was tucked in the back of “Brooklyn Tomorrow”, a glossy magazine produced by by the New York Post but financed largely by Forest City Ratner. I picked up a copy Thursday at lunch. (Where’d I put that tin foil hat again?)

There is money to be made here…and not just in ticket sales, but in corporate suite sales, sponsorships and naming rights, lots of it. And not just by the franchise, but by the players. Nets’ games will now be featured on the fifty-plus Chinese TV stations that carry NBA games. There are 300 million Chinese who play basketball and one billion viewers watch NBA games on Chinese television. Some months, the NBA brings in more revenue from China than it does from North America. The numbers are staggering.

Chinese fans will know the names of Devin Harris and Sean Williams and oh yes, that Carter guy who already has a Chinese fan site devoted to him. It almost exploded in delight this week at the pairing of its two favorite players. It’s reported that every Houston Rocket but Yao has a Chinese sneaker contract. Shane Battier has taken Mandarin lessons so he can better sell PEAK sportswear…as well he should. His agent has said he makes more from his Chinese endorsements than his American ones. Nice recruiting tool for free agents.

Yi is a huge star in China, with more personality and, yes, better looks than Yao. He is the fourth most popular Chinese celebrity in the latest polling. Yao Ming is first. He is featured in romantic commercials along with the country’s top young starlets. His first Nike commercial made fun of the contrast between the staid old China (Yao) and the new hip-hop China (Yi). He was chosen by the Chinese Red Cross to videotape a plea for donations following the Sichuan earthquake.

Chinese media had writers and producers living in Milwaukee, some of whom will no doubt move to New Jersey and cover the Nets for their local newspapers and television stations. Business publications in Milwaukee and Madison newspapers lamented the trade, noting how Yi was Wisconsin’s link to to the world’s fastest growing major economy. People wonder if the Bucks will be able to maintain their Chinese-language website. Will the Nets set one up as well? Already, they have posted a CNN video of him talking about the Olympics, shot in April.

Here’s what Brett Yormark (who knows just a little about marketing) told the New York Times about the possibilities of Yi: “We jumped right on it. We’ve talked to the Bucks and the Rockets so we can learn from their mistakes and, more often, replicate what they did. It opens up a truly new fan base for us. Yi is going to give us the opportunity to be relevant to Asian-American fans in ways we haven’t been before.” (And critics of Atlantic Yards should understand that Ratner just got a brand new and powerful constituency in his battle with them.)

Here’s the beauty part, the Lebron connection. Lebron James is a huge Nike client. Yi Jianlian is a huge Nike client. Lebron James is very popular in China, so popular in fact that Nike opened a Lebron James Museum in Shanghai last year. China Daily was there to record fans’ fevered reactions. If Lebron plays in New York (and last we checked, Brooklyn is part of New York), his Nike contract reportedly includes a 15% kicker.

As John Schuhmann of NBA.com wrote hours after the trade: “if LeBron envisions himself as a global icon, he might see the opportunity to team with Yi, in addition to moving to a larger market, as a wise business move”. Who’s a better teammate in that hunt for iconography: Zydrunas Ilgauskas or Yi Jianlain? You figure it out.

Posted by islesfan:

Brooklyn in da house baby. LeBron on the Nets is going to be sick.

Posted by newyorknewyork:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/06/cleveland_called_asking_about.html

Cleveland offer'd Wally Sczcerbiak's expiring to the Nets for Vince Carter the other day.

Posted by newyorknewyork:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/06/cleveland_called_asking_about.html

Cleveland offer'd Wally Sczcerbiak's expiring to the Nets for Vince Carter the other day.