An unbelievable NBA statistic

January 25, 2009

In the car today I was listening to the BBC World Service broadcast of the 4th round of the FA Cup (Liverpool v. Everton), which in and of itself was pretty cool. During the halftime break, the studio announcers were discussing NBA All-Star voting and, in particular, why Dwight Howard of Orlando was the biggest vote-getter with over 3 million votes cast for him. One theory — not sure how credible it was but it was interesting — was that Chinese voters respect NBA centers because of Yao Ming, and Howard especially because he played well at the Olympics. And they also said online Chinese voters don’t have to vote against Yao because he’s in the Western Conference. Oh, and 30% (30%!!) of all online votes for the All-Star Game come from China. Mind-blowing stuff. Too bad I don’t live in an NBA city — I should bring some jerseys with me . . .

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Posted by Joel | Filed Under Commentaries, Sports 

Comments

2 Responses to “An unbelievable NBA statistic”

  1. Gerry Hoffberg on January 26th, 2009 5:39 am

    Just don’t bring any Knick jerseys or they will send you home.

  2. Joel on January 26th, 2009 6:54 am

    True. What I hear is it doesn’t have to be just Yao or Yi Lianlian — the place is NBA-crazy.

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