(Update June 29) It’s not surprising that Team Yi (Yi Jianlian, his agent and advisors) are not happy with being selected by Milwaukee, accoring to this Chinese news. They even threatened “not come to Milwaukee”. Duh? Please note in this business of NBA, even super star like Steve Nash does not get to choose the team, he was traded from Dallas to Phoenix couple years ago, unwillingly. My advice to Yi is “be professional” about this basketball thing.
(Original June 28) That’s a city 80 miles north of Chicago. I saw the short interview after NBA draft at ESPN, it appears Yi can speak some English. I did watch couple of his games in this April (CBA final, against Wang Zhizhi’s Ba’yi Rocket), Yi’s team Guangdong tiger lost to Wang Zhizhi and Co. Yi is a few years younger than Yao, more agile, and Yi is power forward (7 inches).
I bet most Chinese are not familar with Milwaukee. It’s a decent size city in Wisconsin, the diary land of USA (so consider it as Inner Mongolia or Hei Long Jiang of China). It has two products kind famous: Harley Davidson motor cycle and Miller beer (the No. 2 US brewer after Budweiser). So in a way it’s very similar to St. Louis, which has Budweiser and used to make McDonald Douglass aircraft.
Business wise, it may help Miller or Harley marketing their products in China. But Yi may miss Chinese food at Milwaukee, because it’s much smaller than St. Louis, not to mention Houston (Yao’s town). Let’s see how things play out eventually.
Here is a video clip about Yi on YouTube.