| Nets hope to expand market by adding Yi |
| DATA： 2008-06-30 |
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| Yi Jianlian during a friendly match between the Chinese Olympic basketball team and Lithuania in Shenzhen on June 24.Xinhua |
The deal sent the longtime Nets star Richard Jefferson to the Bucks, who also sent Bobby Simmons to New Jersey. On the court, Yi is regarded as a mobile big man with a good shooting touch from midrange. But the Nets are hoping that off the court, he will help attract a new pool of fans. With sizeable Chinese communities in North Jersey and Brooklyn, where the Nets are scheduled to begin playing in 2010, Yi could be the Nets’ marketing answer to the Houston Rockets’ Yao Ming.
“It opens up a truly new fan base for us,” said Brett Yormark, the Nets’ chief executive. “Yi is going to give us the opportunity to be relevant to Asian-American fans in ways we haven’t been before.”
Within hours of the trade’s confirmation, the Nets’ marketing efforts were in full swing. Their Web site had a splash page of Yi in a Nets uniform, announcing, “Something big has come to New Jersey.” They offered a free Yi jersey to everyone who purchased a season ticket. According to Yormark, the Nets sold 200 season tickets in the 36 hours after the trade.
This was the kind of exposure that Yi had made such a fuss about when he was drafted by the Bucks with the sixth overall pick in 2007.
“We’ve talked to the Bucks and the Rockets so we can learn from their mistakes and, more often, replicate what they did,” Yormark said. “We jumped right on it.”
During his first season in the NBA, Yi averaged 6.6 points and 5.2 rebounds and had 56 blocks in 66 games. But like many imported big men, he has a more fluid game than a traditional inside player. Alongside the Nets’ first pick in this year’s draft, center Brook Lopez from Stanford, Yi is expected to help provide the frontcourt size the team lacked last season.
“Traditionally, the Nets have been a very good perimeter team,” General Manager Kiki Vandeweghe said. “We suffered a little bit with lack of low-post scoring last year, lack of interior defense.
“I think we’ve now got some big players who can score and shoot from the outside,” he said.(SD-Agencies)