MILWAUKEE Bucks general manager Larry Harris is confident that Chinese power forward Yi Jianlian will play for his NBA club when the season opens in three months.
His message Monday to Yi was simple — give us a chance.
“I believe (Yi) will be in a Bucks uniform,” Harris said. “We haven’t found one player yet that has not enjoyed Milwaukee once they got here. We’ve had tremendous support from the community, civic leaders, the Chinese community.
“We are making progress. We’re still talking,” he said.
Newly signed forward Desmond Mason hopes Yi will be his new teammate but said he can relate to Yi’s reluctance after seeing the winter snow when being traded to the Bucks in 2003.
“The snow was coming down so hard and I was like, ‘I can’t believe we’re in Milwaukee. This is crazy,’” Mason recalled. “After we found our niche and got our home and got in the community, we realized what a great place it was here.”
Bucks owner Herb Kohl has invited Yi, his family and Chen Haitao, owner of his Chinese league squad Guangdong Hongyuan, to visit Milwaukee.
NBA rules allow the Bucks to pay up to US$500,000 to Hongyuan to secure his release from China and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel newspaper reported that Yi would have to sign two agreements with Hongyuan.
One would involve a contract buyout that could link Yi to a spokesman’s role with the team or its parent company. The other would assign his representation rights to a Hongyuan-owned group, which could then assign his NBA agent rights to Los Angeles-based Dan Fegan, who has been handling Yi’s NBA talks. (SD-Agencies)