Thunder booms all the way to China

When Clay Bennett was first making his pitch for the NBA in Oklahoma City, not to the league but to the city itself, he talked a lot about the global reach of the NBA, how being in the league would raise OKC’s profile.

And you can hear commissioner David Stern talk a lot about the global influence of his league.

But you had to be skeptical about how much that related to Oklahoma City. New York? OK. Chicago? Sure. Houston, with Yao Ming? No doubt. The Lakers or Warriors or even Seattle, when the Sonics were there? I’ll buy it all on the Pacific Rim.

And there is probably a decent number of Europeans who follow the Thunder to some degree. Thabo Sefolosha is Switzerland’s greatest player ever. Nenad Krstic is Serbian. Robert Swift has universal appeal to a certain segment of young people.

But worldwide reach, which frankly in this age means China? Why would anyone in China care about the Thunder, except for the three or four nights a year the Boomers play the Houston Rockets?

I don’t know. But they do. I received this email Monday from a chap named Xiaoyu Lu. The ssubject line read: “Read this and give me some feedback.”

The email went like this: “Hi, Berry. I’m a thunder fan from China, we have a basketball BBS here which site is at www.hoopchina.com, and I’m proud to be the moderator of the Thunder area. We’ve been following your blogs, articles, news to get the up-to-date information about OKC thunder the whole season. We also pick up some good articles and translate into Chinese so more Chinese thunder fans can get informed.

“As the season has come to an end, I want to write a piece of article about this season and to have an outlook of the upcoming one. I think I need to hear your opinions, and I will translate them into Chinese so our fans can see the exclusive article. Hope you can spare some time to answer those questions for us: