BASKETBALL: In Texas and in basketball, they like things big. And the biggest thing in both of them (almost literally) is one and the same guy: Yao Ming, formerly of the Shanghai Sharks, now of the Houston Rockets.

Beyond question, Yao is transforming the fortunes of the Rockets, who until this season were a wholly unremarkable team. Arguably, he is also transforming the global prospects for his sport and, on the most hyper-optimistic expectations, changing the relationship between the US and China in a manner not seen since the days of ping-pong diplomacy 30 years ago.

So how big is this man? To be exact, 7ft 5in. Shawn Bradley of the Dallas Mavericks is actually an inch taller but even in the National Basketball Association, that league of giants, there have still only ever been nine players taller than 7ft 4in, headed by Manute Bol, the 7ft 7in Sudanese cowherd drafted by the old Washington Bullets a generation ago.

There is always a suspicion with these rather pantomime-ish figures that they are novelty acts rather than sportsmen. After all, when you can dunk the ball into the basket as easily dunking a biscuit into a cup of coffee, it is a minor detail whether you can run, pass or block. That was the suspicion about Yao, who looked pretty hopeless in his first couple of games. (Ow! Yao! said the early headlines.) Now the season is almost halfway through, and the critics have gone very quiet.

Yao leads the league in field goal percentage, which is understandable, but it is his passing which has become quite outstanding, and the Rockets are rocketing towards the play-offs.

But what excites the NBA most is not his height but his reach, which stretches across the Pacific. Basketball is popular in China (Yao's parents were top-flight players) and there is a potential TV audience four times the size of the US, which is being shown about half the Rockets' games this season. The NBA is opening offices in China, planning a Mandarin website, scheduling exhibition games in Beijing and Shanghai . . . the marketing men are just drooling.

So are Nike, one of whose representatives in China spotted Yao in Shanghai as a 16-year-old six years ago. Within days they organised a pair of size-18s for him, and the rest may soon be geopolitical sporting history.

This is a chance to reach out not just to China but to the huge, growing Chinese community in the US. Other teams have cashed in: the San Francisco-based Golden State Warriors, who have 1.5 million Asians in their area, have been offering special ticket plans based on Houston's appearances there. The struggling Memphis Grizzlies last week offered free admission to anyone over 7ft tall. Two took up the offer: one seven-footer and a 10-year-old boy on his dad's shoulders.

The Rockets' owner, Les Alexander, isn't aiming low with his hype either. Yao, he said, will be bigger than Michael Jordan: "There are so many Asians, he'll be the biggest athlete of all time."

Another concern emerged yesterday, in a letter to the Herald Tribune from Russell Leigh Moses, an American living in Nanjing, who said he shared the excitement of Chinese fans at Yao's success but noted a disturbing aspect, "the belief that Yao's basketball prowess is testament to Chinese racial superiority, especially - but by no means exclusively - where African-American players are concerned.

"Accompanying this sentiment is the view held by many young Chinese that Yao's success is reflective of America's decline and China's return to the status of a great power."

Sometimes, he said, these views were "quite virulent". Ow! Yao, indeed. Did you think you were just a basketball player, son?

Guardian service