Yearender: The year of Yao in Chinese basketball

As for the national teams, the long road started with a small but significant change, as every potential national team member now receives an invitation letter rather than a compulsory notification. They can choose to join the team immediately or stick to a personal schedule first such as playing in the NBA summer league or getting married.

This change reflects an environment where respected, allowing players like Ding Yanyuhang and Zhou Qi have a better chance to dream big. Neither Yao nor Wang Zhizhi enjoyed this kind of privilege in their career.

Just as he played in the paint for Houston, Yao was literally everywhere in the CBA. He could show up at the CBA press conference held in Beijing in the morning, talking in a meeting with China's basketball journalists in the afternoon before going to a night state banquet focused on building international cooperation.

After the next day he is already sitting at a summit in Shanghai answering questions. His personal life is not the only thing Yao has given up, he also sold his share of CBA's Shanghai side, the team he played for before he went to NBA in 2002. He waived the controlling shareholder role of a single team to see the big picture of the whole CBA league.

The CBA league is by far one of the best pieces of sports IP and the biggest attraction in the market of basketball in China. After Yao took in charge, the league started a five-year plan of reform. There will be ten playoff teams instead of the previous eight, and the number will increase to 12 in 2018-2019 season. The regular season will grow from 38 rounds to 56 rounds within five years.

Yao's reform of the league also includes the design of a NBDL-like development league to provide more opportunities to young players. More fundamental work is being done like professional training of the judges, the CBA draft and fitness tests.

"Investment isn't everything in the sports industry, gold medals aren't everything for a strong sporting country," Yao said in his remarks at the annual session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body.

China had already built much more than 600,000 basketball courts, showing that the country realizes that a sole focus on professional games or national teams would be not enough. Yao said that competitive sports, mass sports, the sports industry, and sports culture must all advance shoulder to shoulder.