Hongkonger Wilson Tsang Wai-shun began following basketball in secondary school, a time when the National Basketball Association (NBA) experienced one of its fastest expansions, acquiring both fortune and fame with fans.<\/p>\n
While much of that was down to the likes of global superstar Michael Jordan, in China, the sport had by then been popular for decades.<\/p>\n
But then NBA commissioner David Stern\u2019s initial 1987-88 agreement to broadcast games on China Central Television, around the time Jordan was transcending the game, turned the American league into a major player in the country\u2019s sporting landscape.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe emergence of Jordan, and around the same time, this Japanese manga called Slam Dunk became popular \u2026 all these contributed to why a lot of people in Hong Kong got into basketball,\u201d Tsang, who is now in his 40s, said.<\/p>\n
It remains an integral part of his life, and the sales manager is one of several administrators of \u201cSlamtalk\u201d, a Hong Kong-based online forum with 46,300 members.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasketball is indispensable for many people \u2026 as adults, the meaning is to maintain friendships and watch the games together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For Bobby Chan, a 30-year-old designer who runs the Instagram page lakers_hkfansclub with 33,500 followers, the love for basketball began in primary school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hongkonger Wilson Tsang Wai-shun began following basketball in secondary school, a time when the National Basketball Association (NBA)…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":278442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[8952,143875,9710,3124,74,143873,60276,143876,43694,6951,6026,8464,3136,96282,28459,143877,3363,3141,24952,143871,143874,4255,1260,1721,131607,143878,6043,1956,143867,143872,62,78939,143870,67,132,44914,143869,68,60274,143868,143866,96283],"class_list":{"0":"post-278441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-adam-silver","9":"tag-allan-zeman","10":"tag-beijing","11":"tag-brooklyn-nets","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-china-central-television","14":"tag-chinese-basketball-association","15":"tag-colby-college","16":"tag-daryl-morey","17":"tag-david-stern","18":"tag-england","19":"tag-hong-kong","20":"tag-houston-rockets","21":"tag-joe-tsai","22":"tag-kobe-bryant","23":"tag-lan-kwai-fong-group","24":"tag-lebron-james","25":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","26":"tag-macau","27":"tag-mark-dreyer","28":"tag-mark-tatum","29":"tag-michael-jordan","30":"tag-nba","31":"tag-phoenix-suns","32":"tag-reuters","33":"tag-sands-china","34":"tag-shanghai","35":"tag-shenzhen","36":"tag-slam-dunk","37":"tag-slamtalk","38":"tag-sports","39":"tag-tencent","40":"tag-thomas-oates","41":"tag-united-states","42":"tag-unitedstates","43":"tag-university-of-dayton","44":"tag-university-of-iowa","45":"tag-us","46":"tag-weibo","47":"tag-wilson-tsang","48":"tag-wynn-macau","49":"tag-yao-ming"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}