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":2,"featured_media":202554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[20394,116590,550,671,144,53326,68702,116591,14036,116582,9333,5425,5050,68700,7566,116592,3013,1055,18736,116587,116589,7328,355,6415,38575,116593,4633,13563,116584,116588,99,35401,116586,7410,27432,57114,116585,116583,68701],"class_list":["post-202553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-adam-silver","tag-allan-zeman","tag-beijing","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-china","tag-china-central-television","tag-chinese-basketball-association","tag-colby-college","tag-daryl-morey","tag-david-stern","tag-england","tag-hong-kong","tag-houston-rockets","tag-joe-tsai","tag-kobe-bryant","tag-lan-kwai-fong-group","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-macau","tag-mark-dreyer","tag-mark-tatum","tag-michael-jordan","tag-nba","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-reuters","tag-sands-china","tag-shanghai","tag-shenzhen","tag-slam-dunk","tag-slamtalk","tag-sports","tag-tencent","tag-thomas-oates","tag-university-of-dayton","tag-university-of-iowa","tag-weibo","tag-wilson-tsang","tag-wynn-macau","tag-yao-ming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}