Liu Lang took the time to go to Chicago and watched an NBA game with David Stern and Knight, which was the first playoff game of the 91-92 season, against the Chicago Bulls and the Miami Heat.

David Stern is now proud, the NBA game has now fully entered the formal, and the popularity of the United States is also growing, with more than 20 million fans, and it is increasing day by day, and there is a tendency to catch up with the North American ice hockey league, but it cannot be compared with the football league, this event is the favorite of the Americans, with more than 100 million fans.

There are many reasons for the growing influence of the NBA, such as Stern's good management, as well as the strong official publicity, the strong promotion of Nike, and the rise of Jordan, the "god of basketball".

Two years ago, Liu Lang and Stern watched an NBA Eastern Conference Finals against Chicago and the Pistons, but Jordan fell in front of each other again, and the Pistons finally won the championship.

At that time, Stern was scratching his head, he hated the city of Detroit, this is a bunch of rude and unqualified industrial workers, and he also hates the bad boys of the Pistons, they play too roughly, like this city, he admires elegance, just like Jordan, because of Jordan, many young people like basketball, so he wants to push Jordan to the altar, but these bad boys are in the way of Jordan becoming a god.

Liu Lang told Stern that next year, that is, the 90-91 season is the moment when Jordan will come to the altar, and the result is really Liu Lang's words, in this year Jordan defeated all opponents and won his first championship without blood, and the god of basketball came.

Stern was amazed at Liu Lang's judgment, no, where is this judgment?

After Jordan became the champion, the league began the "god-making" movement, this year Jordan's fame reached its peak, Nike's "Flyer" series sold five million pairs, Nike of course will not let Jordan this "god", the two sides re-contracted, Nike signed a five-year contract with the other party at a price of 10 million US dollars a year, and also gave 5% of the shares of the "Flyer" brand to each other.

According to this contract, Jordan was able to earn $2 million in the "Flyer" brand last year, and this contract also firmly tied Jordan to Nike, and Jordan was also quite satisfied.

In fact, in the previous life, the brand "Flyer" was created by Jordan and Nike together, and even Jordan's role was greater, so later Jordan had more shares, at least more than 10%, and this brand later became independent of other brands of Nike and became one of the most well-known brands of Nike, so that Jordan could get more than $100 million in dividends every year for many years after retiring, he didn't care about anything, just sit at home and count the banknotes.

But he is not so "lucky" in this life, the "Flying Man" brand was designed by Liu Lang, and even this nickname was given by Liu Lang, which has nothing to do with Jordan's dime, so it is not low to give him five percent in the distribution of shares, Jordan is also very satisfied with this contract, and feels that Nike is not thin on himself, who would have thought that he got much more in his previous life than in this life, and he was also pitted by Liu Lang.

Jordan's popularity has reached its peak, the NBA's ratings are also rising, Stern is very happy, and is also very satisfied with Nike's approach to wooing Jordan, and the NBA's influence in China is also expanding rapidly, he wants to model Liu Lang's "Slam Dunk" comic book to hold a similar high school basketball game in China, and then strengthen the prestige of the NBA, he feels that this matter needs to be touched with Liu Lang.

Liu Lang of course agreed with the other party's proposal, Knight actually has this idea, Liu Lang has long promoted Nike's sneakers in "Slam Dunk", and at the same time, as the first American sneakers to enter the Chinese market, they have also been officially recognized by China, but Nike shoes are a bit expensive, and the lowest price in China is as high as more than 70 yuan, you must know that a pair of domestic rubber sole sneakers are only five or six yuan, which is 145 times higher than the price, and few people can buy such expensive shoes for their children.

The same is true for the NBA, in recent years, Stern has never wanted to make money from China, in fact, in recent years, the league will spend nearly a million dollars in the Chinese market every year to build thousands of basketball courts for the mainland, but this does not prevent the league and Nike from increasing investment in the mainland, the reason is simple, they are optimistic about China's future, not the present.

Knight and Stern came into contact with China too early, Knight came to China in the '80s and built his own factory in Shenzhen, when Nike was still a small company with an annual turnover of only a few million dollars, barely surviving on low costs.

He still remembers that at that time, Shenzhen was only a large vacant land, and there were very few buildings more than 20 meters high, and the monthly salary of workers recruited in Shenzhen was less than 100 yuan.

Ten years have passed in the blink of an eye, what is the current Shenzhen market? High-rise buildings are everywhere, companies and enterprises are everywhere, and the per capita income exceeds 5,000 yuan.

What is even more frightening is that China's growth has not only not slowed down, but has continued to accelerate, with China's economic growth tripling in the last decade, and then tripling or quadrupling in the next decade?

Some American economists predict that China's per capita annual income will exceed $1,000 in the next century, and people like Knight who know China very well are inaccurate, and the national average income may be like this, but in big cities like the capital, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and even Shenzhen, there are far more than these, much more than that, and the per capita income may exceed $2,000, which is fully affordable for the consumption of the Nike brand.

There is also the Chinese market is too big, the NBA now only has 20 million fans in the United States, but in China this number is really commonplace, Liu Lang's "Slam Dunk" comic book has sold tens of millions of copies, this is not counting pirated books, China's potential fans are likely to have already surpassed the United States, once China's consumption level rises, there is no doubt that it will be an astronomical number.

An outstanding entrepreneur is not only concerned about the current market, but also the future market, and even the latter is more important than the former, Stern and Knight are such entrepreneurs, their eyes are on the world situation in five years, and in five years China will become a country that no one can ignore, ten years later may become one of the world's top consumer countries, who will give up such a market?