As the Chinese national basketball team recovered from three straight losses to squeak into the second round of the World Basketball Championships in Japan this week, U.S. basketball officials might be forgiven a certain rooting interest in Yao Ming and his China team against the likes of Senegal and Slovenia.

The reason has to do with the fact that 400 million "branded pieces" of National Basketball Association products, from jerseys to basketballs, were distributed in China last year. Involved in the process were 25 merchandise partners. When NBA Commissioner David Stern visited China recently -- he has been there three times in the past two years -- he even met with a company that produces Inner Mongolian milk.

Mr. Stern says American and other non-Chinese league sponsors always bring up the world's most populous country before he does. In addition to merchandise licensees, his league counts 15 marketing partners in China, from the domestic (Coca-Cola and McDonald's) to the European (Nokia) to the Chinese (China Mobile).

"Very little of the discussion we have with our international sponsors doesn't move very quickly to opportunities in China," he says. He adds wryly that he is pleased the Chinese government labels his sport "important for fitness, exercise and harmony."

Mr. Stern calls the ascendance of Chinese basketball "inevitable." The pace would be hastened if the on-court part of the equation would catch up. When China lost successive games to Italy, the U.S. and Puerto Rico, it risked dispersing the tournament's audience those companies want so much to reach. Local sports journalists and experts estimate that about half of the tournament's global audience would have turned away.

With a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to beat Slovenia Thursday, the Chinese fulfilled a confident guarantee promised by their first NBA all-star, Houston Rockets center Mr. Yao. Expectations had been running high after China's upset of international stalwart Serbia-Montenegro in the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.

While attention to the tournament in the U.S. has been scant (some games are being shown live early in the morning), it has been big news in China. Updates about China's play dominates newspapers' sports pages. China's CCTV broadcasts every important game. News Internet portals such as Sina.com and Yahoo China are full of chatter. Before the team's turnaround, China's sports bloggers continued to back Mr. Yao. Instead, criticism focused on the rest of the team, ranging from poor strategies to lack of cooperation among players.

"Yao Ming is the first choice for attack by the Chinese team but should not be the only choice. He needs to get most scores for the team, but (he is) unnecessarily getting 50 percent of all scores," says one Internet posting.

There is pressure on the Chinese team to do better when it hosts the Olympic tournament two summers from now, says Kevin Adler, a sponsorship consultant and founder of Engage Marketing. "There's such a degree of nationalism associated with that, much more so than in U.S. basketball," he says. Chinese fans, he adds, consider it "almost a foregone conclusion that they will be contenders at the Beijing Olympics in '08."

Sponsors also are watching carefully. Anheuser-Busch Cos., a company smitten with China's beer-drinking proclivities, is an NBA partner as well as a sponsor of the Chinese Olympic team and the 2008 Summer Games.

Tony Ponturo, the company's vice president of global media and sports marketing, says he believes basketball's penetration into China is only 10 percent to 15 percent of what it might be. At the same time, he says his eyes and ears on the ground in Chinese cities perceive basketball taking a back seat to football, especially after a World Cup in which fans there followed religiously even without their national team competing.

Mr. Ponturo is curious to see how the two-year build-up to Beijing's spot in the international sports' spotlight might skew interest more toward basketball.

"The upside is still to be determined," he says. "That's the case with a lot of brand-building in China. You like what you see. You like the foundation. You like the trends."

Hu Jiashi, vice president of the China Basketball Association, recently told reporters that while basketball has trailed football, he believes it is pulling level. Mark Fischer, head of NBA China, says China has the largest fan following in the NBA, with an estimated 500 million fans.

The NBA claims that more than one billion viewers sampled its 290-plus games in the more-wired sections of the country last season. The league staffs about 50 employees in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing offices, a number Mr. Stern says would double soon. NBA officials in the U.S. travel to China for business on a weekly basis, he adds.

One recent NBA grassroots endeavor is the Jam Van, which contains hoops and even interactive NBA video games and which traveled through 17 Chinese cities, including some in areas where huge swaths of the population don't own televisions. In 2004, the NBA held a pair of exhibition games between Houston and Sacramento. A basketball floor was brought in, there were mascots, dancers and Shanghai's stadium was specially renovated for the event.

"We have been on the air since 1987, but never done anything this big," says Mr. Fischer of NBA China. "This raised the bar, made us sort of real to the Chinese fans and kind of set the standard for sports events in China." More exhibitions are planned for 2007.

Team USA also drew notice with pre-tournament exhibitions last month.

The 12,000-seat Guangzhou arena nearly sold out despite ticket prices of US$50 to US$450, steep for China. The games also were broadcast on national television.

Basketball stars are clearly being used by many companies looking toward the China market. Adidas AG CEO Herbert Hainer said this month his company plans to make Mr. Yao the linchpin of a plan to expand Reebok's presence in China. (The company early this year acquired Reebok, which has a small presence in China with about 50 stores.)

Miami Heat star Shaquille O'Neal announced a five-year deal with Chinese sportswear brand Li Ning Co. this month to endorse a signature line of shoes specifically for the mainland Chinese market.

But for now, actual A-list Chinese basketball talent remains mostly theoretical after Mr. Yao, who scored 36 points against Slovenia -- no teammate scored more than 11 points. Center Wang Zhizhi has been an end-of-the-bench NBA role player, though there is early buzz on a second center expected to follow Mr. Yao into the NBA draft's first round, 18-year-old Yi Jianlan.

Bill Duffy, Mr. Yao's agent, says the country's main league, the Chinese Basketball Association, isn't yet on par with top European competitors. Mr. Duffy can foresee a scenario with seven or eight strong CBA teams, but only when they start to pay at the same level as elite teams like FC Barcelona, Benetton Treviso and Moscow's CSKA.

The agent also predicts Chinese basketball will reach a tipping point when it produces guards as well as centers. "I don't think there's any young Steve Nashes over there," Mr. Duffy says, referring to the Phoenix Suns' point guard, a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player.