Yao leads again in earnings and influence. Yi Jianlian is #4. Click here for the article.

The good folks over at Sports Illustrated China were gracious enough to send me an English translation of the article that appears in their publication after Yao was awarded the 2007 Sportsman of the Year award in China. Here it is!

Yao Ming, sportsman of the year
Written by Mary Nicole Nazzaro

Fast-forward 25 years.

Yao Ming is 52 years old and his basketball heroics are far behind him. He and wife Ye Li have their own family, maybe even a basketball player. They bask in nice memories of Olympic Games and Toyota Center lights and crowds. Their lives are peaceful and uncluttered. The glitz and glamour of the NBA are a distant memory.

Watch the highlight movie of Yao Ming’s sports career for a moment in your mind, and then ask yourself – what will be the best moment of this film? What will be the moment when I will look back and think,yes, that’s the Yao Ming I remember, the man who single-handedly introduced millions of American basketball fans to the most populous country in the world, the man who was named SI China’s Sportsman of the Year, way, way back in 2007?

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Through public voting, Yao was selected as the S.I. China Sportsman of the Year. He beat out several prominent Chinese athletes, including Milwaukee Buck Yi Jianlian and last year’s winner Liu Xiang. Raymond has posted some of the photos from the article in the forum. And for a limited period of time, you can see some of the same photos they are displaying on the S.I. China home page at http://www.sichina.com.