TO SAY that basketball is big in China is an understatement of mammoth proportions. The National Basketball Association estimates that more than 300 million people in China play the sport, although there's not even an NBA team in the country.

But all that is about to change. "Professional basketball in China is undergoing a profound makeover in infrastructure, player development," says Tom Newell, a former Sonics coach who now divides his time between his home in Bellevue and China, where he coached a Chinese Basketball Association CBA team, the Jilin Tigers, in Changchun. He continues to work closely with the league.

What Newell is talking about is the NBA's investment in establishing NBA China in partnership with ESPN and several bluechip Chinese entities, including Bank of China Group Investment; Lenovo, which bought IBM's ThinkPad division; the Li Ka Shing Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Hong Kong's richest man; and an affiliate of China Merchants Bank. The initial valuation of NBA China has been pegged at $2.3 billion.

FANS ALREADY IN PLACE

The partners have put up $253 million to acquire just 11 percent of NBA China, with the NBA holding 89 percent of the venture. To lead the new entity, the NBA named Tim Chen, the highly regarded  in both China and the U.S.  former head of Microsoft China.

The fan base already is solid, and with a population of 1.3 billion, NBA China has a lot of room to grow and has a big upside for revenue. Fans eagerly pay up to $550 to watch an exhibition match, and NBA merchandise is already available in 50,000 retail outlets. Traffic to its recently relaunched website, nba.com/china, hit 244 million page views per month with 10 million unique users. The groundwork was laid by the NBA, which for some time now has been partnering with the CBA in marketing and public relations.

And there will be more to come, no doubt, after basketball gets even wider exposure during the August Olympics in Beijing.

Newell has been watching firsthand the growing interest in the sport, playing a key role in the development of basketball training camps and leagues in China. He's been something of a basketball pioneer in China as the first NBA coach to be head coach of a CBA team. He's got basketball in his genes his father is the legendary college coach Pete Newell and he understands the opportunities to raise the level of play and fan experience.

Newell also sees how the heightened interest in basketball in China can come home to Washington, "into opportunities for a variety of Washington institutions and businesses."

DOLLAR SIGNS AWAIT

The NBA helped design the 18,000 seat Olympic basketball venue and will continue to operate it after the games end. But the sport will need more arenas throughout China. Designing, building and operating them will provide abundant opportunities for architects, designers, financiers and others.

NBBJ, the international architecture firm founded in Seattle its designs include Key Arena and Safeco Field, sees dollar signs on basketball courts. Dawn Clark, a principal in the firm in Seattle who has overseen a num ber of projects in China, says, "For NBBJ, there is opportunity on top of opportunity for NBAstyle arenas" in that country. Clark notes that her firm's experience with designing integrated sports facilities, which include retail and other uses, as anchors for revitalizing urban cores could be especially valuable to municipal governments in China. NBBJ's Staples Center project in Los Angeles is an example of how a welldesigned integrated sports arena can inject new life into an urban area, she says, noting that this is exactly what many Chinese cites might need.