When it came to finding a topic to talk about, Barkley was an absolute genius.
The next day, his comment about kissing Kenny Smith's ass set the United States sports world on fire.
The root cause was simply that Yao Ming was too much of a hot topic.
In this era, every American was curious about that distant, mysterious Eastern country. And Yao Ming came from there, landing in the NBA as the unprecedented number one draft pick.
If Yao Ming were a towering 7'5" white man, all the fans would go wild for him, hoping he could tear up the NBA and break the dominance of Black players.
But he wasn't.
So, many Americans were waiting to see him fail, just for the spectacle.
And Barkley's comments catered perfectly to that sentiment.
The media's frenzy and their "let's-stir-up-trouble-for-the-hell-of-it" attitude became clear to Chen Yu the next day when he returned to his office after finishing his morning work and started flipping through the newspapers.
