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Yi Jianlian hugged teammate Liu Wei after China defeated Jordan during the Asian Basketball Championships in Wuhan in September.

Chinese basketball star Yi Jianlian is looking to continue China’s decade-long legacy of keeping players in the National Basketball Association.

The 6-foot-10 forward is set to sign a one-year contract with the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, according to reports from media company Sina Corp. (in Chinese) and ESPN.

The deal will likely be done within the next two days, after all health checks are passed, Sina cited Mr. Yi as saying in a phone interview.

The defending champion Dallas Mavericks got a good look at the Chinese player last year, when he stepped off the Washington Wizards’ bench and scored 14 points against the Mavericks. It was a season high for Mr. Yi, who averaged 5.6 points and 3.9 rebounds with the Wizards last season.

When finalized, the deal will restore China’s presence in the U.S. sports world. Mr. Yi has been China’s main connection to the U.S.-based basketball since its most well-known player, Yao Ming, retired this past year.

Tennis star Li Na, who made history in Paris last June as she became the first Chinese and first Asian to win a Grand Slam singles title, has become one of China’s main hopes in propelling the country into the global athletic scene, but her career has been up and down over the past year. Mr. Yi offers China another shot at global fame.

The 24year-old Maverick-to-be has four seasons of experience in the NBA, playing for Milwaukee, New Jersey and Washington. But he has been a free agent since suffering a knee injury playing for the Chinese Basketball Association’s Guangdong Southern Tigers in November.

Injuries cost Mr. Yi a contract with the Wizards, who declined to re-sign him after he sat out 19 games last season. Few teams have been willing to pay the $5 million to $6 million price tag Mr. Yi wanted, the Sina report said.

No financial details of the Mavericks deal were mentioned in the Sina report.

The ESPN report said Mr. Yi will rehabilitate, playing for the Mavericks’ D-League affiliate, the Texas Legends.

The Mavericks were the first team in NBA history to sign a Chinese player, bringing on Wang Zhizhi in 2002.

–Laurie Burkitt; follow her on Twitter at @lburkitt

EPA/Mainichi Newspaper

A picture released 15 March 2011 shows waves overwhelm a levee, swallowing a seaside village near the mouth of Hei River, Japan, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

On Wednesday morning, “Teacher Wang” and about 400 followers were inside their shelters made from converted cargo containers in Nantou county in central Taiwan, awaiting a magnitude 14 earthquake and a 170-meter tsunami that would “rip Taiwan in half” at precisely 10:42:37 local time.

The ground didn’t shake. There was no tsunami. The Central Weather Bureau recorded only two mild quakes with a magnitude below four at 11am and 4pm local time, which happens almost daily in Taiwan.

Perhaps shaken by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that laid waste to northern Japan, the world appears to be witnessing an increase in doomsday rumors. On the same day Mr. Wang predicted Taiwan’s quake would hit, groups of Romans fled the Italian capital out of fear an earthquake, predicted by a long-dead self-taught seismologist, would destroy the city. Likewise, religious groups in the U.S. have been spreading similar rumors of a “Judgment Day” quake supposedly set to hit May 21. In Taiwan, however, the doomsday quake rumor got a little extra help from the island’s sometimes breathless news media.

Mr. Wang first made headlines two weeks ago when he predicted the devastating event, based on the Yi Ching, or Book of Changes, on his blog. The doomsday prognostications quickly snowballed after local media outlets picked up the story, and within two weeks Mr. Wang’s followers had set up 170 shelters for concerned citizens who wanted to ensure they were prepared for the monster quake.

Most did not buy Mr. Wang’s grim prophecy, but dozens of skeptics, college students and curious onlookers along with a horde of media and about 40 policemen nevertheless waited outside Wang’s cargo container, counting down yesterday morning. When nothing happened at the appointed time, the students danced, laughed and mockingly demanded Mr. Wang explain himself. According to local TV, Mr. Wang said the quake could happen later in the day. Later in the day, he relinquished and admitted to being drunk when he made the prophecy.

Local newspapers said the Central Weather Bureau sent an official warning to Wang that he could have contravened the island’s Meteorological Act, which states that individuals and organizations can be fined up to NT$1 million (US$34,948) for issuing weather forecasts or warnings of earthquake without the bureau’s permission.

But other critics said Taiwan’s local media played a crucial part in escalating the rumor, with some of the 24-hour news channels spending roughly 10 minutes of every hour covering Mr. Wang. Live reports from the scene in Nantou and the replaying of images from the massive earthquake in Japan dramatized the rumor, the critics argue, turning one blogger’s baseless augury into a story that sucked in a sizable gang of the gullible.

This isn’t the first time Taiwan’s media has given a platform to an individual with an unverifiable story or groundless forecast. Just last week, the island’s newspapers seized on outlandish reports that Osama bin Laden was once taught by a Taiwanese judo teacher when he was in Saudi Arabia — a claim denied by the Saudi government.

While no culture is immune to doomsday prophecies, the popularity of fortune telling in Taiwan, along with its proximity to active faults and annual typhoon seasons makes it particularly vulnerable. Just how far the public shaming of Mr. Wang has gone to arming the island against similar rumors is unclear. Given how much discussion the prediction generated during an otherwise slow news day, one might be inclined to predict that more Mr. Wangs lie in the island’s future.

– Aries Poon