Former NBA star Tracy McGrady made his Chinese Basketball Association debut with the Qingdao Double Star Eagles over the weekend, losing a heartbreaker to the Fujian Sturgeons after Sundiata Gaines, formerly of the NBA's Utah Jazz, drained a three-pointer with no time left to put Fujian up 95-92. It was the sort finish -- dramatic, supremely marketable -- that CBA executives have been dreaming of ever since they started pushing hard to recruit former NBA players a couple of years ago.

But if the presence of so many marquee names on CBA courts has given the league an immediate boost, it's not necessarily a good thing for Chinese basketball as a whole. Or so says China's biggest homegrown basketball star.

'We need to do something to help local basketball grow. You can't always rely on the foreign basketball players to come and help with your marketing and all that,' retired eight-time NBA All-Star Yao Ming told China Real Time in a recent interview. 'You need to have local people come in and have a deep impact, to make that link, that connection between the players and the fans.'

In a country hungry for global sports success that boasts hundreds of millions of basketball fans --- including Premier Wen Jiabao --- the state of Chinese basketball is a persistent source of consternation. Led by Yao, China's national men's team managed to finish eighth in the standings during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But it has struggled mightily since injuries forced Yao to retire and left the London Olympics this summer without winning a single game. The CBA, meanwhile, watched fans lose interest after Yao was picked first the 2002 NBA draft and left the league without any major stars.

Things have picked up for the CBA in recent years, thanks largely to former NBA heavyweights like McGrady, Gilbert Arenas and Stephon Marbury. McGrady arrived in Qingdao in October while Arenas signed with the Shanghai Sharks earlier this month. Marbury, an eccentric former New York Knick, has been tearing up the CBA since 2010 in one of basketball's great career resurrection stories.

Visiting Beijing to promote his eponymous wine at a private dinner at the Ritz Carlton, Yao said he hadn't spoken with McGrady, his former teammate in Houston, about coming to China. As co-owner of the Sharks, however, he's helping pay Arenas's salary.

Yao was careful to avoid portraying the presence of foreign stars in the CBA as a bad thing, and he lauded Marbury in particular for embracing the second chance he was given in China. Still, he argued, the league needs something else to succeed in the long run. 'I don't mean to say foreigners are hurting basketball here. They come here to play, the fans love them, but still, long-term, you need local stars turning out,' he said. 'We need to think about the second step.'

So what's the solution? With millions of kids playing basketball on courts from Beijing to Baotou, China already has the necessary raw materials, according to Yao. The key is convincing the country's schools and parents to give students a break from their relentless study schedules.

'We just need to give them more time to play,' he said. 'I'm not saying education is not important, but we have to have balance...More and more people are starting to realize that education is not only about homework and examinations. Physical education is important, too.'

In that sense, Yao said, one of the great things to happen to Chinese basketball is the emergence of Harvard graduate and Houston Rockets ball handler Jeremy Lin, who stunned the world last year with a torrid stretch as an emergency fill-in point guard for the Knicks.

'He proved that it's not necessary to give up education to become a great athlete,' Yao said of Lin, a Taiwanese American who has a massive following in China.

The other reason Lin could have a big impact on China's basketball future, according to the towering Yao: 'He's just normal sized, 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4 maybe. A lot of people can be that. Not everyone can be 7-foot-3.'

Lin has struggled so far to reproduce the success he experienced last year and said in a recent interview with Yahoo Sports that he felt he was a target on the court because of his race. Yao, who was a target himself when he first got to the NBA, said he thought it was wrong to think about it in terms of skin color.

'He's a target because he got so famous last year, not because of race,' he said. 'That what the NBA is like. You have to beat your opponent to earn the credit, and that's a process that will be with you through your entire career.'

Josh Chin