Kobe Bryant rules China

The U.S. basketball team, entirely made up of superstars, isn't really anyone's, but one of them -- Kobe Bryant -- stands alone, at least as far as 1.3 billion Chinese are concerned.

If LeBron James is still King James in the U.S., Bryant is the new emperor of China.

Bryant gets the loudest cheers in pregame introductions. Fans chant "MVP!" when he's at the free-throw line. Late in Saturday's rout of Spain as he sat on the bench, they started chanting, "Kobe! Kobe!"

As teammate Carmelo Anthony joked, "Kobe might want to think about moving here -- to live."

On this, his fifth trip to China, he's protected by the U.S. team's security people, several of whom were hired off the Lakers staff.

On past trips, where every place he went hadn't already been secured as they have been here, he would have needed the People's Liberation Army.

"Oh, they've broken through security before," Bryant says. "I've lost earrings, chains and all kinds of stuff. This time I tuck 'em in when I go into crowds.

"Last year when I came here, I lost an earring. . . . A kid found it on the floor and held on to it for three hours and came back and gave it back to me. That's crazy."

It got crazier than that. Once Bryant landed in a private jet at a Chinese airport, where a large crowd was waiting, but he was told to stay on the plane.

It turned out the general who ran the airport was waiting for his son to arrive to get an autograph.

If everything has turned around for Bryant, it was never so clear until this trip.

At home, he was always overshadowed by Shaquille O'Neal before he hurtled from grace after his 2003 arrest.

In China, however, Bryant's career dovetailed with the rise of interest in the NBA, and the perception was different. He wasn't just the child star they saw on TV winning three titles. As hard-driving in business as basketball, he was also the one they saw in person on promotional tours.

Says U.S. Coach Mike Krzyzewski: "Kobe has a relationship with the Chinese fans."

LeBron James got the greatest buildup in history, but coverage here centered on games. If James was fresh, young and brimming with "street cred," it didn't match Bryant's exploits in the playoffs and his 81-point game.

For Bryant, it's the latest thing to go right in a commercial comeback like none before.

It used to be axiomatic in advertising that no one paid for mixed messages. If you lost commercial cachet, it was gone forever.

Bryant was dropped by all his partners except Nike -- and it didn't bring out a shoe with his name on it for two years. Now here he is, the reigning MVP, closing in on a gold medal, the most beloved Western figure in the greatest market of them all.