Basketball carries the Flag

Five NBA players are flag bearers at these Games:

Yao Ming: China
Dirk Nowitzki: Germany
Manu Ginobili: Argentina
Andrei Kirilenko: Russia
Sarunas Jasikevicius: Lithuania

Nowitzki thinks the fact that there are so many flag-bearers from the sport of Basketball underlines the sport's popularity.

"It shows that Basketball is getting bigger all over the world," he says. "It used to be a smaller sport, but now everybody plays it. The NBA has fans all over the world. It's becoming a global game."

Read more about this in "How many Basketball players does it take to carry a flag?" on the FIBA website.

NBA.com also has a page up dedicated to the Olympics called Beijing 2008.