1 worker in 1990, now 200

As part of The Chronicle’s coverage of the Warriors’ trip to China, beat writer Connor Letourneau is posting accounts of what he observes.

SHANGHAI — Twentyseven years ago, Rob Levine became the NBA’s first employee based in Asia. With no office of his own, Levine — then a vice president for international development — worked from an apartment in Hong Kong and awoke early in the morning for conference calls with colleagues in New York.

On Saturday afternoon, while watching more than 15,000 people pack into Shanghai’s Oriental Sports Center for the NBA’s Fan Appreciation Day, I thought about how Levine must feel today. With more than 700 million people who watched NBA programming on TV last season, China is easily the NBA’s top international market.

Now, as the Warriors near the end of their whirlwind week here, I’m curious to see just how far the league’s reach can extend. In a recent interview with USA Today, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver mentioned the possibility of teams playing regular-season games in China in a decade.

Perhaps the league will eventually have a team based in Beijing or Shanghai. As crazy as that may sound, I’m not about to underestimate NBA China. The operation that started in Levine’s apartment has sprouted into an enterprise of more than 200 employees.

The biggest question is whether technological advances will allow the league to fully capitalize on its burgeoning popularity in China. While Virgin CEO Richard Branson is helping oversee an initiative to build planes capable of flying from New York to London in little more than three hours, Tesla CEO Elon Musk hopes to use reusable rockets to fly people anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

Outside of government intervention, there is no reason the NBA couldn’t eye expansion in the Far East if a flight to Shanghai was as easy as shuttling from Philadelphia to Oakland. Levine should be proud.