July 12, 2006—During lunch breaks last month at the Basketball Without Borders camp in Shanghai, China, Orlando Magic forward Pat Garrity was likely to be found sandwiched between an HIV positive child from the local orphanage and a HIV negative public school student. The interaction was unique; in a city where 69% of young people think the virus can be transmitted through chopsticks, children like these would never cross paths without the inspiration of superstars like Garrity.

“That type of HIV tolerance and inclusion is something that’s new in China,” says Todd Jacobson of the National Basketball Association (NBA), who attended the four-day camp. “We’ve helped create that by lending our players’ images.”

Through Basketball Without Borders—on four continents now since launching in 2001—the NBA and UNICEF deploy a powerful defensive play: Kids get overdue information on HIV awareness, prevention and tolerance and shoot hoops at the same time. They also learn life skills, including the ability to work as a team and to have compassion for others—a winning combination in China. “The greatest barriers to AIDS care here are stigma and discrimination,” says Ken Legins, who heads the HIV/AIDS division of UNICEF China and puts public awareness about where Americans were in the 1980s.

China is slowly opening its doors to the international AIDS community in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but the extent of the epidemic in the most populous country in the world remains unclear due to a lack of government transparency. Meanwhile, activists have been jailed in an ongoing battle over official responsibility for HIV-tainted blood transfusions.

The Shanghai summer camp, which happened to get underway June 8 just as the NBA finals were in full swing back in the U.S., featured  new HIV education kits called “Skills for Life in a Box.” The interactive materials will be distributed at Chinese schools this fall and used by teachers in at least six of the country’s 23 provinces. The “Boxes” wrap HIV/AIDS education in a bow (literally) by offering instructional DVDs, workbooks with the images of players and, of course, basketballs.

The campaign is supplemented by star power on TV, where local hero Yao Ming recently appeared in a public service announcement graciously sharing his chopsticks with Magic Johnson.

Nothing seems to make a kid listen up quite like the real-life company of a seven-foot-tall professional player, however. “We can all play sports—it doesn’t matter who we are, what our background is,” says Legins of the summer camp, which came to a teary close on June 11. “They’re playing together, and that’s exactly what we want to happen.”