so all these big bad superstars couldnt get a dunk on a 20 year kid... I'm not sure which is more embarrassing... the fact they couldnt get a dunk... or that this is how they conducted themselves while repping their country... ...smh....
Shows that even a young Yao was capable of rebuffing the best players in the NBA at the rim. He's seriously underrated historically (though not on Clutchfans) and was a ******* SUPERstar in his peak, as short as it was. Also he was the nicest basketball player I ever had the pleasure of meeting in person, though only for a short time. What a great ambassador for China and Houston.
I see no problem with team USA making such a bet. It is a sign of respect for Yao IMHO. Especially since they were not able to. A nice story overal.
So uh, supposedly no one won the bet. . . . Who lost the bet? Oh, no one lost and no one won? But it was still a bet though? Was it a bet between two guys, or, like twelve guys ante'd up $80,000 each? Did the short guys and non-dunkers ante up too? Or was it just like the 4 main dunkers threw a cool 1/4 mill each? I really need to know who lost a million dollars! This is so juicy!
do you even know what racism is? they had a bounty on dunking on a 7'6" guy. the fact that KG thought for a second that the bet was won when Vince dunked on the Frenchman Weiss showed it was all dunking on a hyped up tall person, nothing to do with him being Chinese.
We can argue about how much racism if faced by Asian NBA players in another forum on another day. However, there definitely was a bit of... racism? nationalism?... toward Yao that was apparent throughout the NBA when he began his rise to prominence. At least that was the impression I got. Dudes regularly went out of their way to disrespect and belittle Yao in ways they didn't to some of the actual stiffs out there. We can at least agree that some in the NBA... KG and Shaq, definitely... did not take kindly to Yao entering the league with the hype he came with. Shaq even mocked Yao with some "ching-chong" BS and some talk about "kung fu" on a radio appearance. And nobody remembers Charles Barkley and his donkey act??
Any body that says it was a sign of a respect or no different than yada yada really doesn't understand, it's called bullying or trying to intimidate someone cause of their race. Trust me, as an asian kid growing up and playing all sports, I experienced it all the time, since I'm asian there's no way I could play ball until I showed them I could.
Tracy: I love it. When Yao came in & I was in Orlando, he was one of my targets I wanted to dunk on. This is NBA guys being themselves. Rachel: I thought you were going to stand up for him? Tracy: He wasn't always a teammate of mine. Dude was fresh meat coming in. 7'5 guy.
apparently t-mac was at his most racist when he dunked on shawn bradley (a favorite target of nba players): save a horse ride a mav. the racist summamabish just sucked the gravity right out of the building. if you think people wanting to dunk on 7'5"+ guys had anything to do with their race and not their height i don't know what to tell you. it's not like nba players were putting bounties on Wang Zhi Zhi or Yi Jianlian.
How do you know? We found out about this bounty 19 years after the fact. And it's not the bounty that's racist... It's the bounty along with all the other BS that Yao put up with. He was treated demonstrably different than other rookies of his class, other #1 picks, and other unusually tall players. I can't definitively say why, but I'll damn sure cast a suspicious glance.
so basically team USA owes YAO Ming a million bucks plus interest. Its not fair that hes an unknowing participant on a bet. he should get that million.
