Yao on Inside Stuff Cover...Story Inside

Yao is on cover of NBA Inside Stuff May issue. I grabbed the story inside the magazine using my HP scanner. The text may not be 100% accurate.
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Yao's Rocket Ride

By HENRY ABBOTT

ThankS to a hotel executive who had been buzzing around for hours, directing the placement of security guards, bellhops, luggage carts and orange cones, the Houston Rockets' arrival at La Mansion hotel in San Antonio went very smoothly. Within moments of arriving, almost every player and coach had snagged one of the electronic card- keys waiting on an elegant lobby table and made their way swiftly upstairs.

Most were dressed for speed, in plain sweat suits and hats that made them diffi- cult to identify. Even NBA AII-Star Steve Francis and future Hall-of-Fame coach Rudy Tomjanovich slid through the lobby without the normal celebrity hassle. Other hotel guests who happened to be in the lobby weren't quite sure what they were seeing.

"OH MY GOD!"

Until Yao Ming walked in. In gray sweats with a backpack slung over one shoulder, Yao had dressed for speed, too, but he needn't have bothered. Seeming 50-per- cent taller than everyone else in the hotel, Yao was impossible to miss.
The instant he strode into view-his slow walk includes a mild sway, like a giraffe-a nicely dressed middle-aged woman yelled, blew past a handful of other Rockets, rifled around for a pen and got herself an auto- graph from the NBA's next big thing. "I thought my son's graduation from the Air Force Academy was a big deal;' she yelped excitedly to no one in particular, "but now this is the highlight of my trip."

A crowd formed as Yao, slouching to keep his thick black hair from grazing the hallway ceiling, set about signing the Chinese characters of his autograph for every person who asked. He had an appointment with a reporter upstairs in 10 minutes. He would be late.

Half an hour later, Yao stepped into the room of his translator, Colin Pine. Nearly two feet apart in height, the two are almost always together and have become friends; they share a house with Yao's mother in Houston. Yao entered tentatively, stooping to clear the low-to-him doorway.

On court, Yao's height-he's listed at 7- 5-is just one asset, along with flawless footwork, above-average court vision, an array of polished moves and preternatural poise. The instant he stood up in the hotel room, however, height defined the man. Suddenly we were sitting in a dollhouse; it seemed inhumane to keep this furlong of an athlete stuffed in a space so small.

Only when he settled into a chair did it become clear again that there is more to Yao than height. For starters, there is his calm. In a matter of months, he had gone from being the center for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association to starting ahead of Shaquille O'Neal on the Western Conference's NBA AII-Star team. He is undaunted.

Yao is comfortable facing hard work. He recalls when he was 14 and moved out of his parents' house for good, trying to qual- ify for the Shanghai junior team. "We had to be at the court at six o'clock in the morn- ing;' he explains. "We wouldn't eat break- fast first. We'd go do distance running. After running, you would have to make 100 shots. Then you would eat breakfast and rest for a little while. Half an hour later you would resume practicing:'
On the hardest days-which happened at least three days a week-they would have four practices lasting a combined 10 hours a day. "Endurance, strength, it's like what you would see in a sports movie, doing all these drills;' he says. "And we did some things maybe you don't know about. Some strange things that help improve your reaction time, the strength and feel of your fingers and your wrists:' He'd go through a bottle of shampoo a week just washing the sweat out. Yao is not a complainer, but he admits that at 14, "everybody complained. It was extremely tiring...That kind of train- ing doesn't exist anymore. I was unlucky. I was in the last group to have to do that."

When he visited his parents on Sundays, he was so exhausted that he would do nothing but "lie down on my bed and eat:' IUnlike virtually every American player, he cannot remember playing basketball on a playground.) When it was time to go back Dn Monday morning, "I was always a little sad;' he says. "At that time, I guess I really didn't have a choice. If I had to do it again, I don't think I could do it." He is happy to face his current challenge:Taking over the NBA.

Yao Ming was born on September 12, 1980, the only child of top basketball players. Before she moved to Houston to help her son with the transition to life in the U.S., Yao's 6-3 mother Fang Feng Di starred on the national team. (Yao has semi-jokingly campaigned for the Rockets to give her an assistant coach's job.) Nearly 6-10, Yao Zhi Yuan, who has spent some of the season with his son, played on the men's national team and played center for the Shanghai team that pre-dated the Sharks.
They lived in Shanghai, where everyone expected the youngest Yao' to be a great athlete. When he was nine, a teacher asked his class which student they thought would be able to make a free throw. They all screamed "Yao!" ("At that time;' he recalls, "I couldn't shoot at all. I could only make a layup if no one else was around.")

Three years later, when he was a 6-6 12- year-old2 the provincial sports academy enlisted him for the water polo squad. "I played water polo for two months;' he says, "but then they kicked me off the team because my skill level was too far behind. I couldn't swim fast enough."

He dabbled in several sports, but as he kept growing, hoops took over. After a couple of years, he had qualified to tryout for the junior team of the Shanghai sharks-the local professional team. That's when he said goodbye to his parents and moved out to train near-constantly. There was a lot of pressure during what was essentially a six-month tryout.

"They would pick;' he remembers. "The junior team could pick players from 10 dif- ferent schools within the district. You would train, and people would be cut. Only the best players would get to the Shanghai team."

One happy day was June 8, 1994, when Yao saw his first NBA game. Gathered in the common room with his teammates, he watched Houston {led by his future hero, Hakeem Olajuwon') beat the New York Knicks in the first game of the NBA Finals. The series had it all-thrilling intensity, tight finishes and brilliant performances. What Yao remembers best is that it went seven games. With time off to watch the games, the series bought him and his teammates seven precious days of rest.'
Eventually, the workouts got slightly easier. Shortly after turning 17; Yao left China for the first time on a national youth team trip to Paris. "There were about eight African players, three Chinese players, and one Japanese player;' he recalls. "Everyone else was from Europe, and we would have inner-camp games:' Scouts took notice.

He graduated to the Sharks' senior team in '97-98; averaging close to a double-dou- ble, he quickly became a celebrity. That year, over a plate of ribs at the Shanghai Tony Roma's, he signed a shoe deal with Nike (which will run out soon). He came to the United States for the first time, for an international basketball event in San Diego called High Five America. He also found time to stop by Michael Jordan's camp in Santa Barbara and a Nike camp in Oregon. Sometime during that trip, he started think- ing about playing in the NBA.

A broken left foot left Yao hobbling in a cast for a month and marred his second pro season. He bounced back nicely: in '99, he was on his way to the NBA draft until political complications scuttled the plan.

In '00, Yao-a mainstay of the Chinese national team-squared off against the U.S. at the Olympics in Sydney. Back in China that fall, he averaged 27 points and 19 rebounds per game for the Sharks. The following year, '01-02, he added five more points per game to those totals, and Shanghai won its first national title. After testing his mettle against NBA competition at the 2002 World Basketball Champion- ship, he joined the Rockets last October.

Yao had plenty of critics before his arrival, but they have been silenced. Just 22, and only beginning to learn about American culture and the NBA game, Yao is already, by any measure, one of the League's most productive centers. In making the Rockets a playoff-caliber team for the first time since '99, his highlights have been numer- ous-those blocks of Shaquille O'Neal, the incredible give-and-go with Moochie Norris, more than a few spin moves.
People who know expect Yao to get ex- ponentially better. Michael Jordan has said he's "for real:' Shaquille O'Neal opined that he "has all the tools:' And Allen Iverson, not a great overstater, has tagged him" a gift from God:' Isiah Thomas offers "phenomenal:' Hakeem Olajuwon- Yao's idol-has cited Yao's "unlimited potential."

The more folks know him, the more they like him. San Antonio Spur Mengke Bateer served on China's national team with Yao and describes him as "brilliant, not only as a basketball player but also as a person. He is truly special:' Cuttino Mobley says he loves him, pure and simple. NBA AII- Star teammate Steve Francis says Yao is "just like me, only 7-5 and Chinese."

CoachTomjanovich, who was too excited to sleep after Yao's first practice, couldn't be happier. He allotted Yao the starting center spot after just a fevv games and continues to give him warm praise after nearly every game. He has said repeatedly thatYao has special vision, poise and skills to go with his special size.
"Yao is so inspiring;' he says. "It just gives me goose bumps sometimes."

Yao leans back in his chair in Pine's San Antonio hotel room and smiles. It's now obvious to everyone-and to him-that he belongs here. He is as comfortable as a veteran, dispensing a mild taunt to an opponent here and an innocent joke there. When asked whose moves he'd like to add to his game, he brings up Turbo, the Rockets' mascot who uses a trampoline to execute flip-dunks and the like.

He also waxes poetic, peppering his banter with pearls of wisdom. "I remember very clearly something my math teacher said to me when I was young:The hardest challenges sometimes are the ones you will get right, and the easiest ones are sometimes the ones you will mess up."

Yao has learned that lesson: Making it in the NBA is one of the hardest challenges in sports. So far he's making it look easy.