Blinebury: The Book On Yao Not A Quick Read

His 3rd article in about a week...I think he has Yao fever.



The book on Yao is not a quick read

By FRAN BLINEBURY
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

INDIANAPOLIS -- First impressions.

They mean everything. They mean nothing.

They will come at Yao Ming in a frenzied, frantic swirl, like the points of light off one of those old disco balls spinning in the middle of a ceiling.

There will be his first impressions of a new life in a new country in a new culture in a whole new basketball world, where everything will seem to move a thousand times faster.

There will be our first impressions of him, this towering 7-5 giant who has been billed as the "Next Great Thing."

First impressions are hard to change.

So what are we getting? In today's attention-deficit world, the answers can't come soon enough.

Trouble is, there will be so many of them.

A snapshot of Yao, at this point, is reminiscent of the old tale about the blind men and the elephant. One grabs his long trunk, one touches his large ears, one pats his broad side, and each comes away with a totally different conclusion.

They are all right. They are all wrong.

Yao can be an intimidating defensive force from day one merely by raising both arms straight into the air. He can be a tentative defender unsure of when to stand his ground.

Yao can be a quick, slick scorer along the baseline, using head fakes and surprising speed to spin and get to the basket. He can give away his clear size advantage by trying to lay the ball off the glass rather than just rattling the backboard with a slam dunk.

Yao has soft hands, a good head about the game and excellent range on his shot, which will force opposing players to come out on the floor to guard him. Yao has so much to learn about his own larger-than-life body and how to use it.

In a place like Houston, where the bar for big men was set so majestically high by Hakeem Olajuwon, it may be impossible to ever measure up.

Yet as improbable as it was for a soccer player from Nigeria to have such an impact on the game, Yao's development, his story, could be just as intriguing as it unfolds.

So many first impressions.

There will be nights when -- even for one so young and inexperienced -- Yao will make his currently directionless Rockets teammates so much better merely by standing near the basket and cleaning up their mistakes. A shot-blocking, offensive-rebounding monster.

There will be nights when -- even for one so tall -- he will not be able to see over the problems he'll encounter or out of the web of difficult challenges. A raw, callow rookie learning the game.

There will be games in which he gets tangled up in foul trouble, as Yao did twice in the opening round of the World Basketball Championships against Germany and the United States.

There will be games in which he is virtually unstoppable, as he was in dropping 38 points against Algeria.

While it may be true Algeria had no player on its roster taller than 6-9, there were plays on which you could see the flashes of potential, things that happened on the court that explained the beatific smile that has taken up permanent residence on the face of Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich.

While the U.S. team had beaten China once in an exhibition game and again in the tournament, Yao's future NBA peers nodded their heads at what they saw.

"He can play," said muscular Ben Wallace.

"He's for real," said Paul Pierce.

The first thing that strikes you about Yao, from a perspective in the stands, is that he doesn't look 7-5. That's because you see the way he shoots and passes the ball, see how fluidly he moves from side to side, see how he gets up and down the floor, and you realize it's the first time you've ever seen such athleticism from someone so tall.

He is not Shawn Bradley or Manute Bol or Gheorge Muresan or Chuck Nevitt, valuable only for his size. The possibilities are out there for Yao because of his skills.

He will need to add bulk and get stronger to deal with the physical demands of the NBA. But he is not another beanpole oddity. There is substance to his lower body, and he can play in the low post.

During timeouts, they show highlights of Yao's performances with the Shanghai Sharks and the Chinese national team on the giant video board, and one play stands out.

He is to the left of the lane, about eight feet from the hoop with his back to the basket, when a pass is thrown up high in his direction. Yao does not catch the ball but simply tips it back over his right shoulder -- a no-look touch pass -- to a cutting player for an easy layup.

These are Larry Bird-like instincts, which explains why at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning, Rudy T is sitting bolt upright on a flight back to Houston, talking loudly in that foghorn voice while scribbling thoughts, ideas and plays on a napkin.

"There are so many things to like about the guy," Tomjanovich said. "Right now, what I like so much about him is that he seems so determined to get better. He knows he has a lot to learn. What I also like is his demeanor on the floor. He doesn't seem to rattle."

The international brand of basketball, especially in the pivot, is essentially a legalized mugging, where two, three and four players are sent in to surround a big scorer and pound away on him.

There are times when Yao spins away from the reaching and grabbing, the kneeing and punching, and scores. There are other times when he is too easily pushed off the block, out of position.

Yao rarely loses his composure. Yet the explosion and argument that drew a technical foul from referee Ed Rush during Wednesday's game against New Zealand is evidence of a fiery, competitive spark. He still shot 8-for-8 from the field and 11-for-11 at the line to score 27 points.

Yao will stick in a 3-point basket or whirl inside for a dunk and run back down the floor pumping his fist and shouting. He will also take a pass from a teammate for a bucket, then point in acknowledgment, a la Dean Smith's teams at North Carolina.

He will go to NBA cities and put on displays and show flashes of what he can eventually become, and Yao Fever will be recognized as valid. He will go to other NBA cities -- oh, LA and the Staples Center come to mind -- and be schooled and brutalized by the likes of Shaquille O'Neal, and Yao will be called a fraud, a nothing, the product of hype.

He will be a rookie, all that entails and more, as he learns about a brand new way of life, along with a better brand of basketball.

Yao will be introduced to American training methods, including weight lifting. The Chinese, at this point, do not believe in it for basketball players. However, on a trip to Denver last year, Yao worked out for a week with the Denver Nuggets' strength coach. He reportedly liked lifting and is ready to start a regimen.

The Chinese players do not even use ice on their sore and aching muscles and joints after games. Yao will grow and benefit from so many different basic aspects of NBA life.

You can sense he is not just playing ball because he happened to grow so tall. He genuinely likes the game, and it shows. He wants to improve. He knows he will take his lumps.

After an exhibition game for China against the Canadian team in Vancouver and again following a Chinese loss to the U.S. in Oakland, Rudy T told American reporters his No. 1 draft choice did well in handling the rough play used against him. About a week later, during a telephone conversation with a member of the Rockets' staff, Yao said: "Tell the coach he does not have to always be so nice to me."

"I guess he doesn't want to be the teacher's pet," said Tomjanovich, laughing. "What Yao doesn't know is that I treat all my guys the same way. I love them all. Maybe he's not used to that. I love the idea that he doesn't want special treatment, that he doesn't want to stand out."

But, of course, he will. Yao won't be able to stop that in a tough sports market that will judge him with every dribble, every shot, every defender who gets around him.

This will be a 22-year-old representing not just his own family and his own former team, but an entire culture, both at home on the other side of the Pacific and in the Chinese-American community.

"I don't envy that part of it for him," Rudy T said. "He's a kid."

Yao wears a red string bracelet on his left forearm, one of a pair. The other is worn by Ye Li, his girlfriend and a member of the Chinese national team. Talk about your long-distance relationships.

"When we went to China and saw him work out one day, I was talking to Yao about things we'd want to do, and I realized after a minute or two that he wasn't looking at me," said Tomjanovich. "His mind was somewhere else, and I thought, `Whoa! Maybe I've got a problem!'

"Then I turned around and looked at where he was looking, and I saw that the Chinese women's team had come to start their practice at the other end of the floor. He was looking at the girls. I guess some things are the same all over."

What won't be the same is the way Yao is analyzed, scrutinized and crucified when he doesn't measure up. He is the first Chinese player taken No. 1 in the draft. He is the leader of this year's parade of foreign-born players who dominated the draft.

His country will host the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and there is no mistake China expects to win a medal then. Which means there is much heavy lifting to do -- since China couldn't finish in the top 12 at the World Championships -- and that Yao is expected to shoulder most of the load.

So Yao Ming will come to us in mid-October with a double burden, and the journey will begin.

There will be nights when he hits the jumpers, blocks the shots, is a dominating force and makes more noise and sparks than a string of firecrackers.

There will also be nights when he struggles, suffers and pays his dues, not just as a rookie but for several years. And at times, that could be painful to watch.

Might want to be careful with those first impressions.