A player's +/- is also skewed by his teammates but I agree with the sentiment from what I remember of Yao. He was unstoppable if you got him the ball but he didn't exactly help other guys at their own games outside of the PnRs.
My opinion, and I expressed this a number of times before Yao retired and when he was in the "prime" of his career, is that his offensive contributions were generally overrated and his defensive contributions were generally underrated. The best offensive players tend to be playmakers in the back-court or dynamic wing scorers. A center like Yao can be a great weapon, but he relies on other players to get him the ball in the right spot, and his inability to run up and down the floor naturally slowed down the pace of our attack which required that we be more of a half-court team. We also tended to be more turnover-prone as a team when he was the focal point of our offense. This is bound to happen when you're asking a guy to initiate the offense from the post where defenses have more freedom to sending double and triple-teams, and he doesn't have the ability to put the ball on the floor to dribble out of a trap or survey the court.
While his offensive game was not pretty, he was hardly overrated as one of the best offensive centers during his time. If he was still playing, I think he'd still be up there if not considered the best offensive center in the NBA. I think anyone that saw him healthy during the Adelman tenure and with the suitable backup can see the problems with Yao's teammates wasn't him hogging the ball.
Depends on the year. For the first part of his career (which lasted until, I think, the 2005-6 season or thereabouts), he probably didn't have too much of a positive impact in terms of offensive +/- even when he was putting up a lot of points and shooting a high %. This is most likely because it often takes many years for young post players to really develop their post up skills (it's hard to operate in traffic). Yao had skills in the post, but was often turnover-prone and throwing the ball into him is often an inferior option to letting Tracy McGrady have the ball and create off the dribble and running an elite offensive rebounder like Mutombo out there often results in more efficient offense. He got better as the years went by. By his last season, 2008-2009, he was legitimately the go-to guy for the Rockets (with McGrady reduced by injury to a shell of his former self and Ron Artest, while productive, also lost a step compared to his youth). It's really too bad that Yao's career ended just as he entered his "prime" skill-wise. Had he been healthy, I think he could have milked these skills that took years to develop for several more years. On the other hand, I think his defensive impact is probably underrated. Like our current center, he's not fast or graceful on the defensive end, but he is smart and huge and gets the job done.
"Ball-Hog" is a poor name for what Neil Paine is describing, and isn't an appropriate label for Yao. He was an unselfish, team-first player to his core.
It's one thing to be effective with your offensive skills and it's another to effectively help the team's offense. Yao was very effective on offense because of his size and skill, but the stats prove he didn't help the offense as much as one would think. That doesn't mean he wasn't a good passer either. I think it was a combination of things: He didn't always have capable players around him, so why pass? They couldn't hit their shots when he did pass. He had more defenders coming over from the weak side than most post players see, so he had to keep an eye out for that more often. He did struggle passing out of the post, but i think that was an issue with proprioception. A ball that's too big is almost as bad as one that's too small. He dealt with a lot of pushing and grabbing that wasn't called, so his passes didn't always have a lot of zip to them, so it would have to be swung around more to get a shot.
Recently, Mike D'Antoni said that "the straight post up is the least efficient play in basketball." I think he is largely right. It takes a special level of skills and physicality to to make the back to the basket game work. Yao had a good body and skill level coming into the league, but he wasn't Shaq or Kareem. So, it took a lot of hard work and several years for him to make it work.
I don't know. With all that individual talent, I've always felt (or perhaps wanted to believe) that there should be a better way out there to utilize him in a team setting while covering up his athletic deficiencies, whether that's having him as more of a role player where defense can't key on him easily, or coming off the bench in less desirable matchups. One of the main issue to me was that because he's 7'6, the #1 overall pick, the max salary player, the global basketball icon, etc etc... the coaching staff felt "compelled" to make him the #1 option on the team, the go-to guy, even with a healthy Tmac, in a league that's becoming more perimeter-focused. You could say that he's expected to have offense ran through him with the money he's getting, but part of his paycheck was undeniably due to his marketability and ambassadorship for the sport of basketball. Between the "#1 option" and "high expectation", I don't know what's the chicken and what's the egg. Yao might've been a victim (term used loosely here) of the high expectations, and if he had a different background, a different draft status (it's doubtful any other team would've drafted Yao top 5 that year), and a chance to work his way up while not having the spotlight on him the whole time, his career might've unfolded a little differently. /nostalgic rant
I also noticed back in the day, Besides Tmac, Mike James, and a very few other people. We really didn't have anyone else who was willing to attack the basket on a regular basis when the jumpshot was off. Personally, i really found this one of our weaknesses back in the JVG era. It wasn't until we had Adelman that we were finally have a semblance of the team as a whole, being able to score points on a more diversified way.
I think I might've spent half my time here in the early years defending Yao. It feels weird to do it again. Anyway, so several things to point out here. tl;dr post coming up. 1. Big post players make hockey assists, not real assists. Using assist% on post-up players really underrates their passing in this regards. If there were hockey assists, Hakeem would be considered a great passer. And Barkley would've been considered all-time elite passer. But they don't count that except in stat geek rooms of NBA teams. 2. Yao played with some sorry ass floor spreader. Quite pathetic, really. His PF mate were, in order: Kelvin "can't shoot further than a dunk" Cato, Juwan "all I do is miss 15ft jumpers" Howard, and Chuck "horrible on offense early in career" Hayes. All players opponents could double off of easily. When Yao finally had Scola/Landry combo, T-Mac went out. And guess what, the Rockets had their best offense of Yao's career. There were also no sharpshooters during Yao's career. Head, Battier, Rafer, T-Mac, Jim Jackson, Francis, Mobley, etc. They were okay, decent, but hardly players opponents were simply afraid to double off of. 3. JVG's system doesn't create easy baskets. The Rockets simply didn't cut to the basket... EVER, under JVG. He was too in love with getting back on defense that his guards always stay on the perimeter. And as a post player, if all you do is pass back out to 3pt shooters, how can you have high assist totals? Also, Yao(and every other Rockets big under JVG) doesn't hit the boards on offense. This is also by design, so he can hurry back on D. A lot of creative passing comes from plays where the defenses aren't set yet. But in JVG's offense, the defense is ALWAYS set. Because Gundyball is always about safety. In conclusion, JVG created a system in Houston where they slow the game, and rely on Yao/T-Mac almost exclusively in the half court offense. And in the half court, offenses are simply going to be worse. This applies to just about every team, including the Heat, including Jordan's Bulls, or the Showtime Lakers. Teams suffer on offense when defenses are set. And big men suffers when teams can double him with impunity. The fact that Yao could overcome these factors to still put up numbers, is a testament to his greatness, and why the Rockets could win 50+ games every year with many terrible, terrible role players that would likely not see rotation minutes with any other team. I remember when we played the Mavs in the playoffs, the Mavs fans literally said, "Rockets may have 2 of top 3 players. But we have the next 7 best players." That was how damning it was.
I miss Yao, Tmac when they were healthy. Deke was great too! I know, when were they healthy? - but omg, for that 10 mins - they were sick.
can't get assists if you dont have players around you that can make shots. It's a flawed argument. Too many of these BS stat people completely disregard stuff like that.
So do you think the FG% of Yao's teammates well below league average in general, or only when he passed to them? <hr>Update: Did a little digging. Yao's teammates shot 43.2% from the field while sharing the court with him during his career. They shot 36.7% from the 3-point line.
1. Yao's career ended too soon. Most great players have a long prime to offset the less productive early developmental years and declining years statistically. 2. Morey and Adelman came too late. If Yao had the good role players Morey is so good at getting and if Yao had Adelman making the offense more efficient and not just dumping it down to him at the low post, he would have had much better +/- on offense.
Yao had Adelman for a couple seasons. Remember, Adelman initially wanted him to play more in the high post and take advantage of his face up jumper. In time, Adelman came to the realization that the best way to use Yao is close to the basket, which is what Van Gundy always believed. Did it ever make much sense to take a guy with enormous physical advantage around the basket and move him 20 feet away where all he can do is swing the ball or shoot it with his slow release?
It's true that Yao didn't have good options to pass to for most of his career, but from what I remember watching him, he never really developed his passing game, which was promising his rookie season but looked mediocre (to me) in his prime. I guess the question for me is, did playing in Van Gundy's system stunt that development?
Anyone who thinks Yao was overrated need to look at how he dominated Dwight, Bynum and anyother dominante Center he was matchedup on. Yao Ming was the undisputed number 1 C in the league. People forget Yao was a man mountain in the paint. Once the Shanghai shake got started, none could realisticly alter his shot.
