Yao used to alter a ton of shots. He was the linchpin of our elite defense under JVG and even under Rick the Ruler
20 PPG hardly makes him underrated. Remember his MVP caliber year pre broken leg ? He was at his peak of his career right before he went down. Games of 39-11, 35-16, 32-14 on 52% FG and 86% FT. And its not like he was just bowling people over ala Shaq with brut strength. Hell no. If he only coulda stayed healthy we'd be talking top 10 centers ever. In a little over 500 career games including playoffs, a solid 19.5, 52%, 83#. He's HOF great.
I've said Yao was a WILLING passer, because he's a team-first guy. But it doesnt mean he's a GOOD passer or EFFECTIVE passer. For all the talk about how used to be the Arvydas Sabonis of China in his youth, despite the 1 nifty alley-oop to Steve Francis in the All Star game, he displayed little passing touch on the Rockets. I even thought that Yao was better used more in a 29 minutes/game role in the Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Rik Smits mold - which was considered an insulting step down because its stopping Yao from being the next Kareem. Yao came when advanced stats like PER emerged, but just conventional numbers showed that oversized centers always break down and don't play big minutes. (No that doesnt mean Francis and Mobley were correct in wanting their touches instead of Yao, or even wanting Lamar Odom over him.) It was to let Yao FINISH plays and to always be fresh for longevity. Yao's a high character guy and gave it all he could though. Thats what makes him commendable.
That's true but it highlights both his greatest strengths and weaknesses. Styles make fights, and when matched against a fellow big man who liked to use his size, Yao was able to check and mate them with his own size. Unfortunately those matchups were few and far-between given the dearth of traditional big post players thesed days, more often Yao could be frustratinglly neutralized by the opposition simply refusing to engage him that way, like with wath Utah was able to do using the Boozer-Okur combo on offense (force him defend a quicker smaller player or drift outside, neither of which was a strength) and using fronting etc with smaller players on defense.
Paine's argument that he was overrated is based in part on the HOF-level stats you just quoted. His point is those stats overrated Yao's contributions to his team's offense.
nothing about yao is overrated except his foot. a few points which make the expert look like an idiot. 1) when yao got ball at low post most time, do we need yao pass ball out? no. he scored easily and at high percentage. why bother to throw bricks by other players? 2) under jvg, he demanded yao post, repost, and repost. it looks like yao had a few more posessions and only score once. no assist was counted. it skewed stats. under ra, he moved yao to out side. it limited the traditional inside-out assist ratio for yao. it limited yao's offense and reduced yao as offense threat so defence didn't swamp yao to leave other players open. 3) assist depends on two sides, passer and receiver. if receivers jack up 3 and brick every time, how does passer get assist?
This stat may explain why he was so easy to guard at the end of games. In his era if we needed a score late in the games the ball was rarely given to Yao. Unlike Dream, who could be counted on to either score or find the open man once the triple team was thrown at him Yao was a little more one dimensional in that it was easy to double and triple team him if the ball was given to him in the post. Yao also played under different rules than Dream. Once they got rid of the illegal defense call it became much easier to defend passes out of the post.
The better and perhaps more relevant question is if Yao Ming was a boring offensive player. He almost certainly was that.
I don't think his argument is as simplistic as "Yao didn't get a lot assists, so he was overrated." That's maybe how it comes across, but that's not really what he's saying I don't think. Ultimately, a player's worth on offense rests on how good his team is with him on the floor versus when he's not on the floor, adjusting for the other players on the court. If you try to analyze that, the numbers aren't that great for Yao. Really, its rare for post players to be really good in this respect, unless you're talking about all-time greats like Shaq or centers with unique skills which allow them to make plays facing the basket. Paine's argument essentially is that, by the conventional numbers and ways in which we evaluate a post player, Yao looks like a spectacular offensive player. But if you compare that to how much better this team's offense was with him as the focal point, he ends up looking overrated. His lack of assists is one thing we could point to that's in the boxscore as explaining why his team didn't perform better with him. But the challenge of integrating Yao into an effective team offense went beyond that.
When Yao was healthy his last 2 seasons (the ones he played), he was dominant, unstoppable on both ends of the court.
That's true, but the way yao's utilized on offense is too simplistic and robotic. I actually think yao was much more versatile and creative under Rudy T , or even Adelman.
I'm curious how other traditional low-post players rated in this analysis. Was Yao significantly different in overall offensive impact than other similar players? And as others have said, how would the players around him impact his contributions? Passing to the generic replacement level players that Yao often had around him vs. passing to Kobe, Magic, Worthy, Ginobili, etc. should be significant.
I thinks so. The biggest reason is that Yao was too slow, it usually took more than 10 seconds to get him in position for the ball, then a few seconds for him to make his move. When he decided to pass the ball out due to defense adjustment, the shot clock only had a couple seconds left.
It appears that Paine used this blog post as a source, or carried out a similar analysis on his own: http://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/2012/nba-stats/overrated-and-underrated-via-rapm-part-2/ That shows the PER vs ORAPM for all players over a 12-year period.
Yao was the most frustrating player i ever watched. Maybe that's b/c of the refs and the way they officiated him. I just know i miss him. If only we had him right now. Def an all time fav of mine. Even with his annoying asian fans.
Perhaps my memory was off, but I don't remember Yao's passing was ever a problem after he got the ball in the post. Once he got it, it was either a 3 or a nice turnaround. Everyone's problem was what happened BEFORE Yao got the ball, not after. Plus defenses fronted him so much, why would he ever pass back out in that situation? He would have a free pass to the basket once he got it. But he simply never got the ball in such situations.
Glanced over that page and it seems to indicate that post players in general fared poorly in this analysis, and wings and point guards fared well.
I won't argue his statistics, but I think we have to be careful describing what the statistics show. They do not show he was a bad or average offensive player; they show that he was on bad or average offensive teams when he was on the floor. Yao was not easy to defend; he regularly drew double- and triple-teams to get the ball out of his hands. For him to take advantage of the coverage with an assist, however, he needs his teammates to actually convert the pass into a bucket, something they were pretty mediocre at by my recollection. That might be because of the personnel or maybe JVG's offensive sets, but it's not because of Yao. I can't blame the guy who contorts an entire defensive scheme, still shoots a high percentage, and is unselfish with the basketball. I get the feeling that if you swapped out Olajuwon for Yao on the championship teams -- while they probably would not have won -- Yao's career assist percentage and offensive plus/minus would have probably looked better; he had the offensive talent to do his part if the other pieces would complement him.
