Yao Ming ¨C After three seasons of high expectations, Ming has been steady. Not a fiend on the glass (he¡¯s a cupcake), Houston has been unable to penetrate deep into the playoffs. However, Ming¡¯s presence has gotten them into said playoffs, with more than a slight contribution from Steve Francis. Just a note: Mo Taylor is still worthless. (Yao ming)11.5 pts., 7.4 rebs., 3.1 asts. whole story: http://insidehoops.com/nba071102.shtml (I think Ming can get those stats at his first year)
I believe those predictions are for the first three seasons of their career. (ie: written as if from 2005) IMHO, Serious underestimation of Ming and Dunleavy, and overestimation of Caron Butler.
Inside hoops gave their predictions about a week ago for the 1st year of all of those players. Those stats are the exact same as the ones listed now. But, they added a paragraph as if we were in the year 2004.
Stats really tell not much. For example, Ming would still be able to produce the aformentioned stats by playing lots of gabage time. This happens if Ming cannot contribute significantly during critical time of the game ( sitting on the bench because of his poor defense, etc), thus the game is decided long before it's over. So I think how many games Rockets win next year will tell the true story about Ming's contribution. I think he can only make limited contribution to help Rockets to win games next year. On a somewhat related issue: It seems ( at least on TV) that the muscles of most non-African-American players has a kind of fat/round looking, even they are big, but lacking definition. I am thinking about guys like Divac, Sabonis, Minni's center Nesto??, Wang, Luc Longley, etc., but most African-American players have nice muscle mass with little fat. Why is that? All the athletes in US should have been use similar training methods and diet, I guess. But why the results are consistently different? As you probably alreaday know, the one and only thing I wish Ming to do in the next two years, is to build muscle (to be exact, strength). With muscle/strength comes confidence and position, that brings boards and lots of other nice things.
