Haters gonna hate... This article reads like it was from 2004 and the lot of the problems that are mentioned Yao learned to deal with. Further this article completely underates Yao's impact on the defensive end. Yao wasn't fast but his mere presence in the paint completely altered how the other team would play the game. So while he could be beat by faster players playing away from the paint he was invaluable as part of team D.
Rosen's basketball critiques are more or less fair (though he underrates Yao's defensive impact). But Yao does not suffer from "gigantism". I don't know why Rosen continues to publish this false information.
What on earth is the point of writing an article describing him as a player AFTER he's retired? It would be like when Deke retired, and somebody came out with an article detailing why he wasn't a good centre, WTF is the point?
Exactly. No creativity in his moves? That's hogwash. Just go on youtube. And why be creative when you possess the most unstoppable move in the game--a simple hookshot in the lane? Also, Yao was fairly athletic in the first few seasons of his career until the injuries caught up to him. At the end of the day you could make a list of weaknesses of every great player the same way this article did. You could say a lot of the same things for a player like Tim Duncan, especially the lack of creativity in the paint. Duncan was a hideous offensive player to watch, but he still did the job.
