Yao lacks a winning instinct. To be a great player, you can't just wait for opportunities, or wait for something happens. You have to creat them, and when the opportunities are presented, make full used of them conciously. I do think that the level of IQ of this team is lower, which they can certainly improve, but before they take some hard lessons and truely realize it, they can't improve foundamentally in a consistent manner statistically. The personality of Yao is not of a nature fighter, and for him to reach to the next level, this has to be changed. ASK for the ball, show confidence and leadership in clutch times. A so so performance, or a good first half is not enough to make you a great player, the bar setting for you are higher! I just don't see the determination and strong will of winning in him and the team when Shaq was out in the second game, and I was troubled and deeply confused. I didn't see the body language shown in the beginning of the game in the second half, and these mental reflections were evidences for loosing. You have to be mentally tired before you felt physically. and it can snowball to hurt your performance if you are not mentally strong and conciously fighting it to achive excellence.
Come on, how can you misread my posts so badly? I never said 2nd year Yao is comparable with 2nd year Duncan, Shaq etc. In fact, I said 2nd year Yao is no where near 2nd year Shaq or 2nd year Dream, he entered league not as NBA ready as a lot of great players and need time to grow. You can't expect him to dominate Shaq at year 2. He might be able to do that later, but definitely not this year. So I don't think media or people here should blame the losses on Yao alone. I'm quite pleased with his performance against Shaq since I don't have that high expectation like you do. I watched both games, Yao was responsible for gurading Shaq most of the time, he banged hard with Shaq, a lot of those were single coverage. Shaq missed a lot shots trying to shoot over Yao. I'm not saying other players didn't help, but every team double or triple team Shaq and nobody hold him to 7 points in playoff before. To me, that showed Yao played hard and was competitive. I don't know how you get the feeling that I'm saying Yao is as good as 2nd year Shaq or 2nd year Duncan. Please read my posts carefully before you say I'm blindly making defensive assumptions. Also I can't agree that when Shaq has a monster game that's all Yao's fault, but when Shaq has a terrible game it's team defense and fouls. Remember who got Shaq in foul trouble? Shaq fouled Yao and it has nothing to do with Yao? It just doesn't sound faire to me.
And Yao has to give the Chinese Government 50%, plus the continuous games in summer times when every other NBA players are taking rests and reconditioning of their bodies.
I don't know the US tax rate. Suppose out of the $4M Yao had to give 55% local tax, then he has only half of the remaining 45% after his contribution to the Chinese Government and his salary is only 22.5% of the $4M.
... (yawn) ... Do you relate Yao's yawning to his opening performance? Didn't he take 5 shots in the first few minutes of the 1st quarter? And didn't Yao had a good 1st half on offense and defense - getting shaq out of the game - leading Rox to two point lead at half? Maybe it would have been better if he yawned before start of 2nd half too! ... (yawn) ...
Don't you think it's a bit of a stretch to conclude "Yao lacks a winning instinct"? Could the fact that Yao is going up against two of the biggest strongest big men in the history of the NBA and in Malone - one of the dirtiest have something to do with his performance? Do you think that the fact that he's in his first playoff so they (Malone/Shaq) are able to do things to Yao they couldn't do in the regular season and he's too GREEN to realize what he can get away with just yet? Is it fair to draw conclussions about Yao's winning instinct after two games in the Forum in LA against a hall of fame team with a hall of fame coach?
Man, that's a loaded statement. Seems to me the writer is proceeding from a standpoint of conviction-- he's already decided Yao's disinterested. I'm not a 22-yr old seven-foot-five Chinese basketball player who speaks little English, but I imagine that if I were, discussing my performance with a sportswriter making a chump change salary like $35,000 a year after a tough playoff loss would be pretty unappealing to me. It doesn't mean that Yao's disinterested in analyzing his performance or improving. It just means he didn't feel like doing so with this jackass immediately after the loss.
You do waste your time to discuss with a Yao-hater. I see Yao-haters are so active because we lost two games and SF3 played well. If Yao demonated the games, you will see no word from those haters.
After I saw this video it really put me into perspective just how dominant Shaq used to be. Yes it's just one dunk, but have you ever seen a 320+ lb. man jump with that kind of elevation and length from the court? http://members.cox.net/hm_ucsd/OHMYWORD.avi I'm a huge Yao supporter, but jeez that's just insane.
My question is, then, if team defense is what did it, then how comes it hasn't been done before? Let's say JVG is a defensive genius, but what defensive talents do we have? San Antonio has great team defense, Duncan is a great individual defender, how come they've never limited Shaq to 7 points? Fouls stopped Shaq, who created those two early fouls? I think Yao deserves credit on the defensive end at least. Didn't have a good shooting night, and I'm not making excuses for him. But it pisses me off when people are saying that basically he did nothing. He played defense okay? The fact of the matter is, he pushed Shaq out of the box on one on one opportunities, Shaq had to pass it back out almost every time. And Shaq's jump hook is not going to get over Yao Ming. The 6 times they've played this season, never has Shaq been able to score consistently on post moves besides his dunk. 2nd year Shaq would have just been able to dunk more often. I sincerely hope that it doesn't take a 30 point Yao performance and a 10 point Shaq performance to make people happy. I wonder if Yao will ever hit 30 points this series... it's hard to shoot over Shaq, and the extra minutes takes away from his legs on the jump shots.
how bout this one? http://bbs.smeggysmeg.com/videos/Playoffs_v_Lakers_Game2/SF2YaoDunk_game2.mpg Yao takes off from the floor at about the same spot(give or take an inch or so)..and slams it home .
Shaq elevated a lot higher in his dunk, and the one he did was a facial. Shaq is in the decline. Yao can only improve though. -G'day-
It was one of the bright moments in that game. The dunk gave us the lead. Guys in the chat rooms were chanting 'Air Yao', 'He was flying', 'Yao pulled a Jordan', etc. Too bad we couldn't sustain the efforts in the 2nd half.
