Ever since Dikembe Mutombo came back to the team, i noticed that Yao's shot blocking skills has improved dramatically...not saying that his Bpg has went up bc i dont know...but hes been able to block shots that ive never seen him do before... tonights block on leborn solidified his improvement on blocking even more
Yao's arms aren't too short. They're just short for a man his size. His wingspan, measured at pre-draft workouts, is 7,4.75. There are only a few players in this league who have longer arms than that. What limits Yao's shot-blocking is entirely his lack of athleticism and his timing.
You can believe anything you want, but you would be wrong. Let's take a look at a few players around the league. Tyson Chandler's wingspan was measured at 7'3. Chris Kaman's wingspan is 7'0. Greg Oden's is 7'4.25. Yao definitely has an above average wingspan for an NBA center.
Uh...Yao's shotblocking skills are more than the official stats show. The scorekeepers have been undercounting the number of Yao's blocks in order to lower his Blocks Per Games stat. I myself have counted 7 <---yes, seven, different games now, where they have undercounted the number of blocked shots he has during the game. At first, I thought that it was just me, or maybe who knows, that maybe the scorekeepers just made an honest mistake, but then once I noticed the phenomenon after the second game, I myself started counting the number of blocked shots per game Yao had during the game myself. It's not that hard really--Yao usually gets less than 5 blocks per game, so its actually easy to count them, and its easy to remember them over the course of the game, or even to write them down on a piece of paper in a way you can remember them, like for example: the block, then who the block was on, and then the quarter and the time on the clock when he made the block. Like I said, at first, I could not believe it myself, then when I did this for 7 separate games, I realized that it wasn't just me or my imagination, and that the scorekeepers weren't just making honest mistakes, that they were probably doing it deliberately. Take tonight's game for example versus the Cavaliers. Yao actually blocked Lebron twice--one time on the left basket side when Lebron drove around his defender and made a baseline drive on the right side of the basket, and then Lebron kind of fell, and then yet another time on the right basket when Lebron was making a lefthanded drive towards the rim and Yao blocked Lebron's drive and it bounced high off the backboard. And yet, Yao was only credited for 1 block in total for this game. Trust me, even if I am wrong about this game, I have carefully tallied his number of blocks in 7 separate other games, even if I am not right about this one. This is not the only game that this has been done in, and I am definitely right about the other games where I have carefully tallied and counted and written down just to make sure that I am not crazy and imagining this whole thing the total number of blocks he has in the game. And, like I said before, after I noticed this the first 2 games that I counted this in, in order to see whether or not I was right or not and to make sure that I was not crazy and imagining the whole thing, I was extra careful to make sure that when I counted the blocks in the next few games that I watched, to make extra sure that they were clean and were not fouls called after the block, and that I counted them rightly. And yet still, after 7 games of carefully doing this and making sure, I just gave up and I realized that it turns out that I was right and that I wasn't crazy and imagining the whole things, that they weren't counting the number of blocks Yao Ming has per game rightly every single game, and that they were doing it deliberately, because there was too consistent a pattern, and I think that, without even me saying it, that you all know the reason why. It makes me think, if the American scorekeepers are cheating him on blocks, what other stats are they cheating him on And it also makes me think that they might do this to him in FIBA games and international competitions also, and cheat him out of stats that he has earned also. I say this because I also notice that whatever NBA refs do, FIBA refs tend to do also in international competition to Yao, and so why not their scorekeepers also? They really screw Yao over in the U.S...the refs, the fans, the scorekeepers, every 3 months like clockwork, the national press, (ESPN, FOXSPORTS, CBSSPORTS), comes out with a "objective news article", that says that Yao is really a bad player, and that he is overrated. I just hope that Yao can learn how to take this and tolerate this in silence without complaining and not blow up if he knows about this and that this stuff happens to him, and still play on and be a nice guy towards everyone and stay nice towards everyone despite the wrongs that he gore through throughout his career.
he's not a poor shot blocker, he still manages to average 2 blks per game in his career http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/3599/career;_ylt=Ah1dPbLSCwshnSbouSQmFJGsPKB4 Career average of 1.9 blks in 32.5 minutes PER 36 Minutes : 2.1 blks, that to me is impressive considering his lack of vertical leap and lack of mobility.
Players are smart not to attempt shots close to Yao, because he is huge in paint. They always pull up jumps or tear drops to avoid block.
Heh, heh. I just feel sorry for Yao, that's all. Weird, huh? How they would do that. The NBA is all rigged now, I'm just glad that we won this one. Just remember, Rockets, you always play 5 on 8 from now on, (plus the refs). I wish that I could get this message to the Rockets somehow, if the team all realized that, it might make things easier for them, because then they would realize that they have their work cut out for them.
I do notice he doesnt get credit for a few rebounds a game. Say for tonight, he had a missed tip shot that wasnt recorded, and often when he comes down with the rebound and got the ball stolen after he had held the rebound, the rebound is sometimes credited to whom stole the ball. This happened again tonight with Ben Wallace i think in the 3rd qtr. It's his fault though, he tends to not hold on tight after the rebound. eerily, I kinda notice the miscounted blocks too. Maybe his blocks are like touch blocks so it's not immediately noticeable except by watching replays up close. Say Dwight Howard's kind of ball-flying rejection, that's harder to miss. Anyhow, the results are the same, I don't really care, apparently by Yao's habit of tipping or simply giving rebounds teammates, he doesnt really care either.
I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, but I've gotten the impression that the NBA's stat keepers were under-counting Yao's blocks as well. In quite a few games over the last couple of seasons I've counted Yao getting 3-4 blocks, the commentators SAID he got those blocks, no fouls were called on those plays...then I check the box score on NBA.com and it says Yao only had 1 or 2 blocks. WTF? I haven't been tracking the stats like RocketsFan41 says he has, so I can't confirm my suspicions. I'm also a firm believer that the eyes can lie and that your memory can play tricks on you. RocketsFan41, it would be awesome if you could post your work for those 7 games, complete with the times on the clock when you think those unrecorded blocks occured. Many of us on the forum will likely have those games downloaded from BitTorrent or otherwise recorded. If multiple people can confirm those results, it would be huge. 7 games is almost 10% of the season, and even a couple more blocks every other game is signficant for a stat as small as bpg (where the vast majority of the league ranges from 0-3).
Boy, am I glad that he is so unselfish and such a team-oriented player. I hope that he ends up staying that way for the rest of his career, but with the "me-first" ego-driven culture of the NBA, I don't know...I know that some other even All-Star caliber players, as I've read in basketball books in the past, if that happened to them and they knew, would be furious and would be going to the scorer's table yelling and screaming and demanding changes. I'm glad that he's such a team-oriented, unselfish player. I hope that he stays that way throughout the course of his career, and that if he knows, that he doesn't mind. Well, at least it shows that he is a better player than his stats would indicate, and that his actual real stats are higher than what is reflected in the boxscore.
Wow, hmmm...I might be able to do it. I have quite a few games downloaded on my harddrive also. Plus...I hate to tell you guys, but it gets worse, 7 games is all I tracked, once I realize that they were doing it deliberately, I stopped tracking it altogether, because I knew then that what I had seen and double-checked to make sure that I was not imagining the whole thing had confirmed my suspicions. But I think I just might be able to do what you ask within the next couple of days, I still have a couple of Rockets games on my hard drive that I still haven't watched that range from January until now. I will try to do what you ask. If anyone else can help me, and also do that, and post your results, that would be great too.
^^ this under-counting stuff is hard for me to believe. interesting. i may start to pay a bit of attention next time. or i can go to my archive of games...
