Yao -- The New Kareem? - Oct. 30, 2003 - by Arthur Volbert Yao Ming scored 19 points in 23 minutes against Denver tonight and the Houston Rockets beat the Nuggets, 102-85. Yao is more and more beginning to remind me of the young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I saw Kareem play at Madison Square Garden when he was still Lew Alcindor at Power Memorial High School, and later at a UCLA-Boston College game. Yao is a finesse center and the only young player I've seen like him was Lew. Kelvin Cato seems to have won Houston's starting power forward slot. Cato specializes in rebounding and defense, and is the type of power forward Yao needs alongside him. Wang Zhizhi, who is now listed as a power forward by the LA Clippers, is more of an Eddie Griffin type -- too much offense and not enough rebounding and defense. But the Rockets would replace Cato with Kevin Garnett, if they could get him, which brings us to Yi Jianlian. Wang and Bateer both sat on the bench in their opening games last night, for LA and Toronto respectively, though both are on the active roster and not on the injured list. Bateer was born in 1975 and Wang was born in 1977, while Yao was born in 1980. Yao grew up playing a more modern style of basketball in China. Some athletic traits are much more easily learned when young, and the old Chinese style of playing basketball truly hurt the development of Wang and Bateer. But players born in 1987, like Yi, should have plenty of time to develop using modern training methods and playing with modern techniques.
Arthur Volbert The article is taken from asia-basket.com. And that's the author of the article, a big fan of Chinese basketball... looks like a 200-year-old man to me... maybe he's got some kinda bad eyesight
I see the Kareem comparisons, but I also see the moves and footwork of The Dream. Man if he turns out to be a hybrid of the two and just as good.
I love Yao but the thing that seperates Kareem and the Dream is on defense.Those two were probably the 2 best all round centers offense/defense since blocked shots became a stat.They are no'1 and 2 if I remember correct.Yao can become an effective defender but I don't think he will ever be as good as Hakeem just because of the athletic ability that the dream had and Kareem because of his smarts/agilty.Thats just my two cents.Now watch Yao make all defense just cause I said all this...lol.
First I think that WILT is the best center and probably the best player ever to play the game. Secondly, I think that Yao has a chance to be more dominant than Dream on the offensive end. He is taller, a much better shooter. In 2-3 years when he reaches the peak, he has a chance of averaging 30-32 ppg.
yeah, because it was his signature shot for close to 20 years. yao has just been learning his over the last season or so.
