Who’s better now? Let me start this by saying that I love Amare Stoudemire’s game. I think the kid was a hell of a steal in last years draft and will be the best Power Forward in the game in a few years. I just wanted to get that out of the way before anyone interpreted this post as an anti-Amare post or something like that. Having said that I just wanted to say that it bugged me all last summer that Amare won the ROY award and Yao Ming did not. Yes, Amare had an excellent year and it is hard to argue the point based strictly on stats. But anyone that watched both teams knows that opponents did not game plan around stopping Amare last year. In Houston we saw week in and week out that teams entire defensive philosophy was based around stopping Yao Ming,. IMO Yao Ming had a much bigger impact on not only his team but the NBA than Amare and there for should have been the ROY. OK so at least I have accepted it and am moving on. But this post isn’t really about Yao Ming getting screwed out of the ROY either. It is just what the title of this thread states, “Who’s better now”? The two players have put up almost identical stats through out the last year and a quarter and both gave the draft its best production of dominant big men in a decade. But as I stated earlier teams don’t build there defensive game plan around stopping Amare Stoudemire. When teams build a defensive strategy against the Rockets it always starts with pushing Yao Ming out of the post and denying him the ball. While there were stretches last season where that plan worked very well, it has had very limited success this season. While some may come into this thread talking about how there have been games where Yao’s stamina has looked poor or how he may have looked lost or uncoordinated he has still managed to contribute to the tune of about 17 points, 10 rebounds and 2 blocks. Yao Ming has not had any monster offensive games early this season to boost his numbers and only 1 monster rebounding game with only 1 really poor rebounding effort in the first game of the season. Yao Ming has been a model of consistency for the most part this season. We all know that regardless of how he plays we are going to get in the neighborhood of 17 points, 10 rebounds and 2 blocks. To me at least that points to how much he has improved since last year. We are only 19 games into the season but we have yet to see a drop of in production that we saw during many stretches last year. And aside from a small stretch of games early in the year we have not seen the fatigue problems that most of us thought Yao Ming would struggle with all year. Yao Ming is starting to move up and down the floor very well and doing it with out sacrificing minutes or production due to fatigue. OK so who is better now? Amare or Yao? IMO its Yao Ming and always has been Yao Ming but now we are starting to see a separation in stats to at least back up the fact that Yao Ming has a much bigger impact that does not show up in the stats sheet. OK so here’s the statistical comparison of the two so far. Yao Ming: PPG - 17.3 BPG - 2.1 APG - 1.9 RPG - 10.2 FT% - .767 FG% - .494 MPG - 35.1 Amare Stoudemire: PPG - 15.1 BBG - 1.7 APG - .9 RPG - 8.9 FT% - .713 FG% - .453 MPG - 34.2 There it is, Yao Ming leads in every single statistical category on the board. I know all of this is irrelevant because both of these guys are going to be consistent 20/10 plus guys that give teams nightmares every single night in a couple of years but IMO there is no question who the better and more consistent player is. Amare has more hops, athleticism and energy but Yao Ming has more of everything else and is just better…period.
Wait until Yao's shooting percentage recovers to about 60% and he continues to benefit from MoT's O threat and Jackson starting to hit, opening up the middle. Maybe his aggressive play after being late will open his eyes too...
Who's better now? AMARE!!! Just Kidding. Yao is clearly the better player this year. Last year he was a pretty weak but the summer weights have improved him a very noticable amount. I don't think the Suns fans should be envious though...they got a great player for their draft position, but we got the best player in the draft.
I think last year Amare deserved his ROY because of two reasons: 1) He played the entire season with a dislocated big toe. 2) His left eye was basically blind. He fixed it up during the offseason with laser surgery. But right now, Yao is the better player.
I'd seen it. I was clairvoyant enough to see the impact that Amare was going to have and the impact he was going to bring. Yao Ming is not exciting. Nothing against Yao Ming--he is a great player---but there's nothing exciting about that dude except for watching a 7-6 dude play. He doesn't do anything different. --Stephon Marbury, after his prediction that Amare would win ROY came true. (SLAM, February 2004 issue)
Oh yeah? Well Yao can counter that with : 1) He played the entire season in a foreign land where he knew very little of the customs and not too much of the language. 2) He was basically deaf in one ear. Top that! So Yao deserved the ROY. Or maybe we should just call it the "Who's Got The Most Personal Issues For a First Year Player Award".
crash... this is probably not the best site to ask this question. True, on any other site the result would still be Yao's the better player (but we know that last year didn't we?), however, the disparity would be closer to 65-35% in favor of Yao instead of 95-5% in favor of him.
I wonder if he was clairvoyant enough to see the suns battling the clippers for the worst record in the West.
Worst record inthe west is still pretty high up in the East and the season is young.... Don't count them out yet!
I agree with Crash. I think Yao is definately better than Amare right now. If he keeps up the aggressiveness then he should set himself apart from Amare even further.
I don't think you can make a statistical comparison and say who's better. Amare plays against the strongest position in the conference as a PF and Yao plays against the weakest competition in basketball at center. I think it'll always be the case of the skilled center vs the incredibly athletic forward and until one of them wins an MVP or a championship (or at least is the focal point on a championship contending team) then it'll be mostly a draw unless one of them takes off or falls flat.
Yao is clearly the better player right now. But one thing scary about Amare is that he hasn't developed his post offensive game yet. He did all the things by pure athletism. This year he's hitting 10ft turn around J consistently. Next year? it's just scary...
That argument works on defense. I will agree that guarding today's 4's is much tougher than guarding the 5's. However, I have yet to see one Suns game where opposing defenses focus on Amare like they focus on Yao.
Well when your 4 is a better player he doesn't need help. I'm not sure about the Suns offense but Amare probably gets a lot of points off of garbage type chances, ie running the floor, put backs, quick flashes in the paint. Those are things you can't really double team the same way a traditional post up move can be doubled.
