I dont even know what this means cuz he already better than Yao was at 22. You realize Sengun this year would be the same age as when Yao entered the league? So he's miles ahead.
Are we really doing this stupid thing where you compare someone who entered the league at 19 vs. someone who ended at 22 and compare a 4yr vet to a rookie? I think I even saw someone talk about that with Jalen and Jordan, cause you know Jalen has scored bazillion more points in the NBA at an age when Jordan was still in college as a good comparison point for why Jalen will be future star. But even if we are to compare Sengun last year with Yao's rookie year despite its absurdity, Yao actually matched up quite well. Raw stats don't favor Yao because the NBA was slow back then and the Rockets were even slower by that time period's standard. Yao per-100 possessions scored 25 points on .570 TS% against league average TS% of .519. Sengun scored 22 points per 100 possessions against today's league average efficiency of .576 TS%. That is basically like saying one person shoots like Jalen Green and the other shoots like Kevin Durant.
comparing raw stats is not meaningful but comparing skill sets, or where they are in their development is okay. After all you don’t get extra 4 years of career because you came to the league 4 years later. Of course, the late comer will have steeper improvement curve at that point but coming to the league earlier has significant advantages particularly for upper tier international prospects. The best comparison would be 2 years from now Sengun vs same age Yao but we don’t have that info yet.
I was just trying to figure out what you meant by hoping he would be a Yao level player. Because by ever metric he already is better. Shooting% is only part of the game. He's a better defender rebounder than Yao ever was. Also a better passer/ play maker. Yao never came close to leading the rockets to second seed and he had Tmac. So I'm not understanding what you are saying. he's also probably close to playing the same numbers of games Yao played in his entire career already, so by all means he should surpass Yao.
You almost blew my mind with this, but I just checked and no, Yao has played twice as many games as Alpi.
