Yao could be killer on the offensive glass if he works on his hands and maintains a good level of aggression. Today against Miami, he bobbled like 3-4 of them. I blame his natural uncoordination being that tall, as well as inadequate proper training during his formative years in certain basketball techniques.
One thing i notice is Yao has small hands and therefore has bad ball handling skills. He always tend to let guys strip the ball away from him or slap it off his hands. His hands just aint' good man!! I guess that's why he used 2 hands slam instead of 1 cuz he can't grip the ball that good. And still he can't make a dunk!! He should practice dunk more often to get a feel of it.
Yao has the hands of a sickly 6 year old girl. I'm completely serious. Next time when he's sitting on the bench and drinking a gatorade, take a look at his thin fingers. That helps his shooting touch tremendously but a sickly 6 year old girl can't hold onto a basketball for long periods of time either. Yao can be the world's tallest heart surgeon if BBall doesn't work out for him.
1000% right Deuce, Yao needs some active foot speed and athleticsm behind him at the 4 spot. It has made him look clumsy and out of position this season. Howard, Taylor and Padgett are not run and jump athletes. I think the 4 spot hurts them more the 1 spot this season. Slow+Slow= Extra Slow.
The presence of flower forwards made Yao 1. Have to scrifice his field goal attempts for the team to help out the rebound. Nobody in this team except Yao (maybe spoon) can get an offensive rebound under the basket. If Yao’s mid range shot is missed, then it’s automatically opponent’s ball, It’s that simple. 2. Get into early foul trouble. Our 4’s lacking of defensive skills is one thing, it just seems Juwan doesn’t want to foul at all to share some foul troubles! If you need an example, look at the fifth foul Yao took yesterday. He rotated to help out on the PG penetration and on the other hand had his man left open, which is because JHo cannot rotate over Shaq, that’s understandable, our 4s constantly having trouble rotating on Yao’s man. But come on, at least you can foul Shaq and not let Yao run from behind and took his 5th foul. It may be better for Yao to take less FGA to help the team in a short fun. In the long run… I don’t know, maybe Yao needs a frustating season to be aggressive on boards and other stuff. I hope he can overcome this issue and by the time we found our missing 1 and 4, Rockets prevail.
Sorry to keep posting to my own thread, but your answers keep bringing up new thoughts and questions. Do you think that 3 years of nearly continuous play is catching up with Yao. I don't mean energy wise, although that is also suffering. I mean his lack of practice time and being able to work on his own techniques and stuff. I seem to remember that Hakeem would come back each fall with some move that he had developed during the summer. IMO Yao is regressing or at least stagnating fundamentals wise and desparately needs to say NO to the CBA this summer and stay here and practice here.
My observation: Yao is a better offensive rebounder than a defensive rebounder. On offense, you don't box out. You get on the defender's back and sneak in for the ball. That's how his height is used effectively. On defense, you box out. When Yao concentrates on boxing out, he is not quick enough to rush to the ball. I notice many times that Yao was effectively sealing off his man from the rebound, only to have one of his shorter teammates get between him and the basket to snatch up the rebound. That's fine with me, as long as our team gets the ball. And he's the only big man I've ever seen deferring the rebound to a smaller teammate when both are yelling "same team!"
