Yao's good at alot of things, but certainly tip-off is not one of them. He loses the tip-off 4 out 5 times. Not only it's ironic (considering his height), embarrassing, and it can become pretty costly we are in overtime. It is said that the most important play in overtime is the tip-off, which gives the first possession to your team. Since it is only 5 minutes, this could be very important, because having the first possession might mean having one more possession than your opponent. Last year, Cato was filling in doing the tip-offs, and he did a pretty good job. This year, we don't have someone on the staring lineup with the combination of size and jumping ability to do the tip-offs. However, letting Yao do it is pretty much like giving the ball to the other team, so we might just well try someone else. BTW, I don't know enough basketball to know this, but is guys like T-Mac a good choice for tip-offs? He's only about 6'8, but he's got really long arms, and is a quick and explosive leaper. I remember two years ago in the finals, KMart beat Duncan every time in tip-offs, although he's about 2'' shorter.
DeAleck, are you sure about that? The last couple months Yao has been winning 3 out of 5 tip-offs. Maybe even 4-5. He's improved. Certainly he'd loose to guys like KG or Duncan. But Yao used to lose to scrub centers. Not as much anymore. I could be wrong, but the last 10 games it seems as though he has won 7 out of those 10 tip-offs. I think I started to see this improvement about 12-15 games ago. At least he's not losing almost all of them like last year.
He has improved a lot on tips-offs. I'd say he has been the most improved tip-offer to start games. Still even if he did suck at it, you can't have your 7'6 star player not do tip-offs. The psychological impact could be too great.
wow....I didnt think there was anything else to complain about? How about devoting a thread to his raggedy mustache? or perhpas the stink of his socks?
For the season, Yao was 21-32 in tipoffs, so he wins 2 out of 5. Bad news is Yao lost 8 in a row including that overtime against Wolves, good news is Yao was 2-2 in overtime overall. Motumbo 2-0 in overtime. For some reason Rockets won more games when Yao lost tipoff.
Choujie: 21-32, that's alittle better than I thought. Anyway, where did you get all these stats? hotballa: Easy man, cool your balls down alittle bit...
It's not always Yaos fault.. if you notice.. the refs always try to make it fair for the other guy and lean the ball away from yao.
not only that. the ref doesnt throw it forcefully high enough and the other guy grabs it before it reaches the top of Yao Mings outstretched hand. This happens a lot. Yao has to actually wait for the ball to reach his hand while the other guy is already in the process of jumping upward for it.
In regulation it doesn't matter anyway. Each team gets the ball to start 2 periods. In OT, just let Deke do the tip and sub him at at the first stoppage of play.
I believe it was the last game we played, against the Wizards, where Yao jumped, had his hand at the ball, and didn't even move his hand to tap it. The other player just taps it his way. I'm still trying to figure out why he didn't even move his hand?
The ref should climb up to the roof and drop the ball down from there. I think this is Tom Tolbert's idea. He said it in a sacrastic way in response to Bill Walton's assertion that the refs were not being fair to Yao by not throwing the ball high enough.
