Just imagine taking away all the red tape and rating Ming and Pao as player comparisons. I guess the major difference here was that Pao came to several team workouts and lit it up. Pao is as young as Ming. They have a great shooting game. Ming's shorter wingspan could be made up by his height advantage. Nevertheless, you had several teams that wanted to trade up to get him, and the team that did had to fork over Shareef Abur Rahim, a 2000 Olympian. And the gamble did pay off for now when he won RoY. I can hear the complaints now that the Rockets don't need a 7'6 shooter, but rather a real inside presence. Conservative weights for Ming have come in around 280 without the benefit of any professionally supervised weight training. And the guy has a decently developed lower body. This guy has potential to grow past his game and exceed it. And if it does pan out, he's the type of player that other teams get nightmares trying to match up from. If politics isn't the biggest hurdle, it's a worthy gamble to invest in Ming. He might even be eager as Pao and eat up the buyout with his own salary (whether he chooses or not...).
