Except the ranking makes no sense. If he's healthy he'll be top 2. If he's not he'll be 100th and out of the league. Imposing a scaling model to a binary one to cover your prediction makes no sense. If Yao had a nagging injury that restricted his movement or his explosiveness or bothered his shooting hand then you could have diminished execution... a la Tmac who is simply worse at everything than he once was and thus would make sense that his injury lowered his ranking. But if Yao as of now is completely healed and is not expected to feel lingering affects of his past injury. If is on the court he'll be the best offensive center out there. Using the logic that because he MIGHT GET HURT you should scale his ranking is r****ded... Yao had 25/12 tonight but he might get hurt in a month, so let's move him from 1st to 11th behind a guy who is worth 12/10
It's a ranking of desirability. Andrew Bynum will probably be in the top 10 so let's use him as a reference. Do I think Bynum is better than a healthy Yao Ming? Or even 70% as good? No, because I am not r****ded. But Bynum did play 65 games last year while Yao was a 17 million suit model sitting on the bench. And no one knows how Yao will perform this season after the long layoff. So the health factor and the unknown make Bynum a more desirable center than Yao at this time, hence the higher ranking. Is it really that difficult to understand? But this will all change if Yao can prove that he can be at least 50% as effective as before. Before I go, let me quote this for you again from the article. Do you feel better now?
Healthy Yao Ming, top 5? My ass. He's top 2-3 when healthy, and I predict he'll be top 10 with limited minutes.
Tom Brady didn't play last year either but no one is saying he's not one of the top 3-4 best QBs. Yao playing 25 minutes a game is still a top 3 center.
that's ONE year. yao gets hurt basically EVERY year. health is a big question with him. he may never play more than 20-25 minutes a game anymore. but when he IS healthy, he is arguably the best center in the L and the author noted that. however, yao playing 20-25 minutes a game is still a top 5 center in my opinion.
exactly .. its not he is a doctor who went to medical school and so we should just trust his judgement... he is a good writer who got a job with yahoo sports ... if he were any good he would be GMing a team somewhere and making tons of money
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ba...11-through-1?urn=nba-265548#remaining-content 11. Greg Oden 10. Al Jefferson 9. Marc Gasol 8. Nene 7. Joakim Noah 6. Chris Kaman 5. Andrew Bynum 4. Al Horford 3. Brook Lopez 2. Andrew Bogut 1. Dwight Howard
Pretty good list/commentary. I don't know why people are going crazy over his projected ranking for Yao. The guy hasn't played in a year, his minutes will be limited, his availability game to game is still a question mark, and he hasn't completed a season without major injury in 5 years. No one really knows how good he will be, so who cares if Kelly isn't as optimistic as Rockets fans? He's been in Yao's corner for a long, long time, so its not like he's a "hater".
I really can't see how Yao is inferior to the centers of the NBA. But if health and team performance are important factors, I can see why it is ranked this way.
Its okay, as long as we all get to see this again and again. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mFppQfs75Ro?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mFppQfs75Ro?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
Actually, I think the writer is being very nice... The man hasn't played in a year so he was very generous to get the ranking he got.
Then he should take Yao out...only ranking those who did play in last year And he's predicting, it's not generous to predict that you would be as bad as "Greg Oden", that dude so far does nothing...
