Yao ended his own career by playing with his stupid international team every summer, oh well its his career not mine
I will be so relieved once Yao takes his broken glass foot out of town and takes all his worshipers with him...
No, he ended his career by being 7'6"! His parents should have stopped giving him milk by the age of 12! In all seriousness, guys of his size have issues like this. The NBA season alone is really grueling. If we limited his playing time there would be hell to pay, and we knew about his commitments to his country long long before we signed him AND resigned him. We took a gamble and failed. It happens all the time. Look at it this way, what if we decided to tank after our first five losses in the season and ended up with the number one overall worst record in the country. Then, by some horrible chance we end up not getting the number one overall pick in the draft. Stranger stuff has happened before. Do we go on a binder and blame Stern? Do we scream in outrage and say that he ruined our season? We had a chance to trade Yao in this offseason. We had a chance to try and not build a team around him. We didn't. You pick a direction and go with it. To assign blame in post does nothing...
I didn't really have a direction to go when I made it. But I did decide to take it seriously because of all the BS "China is responsible" posts. Why aren't you responding to the rest of the post? Because you have no answer? Because what you stated about big men being injury prone is exactly why I'm holding my position? In the end, it's about common sense. If common sense tells the Rockets they need to be careful with Yao, then they should have been careful. They could also have simply not taken him #1 overall. Jay Williams or Mike Dunleavy were available. If he's such a liability, why draft him in the first place? I don't know. Maybe it's because playing him 35mpg on a team that's 1st round fodder doesn't make you better? Maybe because when you tank enough times, you accumulate enough talent to make his 25mpg enough to contend? Or simply, the Rockets were stupid to give him a 6 year max extension in the first place. If they banked on Yao to fail, they should've simply kicked him to the curb, or not drafted him in the first place. But they didn't. Instead, like with Sampson, they kept him playing major minutes until his health gave out, and then played him a lot again when he came back, and again, and again, until now. The Rockets, if nothing else, is guilty of stupidity. The Spurs only played Duncan when he was 100%, and only what he could handle. For example, in the 2000 playoffs, Duncan was "questionable", and Pop kept him on the bench which resulted in a 1-3 loss to the Suns. That shows commitment to a player. Duncan missing the round was the reason why the Spurs got owned so quickly. Because Pop didn't want to risk Duncan no matter what the cost. Haven't seen a good ole YOF bashing in a while. Good to know that any poster who says anything positive about Yao still immediately get that label. Bring back the old memories.
@Deckard. Ignore my previous response to your post. I thought you were the person I quoted(Madmax), which you weren't. Basically to answer your question, I didn't really think deeply on the issue when I started the thread. My seriousness had more to do with the responses than the topic itself.
I agree with a great deal of what you said. The Rockets had a choice in who they picked, and who they resigned. The enticement of such a big and profitable athlete outweighed concerns of health. Did the Rockets cost Yao his career? No. Yao's foot did. Both parties saw more in their relationship than what actually was. Either one could have walked away (no pun intended) but neither did. Now, both he and us have to live with the consequences...
Nothing personal. Yao threads just annoy me. The Gentle Giant is old news and hasn't been relevant to Rockets ball for the last few years. Yao threads only seem to express the immature putrid hate on our FO or spouts of racism and political ignorance with stupid questions like did the Rockets ruin his feet or Chinese are commies! Rawr! The guy is useless and has been for a long time. When he leaves, I genuinely hope he takes all the garbage threads that follow him with him.
@SamFisher: Could you please tell me the the exact facts which shows how the Rockets were the only team willing to draft Yao? You said the Rockets was the only team willing to give him a chance. I didn't follow the whole China Negotiations much, so I probably missed something in terms of details. Was Yao going to just stay in China forever if it weren't for the Rockets? Actually, this is exactly my position on the matter, although I do believe the Rockets should be better at understanding things more than Yao. After all, the Rockets are a team with a history of big men, and a large training/coaching/medical staff. While Yao was just a kid from the other side of the world. So while it's very conceivable that Yao didn't know what he was getting into, I find it less forgiving that the Rockets did not. My more Yao-tilted/anti-Rockets stance has more to do withe responding to other posts than anything else. I'm really more frustrated with how the organization screwed themselves as well as Yao in this whole process.
Yao's situation has been nothing like Sampson's. Ralph took a very bad fall, hurting his back, during the 1986 finals series with Boston and it led to serious knee problems because it altered his stride. It was a freak injury. That's what I recall. The injuries are nothing alike, and you're dead wrong about the Rockets playing Ralph heavy minutes. He averaged just under 31 MPG the season following the finals. During his career with the Rockets, he never averaged 38 minutes a game. I'll add this... Sampson was a multiple College Player of the Year winner and subsequent MVP of the All Star Game. The Rockets knew what they were getting with Sampson. They took a big gamble with Yao.
Well, I figure I'd balance out all the "Yao screwed the Rockets" stuff these past few years with some "Rockets screwed Yao" stuff. I mean, equal opportunity unnatural hatred is only fair, right?
Aren't Yao's injuries also all labeled as "freak" injuries? Where he got stepped upon, fell badly, etc.? I mean, I don't think ANY injury is non-freaky, unless it was brought upon by bad habits like being out of shape and not warming up properly. If Yao didn't get banged at the wrong angle a few times, we could be talking about championship probabilities right now.
The point is that these threads need to go away. Since we can't count on basic human intelligence and common sense, I am just hoping at this point in time that Yao retires soon or signs with another team.
They were the only NBA team that was paying him to play for them over the last 10 years - what does this matter to your incredibly dubious argument that the Rockets played him too much?
So what this post is basically telling us that - yes, Yao should have been basically a role player throughout his career and treated (and of course...paid)like a fragile part-timer. Basically he's the Chinese Rik Smits, after all. He's not Tim Duncan - as documented, in terms of minutes played, Yao can't carry Timmy's Jock. Or even come remotely close. No, he's Rik Smits (though even Rik Smits got up to 30 mpg - as you told us this is too much for Yao). Now we're gettiin down to Kevin Duckworth level. Or wait, sorry, even Duck got up to 30 mpg. So you're telling me he's the CHinese Scot Pollard, there's a solid 20 mpg man in his heyday....woohoo! In other words, any thoughts people had about him becoming a franchise big man to succeed shaq were silly hype, insofar as he simply wasn't physically able to tolerate the responsibilities of being an NBA superstar, which include such items as actually playing in games. Maybe you should quit while you're ahead, and while ahead, I mean the fact that your thread is a laughingstock.
You're floundering, dude. A freak injury is a freak injury. There is no blame to assign because the causes of such an injury are undiscoverable. If you truly believe that Yao's injuries were "freak" injuries, why did you start this thread? Well, you've made it clear that you DO NOT believe Yao's injuries to be of the "freak" variety, because you've endeavored in front of everybody on this board to place the blame for Yao's injuries squarely upon the shoulders of the Rockets organization. Again. You're floundering, flip-flopping, whatever you'd like to call it. Stop embarrassing yourself while there's still time!
I feel like if we did not pick up his extension he would have easily found a home somewhere else. Heck, coming into this season even people were speculating that if he had a good year we would have to shell out a lot of money to keep him...
Yao's situation is a sad one. One that leaves you wondering what if..... the problem with that whole notion is that it always leaves you feeling the blame needs to sit with a specific side. Bad injuries, nobody can blame anybody.
