It seems like Yao's been a tad more aware of help defenders coming to strip the ball now. He's even dished out a few assists from the double team on the low left block. Though he'll always be a high turnover player. Yao has to up the ferocity up several notches to split double teams. He does work to fight through them but still gets blocked, puts up an uncoordinated rushed shot or falls. He still has to reach that level of dominating the double. And I never considered the ref angle until now, but the refs hopefully wont whistle him for a foul when he's making a legit power move. Yao catching and shooting a simple jump shot can work. He wont have many 75% shooting domination games, but he could get a consistent 50% if he practices them right
Great post. In the playoffs, I am more worried about him getting the ball at the right places than his ability to score or pass off of a double team.
sometimes he hesitates to make his move, i don't remember dream doing that much, he used to get the ball then make his move, swish. when a double team came, he made the pass or went away from the double team for a fadeaway, swish. yao needs to put the shot up earlier and with more confidence imo.
Aldeman made Yao to take his time once he catch the ball so he knows where the double team is coming from. This way he won't run into trouble as he started dribbling.
I agree that to be considered great, he has to beat double teams regularly. Personally, I think his limited athleticism and lack of killer mentality will keep him from true greatness. My view is that Yao is who he is. He will be the aggressive Yao sometimes, but more frequently, he is normal Yao. I think it's foolish to game plan as if you're going to get aggressive Yao all the time, or even most of the time. Just like you couldn't just tell Rafer to be a good shooter, or Battier to be athletic, you can't just tell Yao to be aggressive all the time. It's not there. If you game plan as if he will be, you're just wishing and setting up the team for failure. Since you know what you are going to get, you should game plan accordingly.
I watch all the games. I think on the left block, he doesn't shoot outside of the paint as much. He either (i) powers it to the paint, where he is a monstrous percentage scorer; (ii) passes it out; (iii) turns it over. I don't have data to support this, but that's what my naked eyes tell me.
I think he gets stripped less against the lesser teams - the ones that are not as physical, the ones that don't send a guard down low to dig HARD. Focusing on the games against playoff competition, I still see a high incidence of inefficiency on Move 1. It's a lot of things. It's Chris Paul, Derron Williams, Defek Fisher digging in hard to take the ball. It's also times when where the individual defender (eg. Okur, Pryzbilla) can lean on Yao enough to force him to flip up that rushed, off balance hook in the middle that doesn't go in much. It's also about the flops/charges. I have to believe that Morey has these stats against good teams somewhere. A lot of the problem is with officiating. But we can't change that. I'm proposing that the overall efficiency is better with the right block or other moves from the left block, like the face up J or shanghai shake.
i haven't done any research on this other than what i've seen in the games. but the biggest difference i see in yao's moves is that they always start the same. he's always waiting to get into position in the post then sits there (dribbling or not), waits for the double to pass out and then re-posts. while this maybe a great move, it won't work all the time and it's definitely not executed to perfection just yet. as the op mentions, yao's got a repertoire of moves in the post and i think he should use them at his disposal. yao has either been told to do specific moves more or he's just gotten stuck on using only a few of them. i believe that if he were to bring all of his moves back, it would cause the most frustration. hakeem would confuse his opponents with the dream shake, leaving them with no idea of where he would turn. yao, of course, is not nearly as quick and agile as hakeem was, but it would create the same effect. the defender would have to make decisions on how to guard his move; and therefore, the more moves he uses, the less likely the defender is able to predict where yao will go. but again, without having done my full dd, i will say that if it ain't broken, don't fix it.
I always thought the facing up move was phenomenal. I'm willing to bet that his FG% is around 60+% with that shot...it's borderline unstoppable.
Problem is that Yao is really really slow compared to the Yao of the past. I mean, how many times have you see him use his baseline spin? Not often. That move was automatic a couple years ago. His opponent would be stuck in cement. Yao can't pull it off anymore. Hopefully he loses some pounds like he alluded to eariler and he can regain that quickness he once had.
