I have never seen so many people misunderstand one of my posts. I guess the IQ has dropped on this board. People, get a grip! I am not saying that YAO DOES NOT CARE ABOUT BASKETBALL!!! I say he doesn't care about being the man because in my opinion he defers TOO MUCH even if he is only in his 2nd year!!! I am saying that instead of him being like Jordan, he might turn out to be Scottie Pippen. Is that a good thing or bad thing is what I am asking? Is Nick and the other 3 adults the only one who can see past the Rocket Red Glare? Geez, people. I know you love the Rockets, but they are not critique proof!!
Yao has been great. You want to much too fast. You want him to dominate Shaq? Please. Olajuwon couldn't carry his team for what, 7 or 8 years. Yao has been great so far.
I know. It took Hakeem 10 years to get a championship. Yet people expect Yao to get one in his 2nd year.
Whoever started this thread is a complete idiot. do you know what you are talking about? who are you talking about? and the whole situation itself? are you f*cking r****ded? Don't start a thread without actually thinking...think first! Yao doesn't care?!?! what kind of bullsh*t is that? Hello? it's a job, he get paid for what he does! Are you saying that he doesn't care about getting more money if the teams wins?!?! man..I'm tired of this and people here who are totally stupid. Let me know if you are going to be in the NBA one day...let me know. A$$!
This kind of response is what is so infuriating about what has happened to this board. Almu posted a rational question. But any post that doesn't just praise Yao is answered with such venom that it's just unbelievable. Does it hurt you so much to think that Yao may just be a good player and a piece of the puzzle rather than a dominant monster that can carry a team on his own. I think anyone that looks at the game objectively is starting to understand that Yao will be able to contribute a lot to a championship caliber team, but he is not going to be in that top echelon of players that carry inferior talent to a ring.
The title is what gets this post in trouble. If you want to say Yao doesn't want to be the man yet or even if he's not ready, that's fine. But the title dose not say that and you know it. It's a shame that you had something good to say but titled it to draw out the irre of the forum.
There is no doubt in my mind that Yao will be a very very importance piece to a championship team, wether he'll be in that top echelon of players that carry the team to that ring remain to be seen. We cannot make the conclusion just yet. He has proved us he has all the tools to be a great player, he just need to bring it every games, wether his condition or his committment to Chinese National team allow him to do that, we don't know, we'll see in a couple of years when his contract is up. Yao's play at the end of the regular season and playoffs cannot warrant Rockets make a comittment to completely build a team around him. I think best approach for Rockets this summer (If we cannot get T-mac) is to add a strong PF to the puzzle. Wait and see one more year how we can get from Yao in his third year. There is an old saying in NBA: You are what you are after three years in the league.
Why does the title get the thread in trouble? He DOES NOT CARE if he is the man on the team. Nobody read the first sentence? I guess if you went an saw Wills post of Francis: Sell High, he was talking about Francis Corp that is listed on Nasdaq? Amex? NYSE? Or maybe the Mercantile Exchange in Chicago? People are way too sensitive. This is just to promote thought and debate. Not flaming. The title is to bring you into the debate. Judge a book by its cover is all of a sudden the norm? People, please.
He never played. And he was also 18 when he started. After three years of playing consistently, what were his numbers. Portland players always said that one of their best players doesn't even get to play. Any guess who that was? He just had to sacrifice because of the vets in front of him. His first season of getting PT, he was a star.
Some high schoolers could be exception since instead of stepping up on the court right away, they usually spent first 2-3 years learning playing the game the right way. For International players such as Yao, Peja, Dirk etc, who have been playing professional basketball for a while when they joined NBA, I believe the principle will apply to them quite nicely. That being said, this does not been they are not going to keep improving, but the style/strength/Shortcomings of their game will be identical throughout their NBA career.
Xenogears, is your brain on the off position? Read what Nick said. I am tired of explaining to the closed minded. For the rest, I continue to ask. Tell me. Scottie Pippen or Jordan. Olajuwon or Smits. With the right players around him, can you still win rings that way if he IS NOT DOMINANT all the time? Remember, Shaq is not 25. And there are no other big boy centers on the horizon. So maybe we can get by with just that. A very good center and should focus on getting a tough PF like Brand or something like that.
Holding Shaq to 17.3 ppg. You dont' think that takes a lot of energy? Enough that it might be sapping him on the offensive end?
You folks who want to turn this into a Yao-SF issue have got it all wrong. First of all everyone needs to accept the fact that Yao and Shaq are two different kinds of centers. As the ABC team noted: Shaq has more physical strength and power and plays a power game while Yao has more SKILL and shoots better and passes better. To me. Yao is akin to Tim Duncan - a big man with exceptional basketball skills. In today's NBA that's what you want to build your team around. As for his perceived lack of dominance, the guy is right on schedule AFAIK. His improvement from year to year is simply awesome and I cannot wait until next year to see how much he'll have grown. The ONLY reason we had a chance in this series is because of Yao. With Yao, we were counter the Lakers biggest weapon, Shaq. We have been able to force Shaq to actually play on both ends of the court and thereby free up our guards to exploit the Laker guards. We have lost this series because of two things. First, our guards are so inconsistent they cannot consistently execute against the Lakers - for every highlight Sportscenter play thay make, there's an equally boneheaded dumbass one. They have not proven to be dependable in the clutch as was evidenced yesterday. Second, the hole at PF was exposed for all to see as Malone dropped 30 points on them yesterday. Neither Cato nor Taylor are the answer here although on Sunday, Cato finally scored some points. This will be that hardest hole to fill. They don't have 3 first rounds picks anymore to waste on a future version of Eddie Griffin and they do not have much money under the cap to make a trade (their MLE won't be enough to get them a topflight PF). Plus with CD making the decisions, I don't have much faith in their getting this done.
Yes Almu...this isnt the old days where your post would have been understood and given the treatment you expected.. To answer your question (even tho Nick said it best).... We should plan ahead as if Yao was just going to be a extremely good piece of the puzzle...a second option as it were.. and if he were to improve so much that he becomes dominant, then we can make roster moves accordingly. People are too ready to get rid of players they think are impeding his progress instead of expecting Yao to make the progress with the teammates he has. If he is as smart as we think he is, why would he not be able to adapt and work inthe unit? We expect Francis to do that...yes? We expect(and have seen) Cat have to change the way he plays.. Why not expect Yao to do that also? He isnt playing in a vacuum....changes in team dynamics require a change on all the players parts to make a functional, effective team. funny how you got called a Juugie clone when you have been here for MUCH longer...and then getting cussed out by the classless little punk asianmaster....welcome to my ignore list punk..this aint the espn boards(yet)...we dont deabte a issue by cussing at them and calling someone r****ded ****.....if you plan on continueing that style of deabte...prepare to be kicked since I doubt the mods will put up with it for long.
Some of the guys keep using the first series between Dream and Shaq to diss Yao's impact in the games. They use either Dream's number (30+) to indicate that he didn't need to stop Shaq, because he scored bigger on Shaq, which is true. Then some of them use Shaq's number (20+) against Dream, to say although Shaq couldn't stop Dream, but he also scored on him, which is also true but irrelevant. I guess we are still talking about basketball games, you still need to score one more point than your opponents, as a team to win. Shaq averages 1 more point than Yao in the series, they pretty much cancelled out. Of course, then again, Yao takes no credit, it's team effort. When Shaq shined in last two of our regular season meetings, it was all Yao's fault, he is the center who supposed to stop opponent center. Everything is true or partially true, but nothing is true when you take it out of context. Although Shaq scored 20+ in his first series against Dream, but put his team in 10 points disadvantage, how can you say that he had a better impact in the series? The difference in this series is Malone. And there is no ifs, if Nackbar's clean block is not called foul, if Malone got a technical after he undercut Nachbar, if Yao was not called for that 6th foul, we won't have this conversation. Yao doesn't care, geez, give me a break. How do you know? Did he wisper into your ears so that you leak out this first hand inside info? Because he didn't dominant Shaq? Then I guess noone in the league cares, coz no one can dominant Shaq. It's so sickening to see tons of posts to diss our players after they fought bravely, although not smartly enough. This is their first playoff series. And we are supposed to their fans. We are not a winning team, not yet. If you can't wait, and have no patience, I would suggest you to become a Spurs "fan". You can come back when we are ready. But I have to warn you, even then, Rockets will still make mistakes.
Go back and watch the game. Yao's definitely getting doubled while guarded by Shaq. It's not automatic as soon as he receives the ball, but if Yao turns either towards the lane or baseline, the double-team is there.
Shaq scored lots of points in 95, but was not able to nuetralize Akeem. Yao scored less, but has been basically to hold his own against Shaq in the series. And add Malone to the mix...I honestly believe that Yao would have done better if Malone were not playing alongside Shaq. That is also the reason that Yao was able to more in the first 3 games against Lakers this season.
