CBA offical said :"Yao will be back with China NT after the playoffs"

Right....right....I'm sure it will.

 

Don't blow things out of proportion.

 

"Sometimes you got to take the good with the bad."

But for arguements sake, if the NBA was primarily a Chinese dominated sport, and you were lucky and skilled enough to play in China, would you come back to America during the off season to help your teamates and country?

 

I would love to see Yao become a better player. Obviously we want him to help us win a championship too. I'm sure Chinese fans are also tired of Yao being labelled 'overrated' by other fans and pundits, and a summer of specialized training will help him become the player he can be. Trust me, I'd rather see China win an Olympic medal over those damn Argentinians.

 

its not about coming back...its about being basically forced to come back or be labeled as selfish and unpatriotic in a nation that is highly sensitive towards community and patriotism. yes american players were labeled as this when they didn't want to play in the olympics, but it doesn't carry the same weight in america as it does in china. further, yao has all these expecations put on him by the chinese to live up to the idea of a chinese hero and being labeled as a selfish, patriotic person would be a terrible slight to his reputation.

i know you are just trying to argue the other side but you aren't really arguing the same point. yao wants the summer off to rest and continue to improve his game which he simply cannot do if he is forced into this. yao is being manipulated for political reasons and it's not fair.

 

I think a die hard basketball fan would want to see him play to his best , and yes, doesn't matter where it is, as long as it is a higher level, and that happen to be NBA or the Olympic, not Shanghai's court.

I guess there are a lot of things that's laughable to you. The tweaking Mr. Stern you mentioned is wise enough to take care of his little business in 'today's business world' by not kill the goose for the egg. I wish CBA could learn that.

 

Let's suppose we're talking ping-pong just to carry out your argument.

If I were the best American Ping Pong player the country had ever seen, and ping-pong was a sport that was loved and revered in China, where all the best ping-pong players went, and where if you won in China, the world regarded you as the best. Now lets say the local Houston team was playing Dallas in the summer on teams that compared to China sucked. I have ping-pong elbow, but my country has called on me to play in this tournament.

First of all, I'd be shocked and insulted that my country would want me to play on some local level with a bunch of crappy ping-pong players so they can maybe learn from me at the risk of injury or development. I'd say, hey, get real.

Secondly, Yao Ming can't make Chinese basketball players better. Do you think players in the NBA got better by playing with or without Jordon? Did anyone Jordon played with get significantly better once they left his team? No. What Jordon did was inspire a lot of little kids to play basketball instead of baseball or football, and thereby increase the chance of producing better basketball players. This Yao will do simply by being the best he can be. He doesn't need to go back every summer and play on some intercity squad.

 

Has Yao actually said this?

If so, i'm all for him staying here. He can even crash in my spare bedroom where nobody will find him.

However, my arguement was more about patriotism. Myself, like almost everyone else here, knows Yao would benifit greatly having a couple off seasons here. As of now, i don't think his play dictates him a max contract. However his marketability does, and in the end that's how he'll get it. Because the NBA is a business.

 

if you feel that cynical about things then that is your issue, but i want yao here because i want to see yao develop into a dominating force that i know he can be. of course i want to see him help lead the rox to a championship, but that doesn't mean that i don't want to see yao be the best he can be either.

also, you have to know that a basketball fan in shanghai knows that winning these tournaments in asia would be nothing compared to seeing a chinese man lead an american team to a championship in an american dominated sport. the best players in the world play in the NBA. china would take a hell of a lot more pride seeing a chinese like yao holding up that sweet nba championship trophy that guys like MJ and shaq have held up as opposed to seeing him win one of these summer tournaments.

 

i don't think he has specifically said this from any quotes i remember but i seem to get that feeling from the things i have heard him say.

 

I just finished reading "Yao: A Life In Two Worlds." It is HIS choice to go back and play for the National Team in the summer. Throughout the book he talks about it being the highest honor to play for the NT. And he also said that if he were to chose between the NT and the Rockets, he would choose the NT. It's not the Chinese officials. It's Yao. He is very dedicated to serving his country and playing for them. Their culture is very different from ours, and he sees it as being dishonorable if he does not play for the NT. He does not want to let everyone down like Wang did, because he does not want his own country to hate him.

 

I just finished reading "Yao: A Life In Two Worlds." It is HIS choice to go back and play for the National Team in the summer. Throughout the book he talks about it being the highest honor to play for the NT. And he also said that if he were to chose between the NT and the Rockets, he would choose the NT. It's not the Chinese officials. It's Yao. He is very dedicated to serving his country and playing for them. Their culture is very different from ours, and he sees it as being dishonorable if he does not play for the NT. He does not want to let everyone down like Wang did, because he does not want his own country to hate him.

 

It's a common practice for ***INTERNATIONAL*** sports.

Take football for example, Man. U went through the trouble to come to US to play some low-level exbition games. I don't see anybody complaining. The Brazil national team travel for half the globe to play the Chinese national team..... The conflict of club and national team is always there.

I agree it sucks that Yao has to go back. But it's just a common practice for international sports. All these communism stuff in this thread are quite stupid. And of course, American funs are always interested in national sports, it's natural that they are not comfortable with the international rules.

 

hey, max dugan, what do you know about american funs. we got astro world and cotton candy we dont have our own personal ivan drago we monitor by day and night to. he wants to box or he doesnt want to box we dont make him box. the international rules are for ****ing international idiots. they are for pigs, dirty pigs who are just out to make a buck. international mafia men. you bow down to them okay. yao is a houstonian now and what he says - goes. we we got his back and if you dont like it - well hey - come talk to us, you and your international mafia rule setters. we got a little something for you, know what i mean

 

Some of the unemployed do. And the salary for the Chinese isn't even that high, with the influx of ex-patriots that has the strong foreign trainining, ability to speak English fluently, and typically stronger social skills, the job market in China even for college graduates isn't that great. 400 - 500 U.S. dollars is very good for a recent college gratduate. Most are still around 200 - 300 dollars or even lower.

 

Yao Ming gains popularity in China because he's able to play in the NBA. People are like him because he represents Chinese in a NBA league. However, like I've said, I went to Shanghai, and Yao is getting no where the amount of recognition he does here.

 

If Yao is able to make more money here than in China, then he should defect. I have not been to China but from what I have heard and read, I thought he was a god in China, surprises me that his popularity has not translated to dollars and cents in China.

 

He does get swarmed and worshipped, but so does many other celebrity. The endorsement money is definitely there, but that's because he's playing in the NBA that people gave him this kind of recognition. When he was playing in the CBA, he was at best 2nd tier celebrity until it was apparent he was gonna go high in the NBA draft. As far as merchandising stuff, I haven't seen a lot of jerseys, but if those do get popular in mainland, you can bet there will be more bootleg sold than real versions (it' be hard press to sell Chinese people a "tanktop" for what is basically a third of their monthly wage). You don't know how many Yao Ming bobble head I saw that I can bet weren't licensed goods.

I honestly believe Yao's success is tied to how well he can do in the NBA. That's why I want him to be the best in the NBA he can be. The thing is, he not only have to be successful on the court in the NBA, but also be the good little boy to the Chinese basketball organization, because if he's labled as an traitor or defects, all his commercial appeal in China will disappear.

 

From what I have read, I feel Yao does want to stay here for training in the summer. But he will go back if he is asked to. Why? It's not because he doesn't have the ball to refuse. That's too stupid an idea. Yao just can't afford to have a publicity war with the CBA, which may shatter his good obedient young man image. It's all about image, endorsements and TV commercials. It's all about money, folks.