Chron: Yao closer to NBA (great article)

There are some terrific quotes from Yao in this one...props to Feigen. Yao is amazing.

Aug. 24, 2002, 10:03PM

Yao Ming comes closer to the NBA

By JONATHAN FEIGEN

Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

There was nothing to do but eat, and no one seemed terribly interested in that. The evening was billed as a "reception," a welcome to Canada for the Chinese national team. But there were no speeches, no program, just tables and waitresses and two hours to do little but draw stares.

The Chinese players filled two tables, talking to no one but Chinese players. The Canadians filled a few other tables. Each seemed oblivious to the other's existence, when, as is often the case with young athletes with time and freedom, restlessness took over.

The suggestion was made that a game of pool was in order. The bored Canadians had three players, needed a fourth and didn't have to ask twice.

Yao Ming has a nice shooting touch, good hands, unusual lower-body strength. He is, however, a rotten pool player. When the Canadian players sought a Chinese volunteer to join them in a game of eight ball recently in Vancouver, British Columbia, Yao jumped at the chance, unconcerned that he would be exposed as mediocre with a cue stick.

Within minutes, he was making the long shots, missing the short ones, honoring requests to sign autographs and pose for pictures whenever courtesy allowed and sometimes when it didn't. He traded high-fives and loud laughs. When a Canadian player lined up the eight ball to try to complete the win, Yao put his large and wonderfully expressive face near the pocket and contorted it to assorted distracting positions to the howls of his opponents and partner.

"It was something new, something exciting," Yao said. "In life, you have to experience everything."

Yao Ming had to come to the NBA. He always knew. He craved this life, even if he still does not know what this life will be. He was gifted in many ways, but talent and size, even his incredible size, is not enough, not enough to excel and most of all not enough to handle everything he will face.

In life, you have to experience everything. Everything awaits him.

He knows it, too. He is not quite sure what his life will become when he joins the Rockets and learns to live in the hot spotlight that has only begun to touch him. He said it is all so new, he can't really imagine it. NBA rookies have to adjust in so many ways, but they have seen the life they will join and pictured themselves in it.

Yao presses up to the windows of the Chinese team bus as it makes its way through Vancouver and Denver and Oakland. Soon he will be out there, away from the protective rules of the Chinese national team. Everything will be new. His home, job, teammates, coaches, opponents, expectations, attention, lifestyle. Everything he will see will be for the first time. And it will all come with suffocating scrutiny, the hopes of his nation and future of his new team.

"I can only imagine in very abstract terms what it will be like," Yao said. "But that is something I somehow expected. I never experienced anything like this. I don't know what to think of it in some cases."

But that is what brought him here. He has tried to imagine what it will all be like but has failed. And that has made it all more enticing.

Filled with the confident promise and potential of youth, he has no reason to think he cannot handle anything. He has not yet had to concede, to admit anything. Anything is possible.

"Mostly, I am curious," said Yao, 21. "It's always fun to adapt to a new environment. Of course, adapting to a new environment is a challenge to anyone in my shoes. But attitude is very important. The way you look at things, if you look at it from the curiosity angle, it makes it fun and exciting, then it will be a lot easier.

"It took me two years to adapt to going from my club team to the national team. This is a lot different. When I was selected to play for the national team, there was not that much attention focused on me in 1998. Now, everybody is giving me advice, everybody is wanting to talk to me. I'm under the microscope."

That did not seem to trouble him. Asked what we will see when the microscope focuses on him, the NBA's and Rockets' first draft pick said, "After looking at me in the microscope, they probably see me as 28 meters, instead of 2.23 meters (7-foot-5)."

But has anyone been expected to make so great a change under this level of scrutiny? Other players selected first in the draft could let their talent carry them. But because the top picks have become prospects rather than polished, they are investments to be judged later. Yao will not be given that consideration. He also won't ask for it.

"I have never played in a NBA game," Yao said. "I don't know how good I can be. Maybe I'll be a total bust. When you're comparing us and how we measure up to other players in the United States, it's like us using the metric system and you using the English system. You have a sense of what they are. You can understand some of it. But it's only when you are the same page that you can really measure."

When he finally got on the same court last week in Oakland, Yao appeared to fit in better with the U.S. World Championships team than with his own team, winning praise and respect from the NBA players who had openly doubted him.

"He is," the Celtics' Paul Pierce said, "the real deal."

But it does not take a NBA All-Star or veteran coach to see Yao has skills and size. He is not inconspicuous. The game against the United States, however, offered a demonstration of an attribute that could prove more valuable. He competes, willing to risk defeat, even failure, without the safety net of having not entirely given himself to the competition.

In the second half, he battled with Antonio Davis in the low post, inspiring Davis to retaliate with an elbow as they ran back down the court. Yao promptly returned fire with an elbow of his own.

After Ben Wallace, who had promised to punish Yao before the game, landed hard on Yao after completely falling for a fake, Yao deadpanned, "I hope when he fell on me it didn't hurt him much."

Though hesitant to speak English in press conferences, Yao said he enjoys a traditional NBA and Chinese exchange of trash talk.

"I'll teach every Rockets player Chinese trash-talking," Yao said. "We had foreign players on our team. They learned to trash-talk before they learned any other Chinese."

He will not, however, reserve barbs for the opposition.

He considered his blown dunk on Thursday and said, "When you have pitiful moments, that makes the good moments more valuable."

With a glance at a reporter's scribble, he said, "Some reporters in China, I think their notes look like English. Yours looks like Chinese."

"He has a level of maturity and a sense of humor that I think will put him in as good a situation as anybody can be coming to a new country, using a new language on a team," Rockets general counsel Michael Goldberg said. "That sense of humor is one of the first things you see about him. That will help him succeed."

He does not expect it to be easy, but doesn't seem to want it to be, anyway. He held up well to the test promised and delivered by the United States centers on Thursday. But their pledge to beat him only offered a reminder that players will relish the chance to punish and humiliate him. He knows of Shaquille O'Neal's promise to deliver "a 'bow to the nose and make him wonder what's coming next."

"That's part of the challenge," Yao said. "This is something that I have to overcome. If I can't deal with that, I should not be a professional player in the first place. I have to know how to take that."

With that, it becomes clear why he is here, why he will excited about the pressures he can't quite imagine but knows await him. There is the NBA money. The formality of Yao's signing a Rockets' contract now depends only on his schedule. Yao can earn as much as $3,858,240 from the Rockets next season and $15,690,219 over four years.

"There wasn't anything I really wanted materialistically," he said. "For me, if I get paid for one year, I could live on it forever.

Then, leaning forward as if not to be heard, he said, "I do pay attention when we drive by the car dealerships. Can I fit in Mercedes SUV?"

That, however, only shows that while he is becoming a NBA player, he is not there yet. A NBA player wouldn't ask; he would choose the Mercedes and the SUV.

The Rockets' riches, however, did not inspire this journey.

"Ever since I was very young, I played against players that were much older than me," Yao said. "I was able to hold my own, but I was never able to excel in those competitions. But when I was 17 or 18 years old, I played in basketball camps here in the United States. Knowing I was competing against the best the United States had to offer in the same age group and being able to see I was able to do well against them, I thought, `Wow, I have the potential to be that good.' That's when I really started to explore that possibility and to challenge myself that way."

As noble a pursuit as that might be, his motive is more simple. It is almost as if he had no choice but to take on his life will throw at him. A water-polo player as a child, as he grew to almost 7-foot-6, so did his love for basketball and challenges in all forms. He didn't accidentally fall into all this. He wants it.

"I have a special talent," Yao said. "Everybody here contributes something to society. This is the responsibility I'm talking about as a professional player. I serve as a role model for the young kids because I'm in the media attention. Everybody knows me. But also, I have to be true to myself, to know that I did the best that I can.

"I used to get stressed out about it. Sometimes, the team does not do well, or I didn't do as well as I could have. Or I think I should have acted differently. Now, I am a little easier on myself.

"I didn't really enjoy basketball until only very recently, a few years ago when I was 17 or 18 years old. That's when I was not stressed out and found it enjoyable. That's when I realized, it was wonderfully intricate and a wonderful profession. It's become an enjoyment, every aspect of the game. Even little things like the squeaking sound of the shoes or the swishing sound of the ball going through the net, the people yelling, the coaches yelling, the teammates trash-talking. I love all of it.

"I still have a long way to go but I'm just so excited to be here."

In life, you have to experience everything. It helps if you "love all of it." So he laughs easily, cheers teammates loudly, shows his emotions a head higher than the giants that surround him. Everything is still possible. Everything awaits him

 

I didn't get this line from Feigen:

Then, leaning forward as if not to be heard, he said, "I do pay attention when we drive by the car dealerships. Can I fit in Mercedes SUV?"

That, however, only shows that while he is becoming a NBA player, he is not there yet. A NBA player wouldn't ask; he would choose the Mercedes and the SUV.


Does Feigen not know that Mercedes makes SUV's???


os