Yao will be 31 in the first year of a new contract and 36 in the last year of his contract. That's older than Manute Bol's retirement age.
Despite all the mounting evidence that Yao is not going to be the same, some YOF's like INTL are still trying to convince themselves nothing has happend and everything is all right. See no evil hear no evil.
So based on the ages and then adding in shaq,robinson ,jabbar and the list I provided he still has potentially 2 years. The only one from your list is muresan and I believe he had giantism or some other glands issues that I think kicks him out of the equation. I think the closest to yao body type and closest we can compare are nevitt ,ilgauskas, bradley and they were all marred by injury but also were/are years older than yao is now. It's almost as if you are not reading your own post? I am only saying that you can't say he is done when he is only 30/31 and based on our comparable lists yao still should have at least 2 years of shelf life. I mean based on everything presented we almost HAVE to give him 2 years. Bynum is making almost yao money now and you dont hear people in LA crying about it too much unless they are losing(ahem we are losing). Bynum was there for the Lakers down the stretch and contributed in the playoffs. I see Yao contributing in future playoffs more than bynum did and has done.. so by all accounts I think Yao is worth a 1-2 year contract next year at min. Would like to give him shaq money like 1.5 mill a year but I would possibly go all the way up to 8-9 a year going forward which is villanueva diaw nasr mohammed kind of money. I can live with that. Since certainly yaos upside even in a bynum type role FEB -JUN on a winning team is better than what nasr mohammed gives you. By the way why can't we compare shaq and yao? They are both huge 300 + over 7 foot 2. You say we cannot compare them when shaq has been hurt too. Shaq has not had some of the bad snakebit foot kind of issues like yao but there are some similarities. Yes I know shaq is more muscular /fit but again shaq won at 34 and is still playing. You can't selectively exclude players for nothing. Again only excluding muresan due to the freak (giantism) factor. yes there is lots of evidence to his demise but there is lots of evidence that he can still play and has already shown that this year. It's almost as if some of you don't actually watch the games and just check in once in a while . since yao is out ,then its oh yeah 'he's done' Sounds like some boston fans I know or Lakers fans who know 0 about yao, the rockets and the day to day. Our team is not good enough to make the playoffs then what is the point of hurting yao? Just to run him into the ground to feel validated about getting our moneys worth? You guys don't think these things through. Yao is a piece not a scapegoat. It's DEC.Hes 30. Yao is FEB - JUN player. You guys will get your wish and when he rattles off 5 in a row with kobe.. at that point you can easily just throw on your lakers/celts (insert poser team name)gear. I will be sitting there crying. feeling even much worse then when horry was hitting game winners for the Lakers. It's almost now about next year (due to W-L record)with yao since this year our team isnt worth trashing yao over. We all said limit the guy against the bad teams, not run him into the ground in DEC and here it is DEC and you guys are all jumping the gun. The mindset is somewhere between 8 and 12 years old. When it was down 3-1 against phoenix and I was leaving the summit I heard alot of you guys saying the rockets were done... plenty of people ready to throw their rockets gear away. Sure lets give yao away to another team to see him win it elsewhere that's going to be fun. He's a rocket for life and I hope he will take us back to the promiseland as he is the chosen one. I'm not saying he can't get hurt or break his arm etc (that applies to anyone) but he is not dead. That applies to anyone too. He is 30 and until he is dead or not 7 foot 6 he is ours and no you can't have him not yours! you can't snag him you lakers/celt/heat spy/double agent sneaky SOB.
what about a 2 year contract ? I cant post polls but curious to see what the board thinks yao is worth per year next year.
yeah I mentioned mark eaton and he played to 35/36. I am not looking at DOB and the actual season so numbers are approx.
He played 10 seasons, to age 36. The thing was, he played to his strengths and didn't try to do things he wasn't capable of. Here's one point. a 7'5" player should NEVER be diving on the floor for loose balls, and should NEVER be attempting to take charges and falling over. A big man should stay on his feet. He's too slow and too big to be falling on the floor. Eaton didn't do that. He was a slow plodder and he knew it and he didn't try to do things outside of what he was capable of. One of the STUPIDEST plays I see Yao make is taking charges and falling on the court like he is Hayes or Scola. I absolutely HATE that play.....even when he gets the call. He should stand there like a man, stand straight up and let the opponent run into him and fall down. Yao creates injuries to himself by trying to play a small man's game instead of standing big, maintaining his balance and playing big.
2 more years of how many minutes per game??? of the ones on that list, in their last 2 years they were putting in very few games relatively and/or very few minutes within those games. Shawn Bradley averaged 11 minutes per game in his last 2 seasons. Chuck Nevitt put in around 1.5 minutes per games in his last 2 seasons. Not interested.
Yao doesn't fall down as a defensive strategy. He's slow to move out of the way, and he loses his balance easily. Yao is always going to be a player who falls to the floor lot. Which is why his latest injury scares the hell out of me. He's going to miss 1-2 months simply for falling down.
Yes, he does lose his balance and fall. But he has learned to try to embelish the charge to get the call the same way that Hayes and Scola do. That is a learned "unskill". And he loses his balance because he is trying to do too much. There is no way that a 6'3" guard that weighs 185 lbs should be able to knock over a 300lb man that is planted on the ground and braced for the collision. It's just simple physics. These guys are taught to be light on their feet so they can fall over and get the call. He should be taught to stop that nonsense and stay on his feet. There is no way that Mark Eaton plays 10 years in the league until age 36 without staying on his feet. Eaton was known for that. He couldn't be faked out. He didn't leave his feet. He kept his feet planted and he very rarely ever fell on the court.
Eaton also missed fewer games over his first 10 seasons than Yao has missed this year. Eaton's a bit of an anomaly to begin with. He didn't come to the NBA till he was 26, and it wasn't because he was busy playing elsewhere -- he went to a community college and became an auto mechanic, got discovered for being 7'4'', and then sat on the bench at UCLA before being drafted. His body just didn't have that much mileage on it. And he was still done after 10 seasons. Yao is a lot more comparable to the other guys on Max's list.
Well, Yao's body hasn't gotten a lot of mileage during the past couple of years, so maybe his career will just be extended by these two years (if his feet can hold up)? He doesn't seem to have any problems with his knees, back, etc. At least that seems to be the way Ilgauskas' career has turned out, whom I consider most comparable to Yao in that respect.
But he had the same injury history. What do you think about the argument that Yao might be able to play longer (if his feet hold up, which I realize is a big "if") due to the fact that his knees, back, etc. weren't exposed to the pounding of an NBA season for almost two years?
I have no idea. He's been recovering. Right now, his career is on the same trajectory as everyone else on that list I posted of players over 7'5"...except he logged more minutes than any of them, including minutes in international play. As durvasa said, we're at the point with him now where, when he falls down, he's out for a month or two. We were playing him limited minutes, and he still got an injury significant enough to knock him out a while. We still have no timetable for his return. I hear ya on Ilgauskus. I think the size is the difference, though. There's a physiology to this...it's not an accident that all of those guys' careers look so close to one another in terms of games played and minutes played. Hit about 30, and the minutes start falling fast.
We can hope. But at the same time, there was a lot of excitement when Ilgauskas entered the league and put up 14-9 as a 22 year old. The thought was, he had a 20-10 type center trajectory, which is of course a great thing. It took him a few down years to get back into shape and put together a few solid seasons, but he also had age on his side, missing time on the right side of 25. Even if Yao had age on his side, it still becomes a tough question. Yao's value on the court and off the court are two very different things. If he can return and become a 13-6 type player, that's nice -- and more than a lot of teams get from their starting center. But how do you pay a guy like that? And how do you construct a team if that's your optimistic case?
Regarding Eaton....the Jazz never built the team around him. The low post "mileage" went to Malone and Dantley. Eaton's NBA was much slower paced and less athletically oriented than Yao's. Regarding Ilgauskas...once "healthy" the Cavs moved him out of the post and turned him into a faceup shooter. That probably helped whatever Z had left in the tank. Regarding Yao...we Luv Ya Big Fella...but it's time to move on.
