ESPN has been hating on the Rockets seriously this season. With the exception of Marc Stein's generous bump in the power rankings last week, the Rockets barely get any coverage on SportsCenter despite the fact that we have two of the most popular players in the league, and the writers generally choose to ignore us unless they're writing something bad about us (just scan the "daily dime" archives this season and try your best to find any anecdote about the rockets that's more than 2 lines long). They dropped one of our nationally televised games too. Last night, despite the fact that there were only like 5 NBA games played (and really nothing else going on in the sports world other than the winter olympics which nobody cares about), they totally ignored the Rockets in a 90-minute sportscenter program and chose to instead waste time rambling about Dale Earnhardt's death. It's official: ESPN hates the Rockets. Sorry, but I had to vent about it.
I found this kind of funny. He's making it seem like DA would come back to haunt us. I was skeptical at first, but I guess there's a reason why DA hasn't played a whole lot the last 3 seasons.
What's really funny is that Yao and Pau have nearly identical numbers (besides assists), and yet Pau is perceived to be having a breakout season, and is well deserving of his all-star spot; meanwhile, many writers portray Yao as being some underachiever who is only an all-star because of the China vote. Neither of them are superstars yet. But you don't see articles about the all-star selections with a picture of Pau along with a caption that reads 'despite his disappointing play, Gasol made his first all-star roster' or other crap like 'Gasol has still not lived up to the lofty expectations that we all had for him'. Now I realize that the early success of the Grizzlies and the disappointing season of the rockets makes a difference here in terms of perception, but there were people complaining about Yao even we were winning last year. I guess the extra 6 inches really has an effect on expectations.
They are all bandwagoners. They'll kiss the Spurs and the Pistons and the Mavs's asses because people want to know about the best in sports. BTW people are hating on yao because their center isn't as good. You don't see Detroit, Miami, or Phoenix's writers constantly complaining about how the league isn't Yao's personal b**** by now. Well at least I haven't read anything bad about Yao out of those cities. I don't understand why sportswriters have to constantly try to remind people how bad Yao is compared to what he should have been...people hyped lebron to be the next jordan. I'm not saying lebron isn't good or anything, but he's not jordan-like. ( I realize he needs more time, but shouldn't Yao too?)
Difference is Yao is expected to be dominant and a superstar - Gasol is not. Yao was a number one pick and tauted as being the "next big thing", Gasol was not. It's funny how expectations will always frame someone's performance. It's not about numbers or anything, it's about exceeding expectations. And that's what superstars do. No excuses.
I like how you ended your post with 'no excuses'. You talked like a righteous man. Alright, back to the topic. You mentioned expectations in your post. True, Yao was a number one pick. But IIRC I saw more people think he would become the next Shawn Bradley or Larue Martin than the "next big thing" back then. At least 70% of the people either didn't believe we would draft him at number 1 or thought we would do that only because of the Chinese market. So he has actually exceeded the expectations of all these folks who were the majority at that time. What do you think about it? Oh, by the way, what were your expectations of him back then? Were you one of those who thought he would be the 'next big thing'? Has he met your expectations? I don't want to waste the site resources to search for your posts at that time. May be you can tell us.
