Has Yao "somewhat" recovered from his injur? By "somewhat" I mean can he spare a good 10-15 minutes off the bench. Sounds crazy? Maybe. I mean he's been off his crutches now for a while hasn't he? I know he wants to save his body for the Olympics, but would it be too much to spare a little action for the sake of your current team, who are in a one-and-done situation? But imagine the Great Wall coming off the bench. The least he could do is do a gnarly face plant on Okur or Kirilenko and take one of those guys out (literally). Maybe Yao can come in for a little bit when Okur is out (so he doesn't have to guard him). Sorry if this sounds silly, but I'm actually seriously wondering if this a possible scenario...its just that I really think the Rockets could use a true center on the road (Mutumbo ain't that, and Scola isn't exactly a pounder on the inside)
I am sure he is feeling pretty close to 100%, and a normal person would be on the bball court playing at the YMCA already.... BUT.....this is his career and they have to be uber careful.....and a normal person is not over 7 feet tall and 300 pounds.... So, I think they are being smart...his career is more important than one year in the playoffs. DD
I fantasize about this myself especially if the Rox make the WC finals. No, not going to happen, Yao said himself that it was a season ending injury.
i'm sure he can play, but he isn't going to take any risk with the biggest games of his career coming up in the Olympics and he also has to think about his career. he wants to play 5-7 more years at a high level.
Thats all I needed. Brilliant idea DD! So what, Yao gets suspended......but its not like we've playing with him for the last 2 months....plus AK gets "AK'd" Thats a good payoff to me. Oh man I'm drooling at the brilliance of that novel idea !
if thats what makes yao happy its in the best interest of the rockets to let him be ready for the olympics. otherwise yao will be conflicted and get angry and turn into the hulk. sorry i just read the hulk thread.
I guess he should be close to 100% health wise, but probably only 10% conditioning wise. He probably doesn't have the speed and stamina right now for an NBA playoff game, and could do more harm than good to our team, plus the chance of him being hurt again could be pretty big. I have been dreaming for a while that he would miraculously recover and help the rockets to the finals, but that ain't happening. If we end up playing in late May or June, then he might be able to play some minutes.
He would need some serious conditioning (playoff oriented). He probably could be healthy enough to play in the end of round 2, but his watchers (esp. China) don't want to risk him getting reinjured in case he could not play in the summer.
