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Yao had Hall of Fame talent that barely got realized. When he does eventually hit the hall of fame it will mainly be due to his various ways he has been an ambassador of the game to the international community. But he will still have jerk weeds that claim it was only because of his nationality and that he wouldn't have made it as a player or respect how he has helped the game at large outside of America.
There's one guy on this thread who doesn't like Yao. He likes the player that played on many other teams and accomplished nothing.
I think he overstated Yao's weaknesses and understated some of Yao's skills but some of his technical descriptions of them are decent. His first sentence about the overpaid boat anchor is sure to enrage YOF and asian fans was a really bad way to start his analysis. He obviously does know something about basketball. Like any player Yao had considerable weaknesses and some of his biggest strengths really was the FT shooting and the 15ft or so jumper. Too bad the poster had to throw in the unfortunate rhetoric.
Can't believe this hasn't been posted yet, but here you go Yao's rookie highlights. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/CUnnWoRWvdA?list=FLmEvX6ioIep9-hxGmxUseAw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Yao truly was a freak of nature, given his mobility at that size, along with a crazy high skill level. BTW Yao was just 22-yrs-old in the video.
It's meaningless to compare their head-to-head stats, because the Magic played Yao 1on1 most of the time, while the Rockets sent a helper when Howard started putting the ball down. Plus, Howard was, and still is not a real post player offensively, he always had trouble to score against huge guys. Yao was a very good offensive player, he could score against almost everyone during his time. But the time it took for him to establish a good position down low really killed the team's offense. When he did, there wasn't much time left on the shot clock, so the team had to force a quick shot. And then you have many teams fronting him, he was too slow to get a overhead lob to beat that. I'd say he is a slightly better version of Rick Smth.
What if? Those are the two words that come to mind when bringing up Yao. It's unfortunate that our last memory of Yao was a career ending injury which unfortunately clouds a lot of the great memories. He was the best center hands down post-prime Shaq. It was really only after his second injury that he wasn't quick enough to beat the fronting defense. You can also thank JVG for vocalizing his weakness every national broadcast. Anyways, that 08-09 season was his best in my opinion. Maybe not statistically, but as the true leader of the Rockets w/ T-Mac down, he carried us to the 2nd round. And if not for the injury, another what if, we'd have a great chance at winning the entire championship. Too bad...what if...
Yao had amazing court vision and showed it too. He loved passing too. I can't stop imagining what coulddddddd have been if it was Yao, Harden, Parsons, and Lin.... man. Not only that, buy Yao ran the court and hustled all the time.... at his height! Miss the Yao days. I wish he never got hurt, he deserved a championship.
Yao killing the Blazers in the 2009 playoffs: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtozD85NnTs[/youtube] Seriously, look at those moves. You'll never see anything like that ever again.
Two words. Fronting defense. His lack of balance and slow reaction time made it easy to deny him the ball or to neutralize him using fronting defense. When he got the ball in the post against single coverage, he was very reliable. Yao used to give Howard and Stoudamire plenty of problem. Both of them insisted on going over Yao instead of around him and Yao just stood his ground and made the most use of his size. On offense, neither was good enough to stop Yao without fronting him. Yao used to be inconsistent against the rest of the centers though. So it is unfair to judge how good Yao was based on his stats against Howard alone. Also, Howard improved to the point where you could say that you could pick him out of the two unless the two were playing against each other (to me it came down to whether you wanted to run your offense through your center or not which Yao was better at, of course not without limitations though). Honestly, to me they were both flawed centers and I have always said that if you could combine the games of Yao and Howard you would get the best player in the league (post game and passing skills of Yao + rebounding and quickness of Dwight). The weaknesses of one was the strength of the other. I am going to set aside my homer glasses for a second and call it as I saw it ever since Yao came into the league. Overall I would say Yao was very good but not dominating because you could neutralize him. His playoff runs point to this as well.
Yeah he was good.. He wasn't great. Someone who can be neutralized by a simple defensive ploy as fronting - is not great.
