I would be willing to bet the ratings probably give more weight to athletic ratings than actual skill ratings. If the overall rating is some sort of simple average of all the ratings and there are more categories for athletic ratings, than it's easy to see how this could happen. I'm sure the player's actual performance in the game is based on the individual categories and NOT the overall score. That would explain how Dwight Howard is rated significantly higher than Yao because part of Yao's overall rating is going to be made up of injury rating and jumping ability - both of which are categories that Yao would rate lowly in and possibly skew his overall rating although they clearly don't impact how good he is on the floor when he is playing. I'm sure it's not worth the developer's time to develop some sort of intricate ratings system that truly reflects accurate overall player value in some Hollinger/Morey kind of way.
