that wasn't the case during december when yao was on fire. yao is just struggling right now (boston was really his only great game). there were other games tracy missed and yao struggled also. yao's back to being the perimeter oriented yao again. even blindbury wrote about yao's inconsistency lately. Yao Ming had one of those Barack Obama voting nights in the Illinois legislature - present - but continued to search for the dominating inside game (14 points, 3-for-10, 7 rebounds, 6 turnovers) that, for the most part, has gone south since about a week before Christmas. http://blogs.chron.com/franblinebury/2009/01/who_do_you_love_rockets_98_thu.html so yao started out mediocre, picked it up for the most part of december and dominated, and now back to mediocre. hopefully april will be one of his dominant months.
do you agree that yao needs to be established offensively early and often in any given game, or not? to me that's crystal clear. when he is, we as a unit have relatively easy games; if not, we struggle. it has nothing to do if he's doing well defensively. yao's strength is in his offensive game and we need to utilize that. his defensive ability is decent, but not great. adelman, or any other coach, needs to plan the game accordingly. it is independent from yao's aggressiveness issue. don't mix these 2 issues. any player is better off when being more aggressive.
IBM- u kinda always prove my point of yao's effectiveness being based on offensive output. No matter if he's established early and often, you have to get into the game. Either by rebounding,shot blocking, setting teammates up or something. There are too many games when Yao's scoring effects every other aspect. In fact, you don't even know he's on the court. Another poster said when yao is dominant, its a close game, when Shaq is dominant, its a blowout. That's true too many times. Yao has to be AGGRESSIVE ON OFFENSE AND DEFENSE! There is more than 1 way to skin a cat.
the best way for yao to "enter a game" is by scoring in buches, and early. of course there are always more than one way to get things done, but this is the best way - both for him and the team. compared to his scoring, using rebounding, shot blocking or setting up teammates (as you said) to "enter the game" are far less effective for him and the team. this is just like for mcgrady, he is always a scorer first; even though his facilitating ability is also great. i agree that yao has problems when he lets his offensive game affect his other aspects and being not aggressive enough at times. but this is a separate issue altogether. it will be great to see yao having an 18pts 20 rebounds 4 blocks and 5 assists game, but this is not who he is. this also doesn't change the fact that he's best used for the team to win when he has a 30pts 10 rebounds game. when he scores over 20, our winning % is unbelievable. that's an overwhelming fact to prove the point i'm trying to make.
