yao will become the best center in the league in the next 3 years. shaq, duncan, kg...all of them are older than yao. shaq is already past his prime, and the other two are in thier prime right now. in a few years they will pass thier prime and yao will be dominant. the only player that will be able to compete against yao is amare, even though neither will be able to guard eachother. trading yao is trading the future.
Rudy T and I both think the issues with Rockets right now is injury. Definitely not Yao. We're both intelligent and rational Rockets fans.
I think Yao becoming dominant or not does not depend on those other guys. Think of it this way, if all those guys were out of the league right now, would it affect how Yao has played this season? As long as there are guys like Boris Diaw in the league, Yao will never become dominant.
You kind of disregard the nature of the league. You're looking at who is going to be past their prime, but not who is going to be approaching theirs. Yes, in a few years Shaq should be retired and Duncan and KG will be in their early 30's, but what about the young guys coming up? What about guys who aren't in the league right now who may have an immediate impact. Both Shaq and Duncan were dominant players in the NBA from their first game in the league. I'd love to see Yao become the most dominant player in the league. I don't think it'll ever happen, but I'd sure love to see it. But basically, I'm saying that you can't argue that he'll be that player by default because (there won't be anyone else!) because there will be. Some of those guys may be in the league right now. Amare Stoudamire, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Charlie Villanueva - all of those guys may or may not develop into dominant forces. (though I suppose Amare is pretty dominant now)
Uh.............any of them. Dirk, Brand, Garnett, Duncan, Jamison, Jermaine O'Neal, Amare' to name a few. The problem with your argument is that you're saying that Yao is a 20/10 guy. He's not, nor will he ever be. 18.25pts and 8.8 reb is not 20/10 last time I checked. Yao's soft. Yao's weak. I'm tired of the excuses as to why he's not better than he is. In years to come, the fact that we gave this dude MAX money will affect our ability to get other quality players. The Rox are over paying this giant cotton ball so Les can sell jerseys in China. There's 15 or more guys that can avg. 18/8 in the NBA. At this point, I'd rather watch any of them play, rather than watch Yao stumbling around the court, missing layups, dropping passes, fumbling the ball out of bounds and falling down.
Now that is a bold prediction. I will say that he will get his 20/10 in his prime, for 1 or 2 years, no more and no less.
The problem with that line of thinking is that you don't know what the going rate of a quality big man is these days. Just taking a look at the big men whose numbers are most similar to Yao's. Troy Murphy, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Pau Gasol, Zach Randolph. The average salary paid to these players? 12.33 million/year. It's not about teams being stupid and offering ridiculous contracts. It's about economics. That's the price of a borderline all-star big man in today's NBA. Yao is set to average $15 million starting next year. For argument's sake, let's say we did indeed overpay Yao by 2.67 million a year. What would we do with that extra money otherwise? First of all, it doesn't put us under the cap so it's not like we can sign another player. Second of all, even if it did put us under the cap, what caliber player are you expecting to sign with only 2.66 million a year?
If Yao needed to avg 20/10, he would. Right now, that is only an option. I love Yao, but he doesn't have that drive to go beyond the pain and take it to the next level. But to trade him because of that deficiency would ignore the double teams and opposing teams changing their defences just to contain him.
Not saying that we could sign a quality player for 2.66 million. I'm more implying that the 2.66 million could make the difference in say.......missing out on a good FA by a few million that we don't have because we've overpaid Yao. I do, however, understand what you're saying. I've been frustrated for the past 3+ years with Yao. I didn't think it was a good idea to draft him on draft day, and I still think they made a mistake. Time will tell. I honestly hope I'm dead wrong. I just don't like his game at all. I put my beloved Rockets team before any player.
If we lost Yao it wouldn't hurt this team all that much if we got another decent big man for him that could average 15/8 somewhere around there. Its not like Yao is this dominant force that carries the rockets the way dream did, lol.
I think T-Mac would agree with Rudy T. Yao takes a lot of pressure off T-Mac. The pick and roll is one weapon. Yao working in the post while T-Mac standing there resting is another advantage. T-Mac enjoys playing with Yao. If we are to trade Yao, let's get a superstar in return. Otherwise it's a waste of Yao.
