yao did the right thing by not fighting back, with T-mac out, do you guys really want yao suspended as well??, i do agree yao should act tougher, but sometimes, the player must choose the hard decision for the greater welfare of the team. if t-mac wasn't injured, yao could have whooped that idiots ass to china, where he will get more whoopass by chinese fans.
I used to get picked on when I first entered high school. You know how kids can be really mean and they were...to me. Until one day some kid spit in my face. Well, I just snapped and brawled with him for about 10 minutes (it was after school) until finally a teacher pulled us apart. End result? I got one of my central incisors fractured (later required a root canal) was covered in blood and probably had a hairline fracture in my hand, from the way it hurt for the next few months. The other kid was much bigger but I broke his nose. He popped open like a can of tomato soup. But you know what? No one picked on me after that. Yao needs to man up cuz as of now, he's seen as a wimp. PS: Also got into a fight in the parking lot of a bar right after I graduated college. Skinned up my knuckles pretty bad.
I'm not opposed to Yao getting into a fist fight or anything, but the situation has to call for it. The Marbury elbow was a stockton-like cheapshot, not really something that would start a fight except if it happened to Artest. Do we even know whether that was intentional? I don't remember much about the big Z incident, but I doubt he did anything to warrant a suckerpunch. The Josh Howard incident was a hard-foul, and Yao reacted, but couldn't get up in time to do anything before being separated. You want him to shove the refs aside and go after Howard in a playoff game? I'm sure the Mavs would gladly take that trade. Would have been like when Hakeem got ejected for trying to kill Mitch Kupchak back in the '86 WCF. Yao could have pulled Chris Andersen's move of trying to get to whoever to look like he wants some, but let's be real, that's all a show, and everyone knows it. Looking at the clips from the other night, Andersen just looked like a tremendous asshat, not some tough guy. And finally, was Mason's offense worth punching someone? He was embarrassed and trying to save face, does that mean that Yao should pummel him out of principle? One of these days, some guy will really piss Yao off, and truly deserve a beating. Like when Brad Miller repeatedly hacked the hell out of Shaq, including some on the head. Then something will happen. So far, none of these 'punkings' have been severe enough to put Yao over the edge. Everybody has their own threshold, his just hasn't been crossed. Oh, and about Yao being taken out of his game, would anyone be saying that if a few of the shots he took didn't rim out in the 4th quarter? He looked pretty damn agressive to me. He continued to block shots and demand the ball. His shots just didn't fall. Let's compare Yao to Tim Duncan. Has anyone here ever seen Tim get into a fight or punch somebody? In the playoffs in 1999, KG came from behind while the spurs were in the huddle and just shoved Duncan in the back of the head. He reacted similarly to Yao in that situation, and his teammates went after KG. The incident showed that Duncan always keeps his cool and that is what gives him a mental edge over hotheads like KG.
Consider yourself lucky with your fractured tooth, fractured hand and skinned knuckles. Try it again and you might run into someone who will make you look worse.
Think about the hockey game. Some use a fight to inspire a win. Surely I don't like that and will hate it more if it happens on a basketball court. But from the last game I really had some hockey feel. What I'm still upset about: - Yao pat that punk's back, making Horward look bad (and surely he wouldn't be happy about that). - Hornets won the game and that inccident was, to me, the turning point. - Mason got no punishment at all, not from Yao, not from refs; not on the court, not off the court.
Think about Rudy T's face getting smashed in by Kermit Washington. It could have killed him. It took reconstructive surgery to fix Rudy's shattered skull. Think about the Ron Artest/Ben Wallace brawl. A small scuffle can turn into an all-out brawl, and people can get hurt. Fighting sucks, and is childish, like it or not. Yao is the bigger man for letting paltry $hit go. If he is forced to deal with some idiot's fist coming at him, then I'm sure he would defend himself, and that doesn't mean hurting the other guy in the process. The NBA isn't a pack of wild animals, and we as fans are not wild animals either.......or are we?
And that's exactly what's wrong with hockey. Dying ratings. Fights becoming criminal issues. Good grief. Some of you really need to have your heads examined. You are the very ones that condone and support the idiocy of what's happened in the recent past in little league hockey and baseball game brawls ending up with people getting killed.
I suggest we make this thread sticky so if any of our fellow rocket fans got beaten up or humiliated by someone in real life, he can come over here to tell us how tough he is to redeem his manhood. My friend who is a psychologist has confirmed that talking tough on the internet will help.
I will add myself to the group of people who agree with this post. Mason's hand was not moving nearly fast enough for it to have been him intentionally trying to hit yao. if he had wanted to punch him, he would have. People should calm down. Maybe mason should have gotten a flagrant foul or something, and AT THE VERY WORST EJECTED, but he sure as heck did not deserve to be suspended, people need to calm down
Great post. As long as Yao doesn't get rattled after a physical confrontation, I don't really care how he reacts to the provocation. The only thing that matters Like it or not, Yao considers himself as an unofficial ambassador to our country. He is very conscious that he is the face of China in the United States. He doesn't want the most popular Chinese icon to be a thug, and frankly, neither do I.
I agree on 'Wins will fix everything'. But that's exactly what I'm worrying about. That punk has proved using some violence against Yao is an affective way to WIN the game, with no cost. We can call him childish, we can call him a$$, but he was the guy who walked away with a WIN and left some crap like "Rockets with TMAC is tough to beat but there're a lot other good players out there". 'People might think that they can foul Yao hard or even punch him without punishment? Well, they will be ejected, and Yao will punish them in the FT line.' That would surely be nice. But I'll only believe it when I see it. So far, never.
Yao is A face or China but not THE face of China. But yeah I also agree he's such a nice and responsible guy that he feels like it's part of his job to present a good image of Chinese. And I appreciate that. A bit off the topic. Sorry.
Man, you just cracked me up. I got coffee all over the keyboard. And that's a new job, in a new city, damn it!
Mason is pitiful for taking a swing at Yao. Did you see the look on Yao's face afterward? It's like "He took a swing at me? Damnit, I'm Yao Ming"
