hotballa, you're overreacting a bit, don't you think? From what I understand, Yao's and Dream's schedules never coincided in the past. Yao had his commitments and Dream had his over the summer.
As I've analysed above, their schedules never coincided during the summer, and more importantly, this is the first time that the Dream placed the offer directly in person to Big Yao. In the past, the Dream only expressed this wish over the media. How should Big Yao react to such offer over the media? Say YES to something vague and not concrete ? What would happen if it turned out that the Dream was not serious in his offer over the media? That would make Big Yao looked stupid. Besides Big Yao was recuperating from his surgeries in the last 2 summers. He would not have been able to train with the Dream when he was still having difficulty to walk, hop and run.
I do agree that hotballa overreacted but did Hakeem ever express directly with Emeka Okafor that he wanted to work with him, did he do it through the media or not at all?
Exactly Dreams been workign with other bigs before. Why the hell would Dream have to go ask Yao to teach him? Shouldnt Yao have made the effort? Doesn't surprise me one bit though. He turned down the chance to learn from one of the best rebounders EVER in Moses Malone, who was practically on his hands and knees BEGGING for the chance to work with Yao. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/yao/1773124.html
if you read the artical, you would've known who get to pull the trigger. Actually you don't need to read it to know the answer.
I can't believe you are still arguing about this. A few people have already pointed out to you that their schedules have never coincided until, hopefully, this summer. I guess you can probably make an argument that Yao should have stayed here to make time for Dream in the past. But that guy had tons of commercial obligations in China and I have heard before that he makes more money from his endorsement deals over there than his NBA paychecks. So it's easy for you to say he should have stayed here instead of going back there to fulfill his commercial obligations. Playing for his national team is important to keep his popularity there too. So it's all about money. I know it's easy for the fans to say he should have stayed here to train because we are not the one who would stand to lose millions of dollars.
No that was a condition of being able to come to the US and play for the Rockets at all. Remember he is still a citizen of communist China. He can't just go where he wants, when he wants.
I'm sure this guy has the inside scoop that Olajuwon has offered to tutor Yao before. This is the same guy that spells Hakeem, "Akeem" 20 something years after he leaves UH. Get a grip man and don't believe everything you hear especially from this guy who got the name of the place wrong where Hakeem and Okafor worked out last year.
I can't believe you would have spilt out such rubbish about Big Yao's motive for returning to China. If you have followed my annual threads about Yao Ming's summer activities, you'll know for all these years, he had been working his @$$ off in the summers just to prepare to play for his country, in particularly the past 2 summers, when he had to recuperate and rehabilitate from his surgeries; in the past 4 summers, he played in Asian Championship (2003), Athens Olympics (2004), Asian Games (2004), Asian Championship (2005), World Championship (2006). And in all his other summer activities outside of basketball, there had been minimum commercial engagements. All his public appearances were mostly for charity-related or public-relationship related activities in his capacity as Image Spokesperson/Goodwill Ambassador for his home city Shanghai, China AIDS Prevention, WILDAIDS, China Red Cross, China Marrow Donar Program, Hope Project, Special Olympics, 2010 World Expo...... So it is not everything is for money as you said.
