[WashPost] The Best Center Is Made in China

The Best Center Is Made in China

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/09/AR2006120901182.html

By Mike Wise
Sunday, December 10, 2006; Page E01

In New York last month to play the Knicks, Yao Ming spoke with Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the United Nations. When Jeff Van Gundy walked by, the 7-foot-6 center introduced the coach of the Houston Rockets to the diplomat.

"Jeff," Yao said, "this is the guy who's going to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear arms."


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The assembled mass broke up laughing, and the best healthy big man in the game kept unloading one-liners.

Yao Ming, the most bashful, 7-foot thing you had ever seen five years ago, now mumbles under his breath and gets the laughs -- just like Shaq.

If you were at Verizon Center last night and saw Yao suction hope out of the arena every time the Wizards got close -- scoring 23 in the fourth quarter alone, hitting every pressurized fallaway jump shot he needed including the clinching basket with 11.1 seconds left -- you were a part of the NBA zeitgeist this season. The year of Yao.

The outsourcing of the most important position in basketball is now complete.

From China has come a better, more skilled and bigger pivot than anything we have to offer at the moment. Except for postseason hardware, Yao is a finished product. Dominant, clutch, self-effacing -- "Maybe one day I'll be good," he said, smiling -- Yao is part of a healthy and rejuvenated Rockets team with real championship potential.

We could go on for hours about the death of the center in the United States, how all these 6-foot-10-and-over kids wanted to cross-over every cat who challenged them in an AAU game.

We could talk about how they lost the desire to play inside because the sneaker companies don't make commercials about low-post footwork, power dribbles and breaking your defender down by craftily sealing him away from the basket.

We could trace the NBA decline after Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson to a number of factors, including a high-octane, guard-oriented league that does not referee accomplished pivots the right way -- mostly because the officials are too worried about missing calls for Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade. They know that's what makes their bosses happy. "If he's guarded legally, Yao is going to score," Van Gundy said. That's a between-the-lines lament that his big guy is refereed wrongly, and it's a fair point.

We could denigrate American big men all day, but it takes away from what we should celebrate: the rapid development and maturity of a foreigner who has worked hard enough and dominated enough to be considered a most valuable player candidate.

I was there five years ago in Chicago when they brought Yao in for a public workout at Loyola University. Pat Riley and Don Nelson and everybody who was anybody as an NBA coach or general manager showed up that afternoon. About 500 media members made a half-moon around the court where he was working out. Yao was trotted out and shuttled around as if he were a circus act, everybody gauging his slightest movement and facial expression as a sign of whether he was qualified to play in the league: "Come see the tall Chinese man put the ball in the basket and try to convince NBA personnel that he is not soft."

Yao dumped in a plethora of jump shots from all angles that afternoon, more than any young center in recent memory had probably made in a season. I was amazed at how consistently he used the glass, banking in 20-footers like Tim Duncan. (Duncan has challenged Shaq as the greatest big man of his era, but is really a power forward playing out of position). But most people that day wanted to talk about was how Yao was gangly and slow and raw. That day someone surmised that Yao would be dunked through the rim by Shaq. I forget who.

Today, he is averaging almost 25 points and 10 rebounds per game. At a time when most big men chip paint off the rim from 15 feet away, Yao is shooting 85 percent from the free throw line. He made 11 of 12 in the final minutes last night. The emotion that his critics said he needed to show more often cost him a $1,000 fine last week. Yao went overboard, believe that?

Last month, Yao had a monster game against O'Neal and the Heat. His line of 34 points and 14 rebounds eclipsed Shaq's 15 and 10. Four days later, he ate up Ben Wallace, dropping 20 and 12 on the four-time defensive player of the year.

"Before we give him the mantle as the best center in the NBA, let's relax a little bit," Charles Barkley said afterward. I'm with Charles on this one.

You can say Yao is playing the best basketball of any big man in the world. You can't hand him the trophy yet, not until he at least competes for a championship and goes enough playoff rounds to prove his mettle at the end of a long, grueling season.

That's when big men, ruthlessly pounded on because NBA officials still judge them by their size and not their abilities, truly set themselves apart.

But he's getting close at just 26, six years after he began playing organized basketball. Why people compare Shaq and Yao, based on that fact alone, puzzles Van Gundy. "Shaq was dominant from Day 1," he said. "Yao? first game he didn't score. They come from two different backgrounds, two different starting points, but unfortunately the same expectation."

Yao was asked if he remembered that day in Chicago last night, how it felt to be on display at just 22. "Yes, I remember, I was very young and very nervous," he said in almost perfect English. "I wanted to get it over with. I just remember all the coaches and everybody and media around. "He spoke while sitting down in the locker room, a humongous man engulfing a small chair and blocking out his cubicle. His shyness from his first few years was gone. During Van Gundy's first year in Houston, he railed at his team and found a target in Yao. "See Yao?" he said to his team, looking across the locker room. "Is he an intimidating presence sitting there with his legs crossed?" Yao asked his interpreter for a Chinese translation. When it was relayed to him, he busted up laughing -- as did the Rockets' locker room.

"Humor is a good way to relax, even then I used much of it," he said.

The player whose coach took aim at his non-aggressive nature then was nowhere to be found last night. Yao Ming took over the game. He yanked it away from the Wizards the way he's yanking away the mantle from Shaquille O'Neal. Bless Dwight Howard and the rest, there's nothing any American center can do about it.