Any particular reason O'Neal is better? He averages 3 more points than Yao, but had A LOT more FG attempts to get there. If Yao forces 4-5 more shots a game the way O'Neal does, his ppg stat would look just as good. As for the "don't let scrubs beat them" argument, that holds no water. EVERY player, even the best players in the history of the NBA, gets shown up by mediocre players at times. Jordan had tons of trouble with Vernon Maxwell and the Rockets back in the early 90s. Hakeem had a ton of trouble at times against scrub centers that the Supersonics had. Shaq even got owned by Cato a couple of times. That's why you look at "averages", and not just point out individual games. Sure, Yao gets beaten down by some scrubs once in a while, but which other non-Duncan player can match up against Shaq and play pretty even with him?
It's not that hard to see that those two are at the very least equal offensively, ignore a stat sheet and you know O'Neal has a very nice offensive game, same with Yao. He's better defensively though, he helps in the overrating of Ron Artest more than Ron Artest and Rick Carlisle does. Then there's the fact that he almost won MVP, I think twice already. Yeah every once in a while I guess every dog has his day, but it happens more with Yao than the other players we've mentioned. Man, you ask Vernon Maxwell if he was better than Jordan and he'd probably tell you he was, wouldn't he? Hakeem had trouble against the Sonic defense, not the Sonic's centers defense, and Cato might of showed up Shaq on a couple of plays, no big deal. He matches up with Shaq and that's great, now if he played that way against everyone else we wouldn't be having this conversation.
