Then I am sure you will be surprised (suppose Yao does decide to stay in Houston). Wait a minute, for such a sure thing, should it even be called a surprise?
Yao only miss 5 games during the regular season this year, imagine if Deke was not injured, Yao wouldn't play around 40 mins in playoff. lots of people saying he is an injure prone, but compare his past record, Yao really did a good job to aviod injure this year. I dont care whether Yao gets a max contract or not, just keep him in Rox. No Yao, No champion
Especially in this recession les would do what ever it takes to keep his cash cow it would be a great BUSINESS move...
It's naive if people think NBA is pure basketball. Wake up people, NBA is a business and the ultimate goal in business is to make money... As a whole, Yao worth much more than a max contract to many NBA teams, because he could bring in much more money than whatever the max contract pays him.. If someone could benefit you at least $50 mil a year but only cost you $20 mil, would you do it? Would you even want to waste your time bargaining if you know there are at least 20 teams out there waiting to cash that $30 mil profit?...
Dont be surprised, Yao IS underrated. Do u guys think he will get the same treatment from Refs if he plays for New York or LA?
Trading Yao might be a good idea for both parties. There are a few teams out there that are better suited for Yao's skills, like Cleveland and L.A. And the rockets will be able to get decent players back too.
Yeah, u r right. Deke's ingury plus olympic games last year made yao's ingury happened again, u know that, 40MPG for a 310pound center in playoffs. Next season, a healthy Yao plus a contract year t-mac may make Rocket a real contender!
I hope he will. Tim Duncan was in a similar scenario and opted to not take a max deal so that the Spurs would be in a better cap situation. That was a few years ago, and even after he won a MVP and championship or two. Yao is very smart in both business and basketball sense. Hopefully he will follow Duncan's example.
Yao and Lebron would not only win championships but they would be a marketing juggernaut. Yao's going to get a max contract, one way or another.
For those of you saying 20+ teams will give Yao a max deal, do you really think that many teams will be $20+ million under the salary cap? There's no way in hell. A majority of the teams are going to be above the salary cap. They have enough contracts on the books already to know that. Of the teams that could be under the cap, half of them still won't have room to offer anyone a max contract. And the teams that would have the room to hand out a max deal would only have 4-6 other players under contract. And those teams would all be competing for Lebron, Wade, and Bosh not to mention Joe Johnson, Dirk, and Stoudamire. So in the end, you may only have something like 4 or 5 teams that would even be able to give Yao max money outright. Those teams would likely suck major balls and need to fill out their roster in other ways as well. It's highly unlikely they'd give Yao max money. Do you know how many all star free agents switch teams? In the last 10 years, there have been 9. It's not a common occurrence. Why? Because it's incredibly difficult to have enough cap room to sign those free agents outright. If those players leave their teams during a free agency period, it's almost always in a sign and trade deal. So in that case, if the Rockets did lose Yao in "free agency", they'd at least get something back. Yao's player option for 2010/11 would pay him $17.6 million. If he made that this year, he would 11th in the NBA on the list of highest salaries. IMO, that's more than fair. Only 8 players are making $20 million this season and of those, only 3 really deserve it. The only players that should be getting paid that much are the true elite. Kobe. Lebron. Wade.
why should he? If there were a legitimate backup in C and Yao didn't have to play 38+ minutes a game in the playoffs, Yao would have had a complete season. Yao should go to a team where the owner cares more about players and winning games than money.
