Vince Carter was a quitter and fake-injuried and whined his way out of town. Yao Ming has honor. And Yao was light years ahead of Bryant Reeves. Reeves never had a PER better than 17.3 and never won more than 23 games. Yao Ming had a career PER of 23 and won 50+ games in 4 different seasons. They may have shared certain physical characteristics, but so do Keith Van Horn and Dirk Nowitzki. As far as Yao v. Ralph: Ralph had better overall skills but it doesn't necessarily mean he's the better player overall. An extra 60 lbs does make a difference. They are just : One is a traditional post-man and the other was more of a point forward. It's hard to compare since Ralph's career was seriously affected by injury earlier than Yao's-- Ralph's Rockets career lasted only 3.5 years-- but I don't think the early/mid 80s Rockets would have been worse with Yao+Hakeem instead of Ralph+Hakeem, but we'll never know.
Of course, this is a no brainer. Especially when you factor his race - there will be some type of pressure / expectation that Houston would do so. Regardless of that, he was a 8 time Allstar - deserved about 5. It's a lock that it will happen and it's deserved. I know he won chips there but I think Dennis rodman has his jersey retired for two teams - we are talking about a role player albeit an elite one.
Dennis Rodman won defensive player of the year TWICE he was the rebounding champ 7 times and he won 5 nba titles I wouldn't label him a 'role' player, I would label him a champion and elite player also helps he was super durable <iframe width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8VXvXDuTBpg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Detroit did. If a prime Dennis Rodman faced off against a prime Yao, who'd win the rebounding match in a 7 game series? I think Rodman would win. easily.
Mr. tinman, whatever, deserved or not, Yao's jersey will be retired in Houston. So accept it, and stop arguing. It's useless and waste of time.
I'm not trying to say if he deserves it or not, I'm trying to say that some of the reasoning that people are coming up with are wrong. No one needs to drag Calvin Murphy or Rudy T into this discussion cause that was a completely different time and era (and even city). No one needs to drop how much money and non Houston first fans he brought in cause that has nothing to do with basketball. I'm sure they retired Yao's number in the accounting books along time ago. It's up to the Rockets organization, and it's not the Miami Heat organization cause there is a rich tradition and history of players that were elite. And yes.. Yao can't outrebound Dennis Rodman, cause he in his prime can't handle Okur and Boozer.
nah, big country went against a prime shaq, hakeem, d-robinson, ewing, rick smits, mutombo, sabonis etc night in and night out and for a few years was one of the better centers in the league. he held his own against some of the all time greats could yao averaged 17-8 if he were playing in the 90s? maybe, but we'll never find out, but every night will be a nightmare for him guarding guys like robinson. can you even imagin how much a mismatch it'd be. at the same usage rate as yao, a prime big country would have no problem averaging 20-10 in today's nba. you know if you ever watched the man play.
yea but only for the money he brought in and being a decent guy off the court. never for his on court contribution. just wasn't good enough a player to warrent jersey retirement
I don't understand how anyone can say he doesn't deserve it. Even if he was a white American who was Rasheed Wallace off the court, he deserves it for his on-court contribution.
That's the problem, his on-court contribution was so limited because of his durability issues. I love the guy but we shouldn't retire the jersey, even though the organization will because of the $ he brought in.
If Yao deserves it for his "on-court contribution", then the Rockets need to retire a lot more numbers than just Yao's.
Wow you're really dumb. Here's the company ****** Reeves shares: http://www.basketball-reference.com...tat=&c5comp=gt&c6mult=1.0&c6stat=&order_by=ws I call them "non-shooting chuckers", bad players who even without being 3pt shooters managed to have a TS% below .515, all while touching the ball way too much for their pathetic skill level (usage > 20%). Oh btw, a 7 footer with a 13% rebound rate and sub 2% block rate, yeah now we know why they won 20 games every year.
Number of win shares by a Rocket Win shares, IMO, is a decent measure of player contribution over long periods of time. It's an estimate of how many wins a player is personally responsible for. You can see that Yao belongs right in there with the Rockets' legends.
Well, Vince's jersey isn't going to get retired in Toronto for more or less the same reason Lebron's won't be retired in Cleveland. It has nothing to do with their on-court production, and more with being a total douchebag towards their city. Which Yao wasn't. At all.
