In today's fast paced, three point shooting, perimeter oriented NBA, it would seem like slow dominant post players like Yao would not fit. The modern great centers are quick, stretch 5s that shoot jumpers all the way out to the three point line. It makes me wonder if Yao Ming would be effective if he was drafted today instead of 16 years ago. Opinions?
Yes he would useful and yes he would still be a max salary player in the league if Ryan Anderson's of the world can make $20.4m next year. Yao Ming would shoot 3s better than any big man we have currently. He also would not have to pump fake like how Ryan Anderson would.
He'd have to play less minutes but yes he could manage considering he was mostly a finesse player anyways.
He's Brook Lopez on his (Brook's) best days. I hope I don't get flamed for that. I'm trying to pay a compliment.
Define “effective”. He would not be a featured player on a great team. His inability to defend outside the paint would turn him into a defensive liability against most teams. And offenses centered around post ups are not good enough. People saying he’d be a great outside shooter — based on what? He hit 2 out of 10 3 pointers in his entire career. He was mediocre on long twos as well.
Without the defensive mobility, outside shooting, passing ability, and ball-handling facility. If you manage to get him a clean look around the basket, however, he’s a great option.
Yao would probably be better today than he actually was in terms of efficiency. Not hating on JVG cause he was old school but he shouldn't have turned Yao into a traditional low post player. Yao had shooting touch and would've been a great P&R or P&P player in today's more guard dominated style. I can also see him doing well as a high post player. If Yao had been lighter and didn't have to bang in the post all the time, he might've had less injury troubles throughout his career. He also wouldn't have so many crappy turnovers due to everyone force feeding him the ball all the time. I can imagine D'Antoni finding more effective ways to get him the ball in better positions to get a good shot. I mean Yao could shoot incredibly well. He had a mid-range game that even Morey would have no trouble with him shooting. On defense Yao wouldn't be terrible in a more switching system given his BBIQ, although he'd still have trouble with shooting bigs like he did with Okur in those Jazz series. He's always been good at positional defense and lack of blocks/rebounding stats that people killed him over during his playing days, are less of an issue with today's analytics. Pace is probably the biggest issue so he may be more of a 25-30mpg player. But given his injury troubles, that's probably a good thing anyway.
If Yao never had foot injuries, China Government forcing him to play during the offseason every year, Yao never had a real offseason to relax his Feet, Body. Jeff Van Gundy forcing him to be Low Post Everytime getting hacked, scratched, bruised down low. If Mike DAntoni had Yao More Midrange Shots and 3 pointers some low post touches. Yao still would be playing today with Harden and Chris Paul.
Yao's game might be relegated to something like LaMarcus Aldridge, in today's NBA. And that's a compliment to Yao. Dude would be lethal from the post, whether it's facing you up or backing you down.
Im not sure. I’m guessing that, defensively, he’d drop back during pick and rolls. Golden State would murder him if that’s the case.