He's reporting his private conversation with Yao. What kind of proof do you expect? And I second Easy and heech's point, you can not judge Yi's credibility by his style. Dr Q
Just for reference: Here is a Link about Yang Yi and all his articles. On that page, you can find the guys's resume and a picture he took with Glide in Denvor. He even left his email address there.
I think that Jeff's point addresses this. By journalistic standards if you can't find any corraborating evidence you don't print the story. That's what he was saying makes Yi's stories less credible. If Yao said something worthy of print in an off the record conversation, Yi should ask Yao to get those comments on the record. That's part of journalism.
I mean we have no physical evidence to either prove or disprove if Yi's telling the truth. But the fact Yao never disbute Yi's report give him enough credibility, I think.
When he talks about what he thinks about the NBA or the Rockets, yes, I equate him with people like Ford and Vescey. They just give their opinions and you are free to take whatever you want. No difference from what we read from this bbs. (OK, I have to say we know better about the Rockets than those guys.) But when he talks about what Yao tells him about Yao's view of things, I think he doesn't make all that stuff up. He might not quote Yao verbatim, but I do not doubt that he captures the drift. Otherwise, if he just put his own thoughts in Yao's mouth, Yao would be very stupid still treating him as a friend in public. And I don't think Yao is that stupid.
Part of it is the level of relevance and part of it is how much is reported here. Look, journalists everywhere want a scoop. If they honestly thought this guy was running legit stories and some of the things he said made it out that Yao didn't like teammates, was frustrated with coaches, etc, don't you think that American journalists would be all over that? I mean, if even a RUMOR of Francis being dissatisfied with his coach or teammates is out there, every damn reporter from here to Achorage, Alaska is reporting it. The fact is that Yi is simply not considered a credible source of information. Maybe what he is saying reflect direct quotes from Yao. Maybe they are his versions of the quotes. Maybe he made them up. We don't know and that's the point. Until someone is able to corraborate that everything he is saying is legit, we cannot simply accept it as truth any more than we would accept Vescey or Ford saying it. That's what credibility is all about.
actually it's very nice of you to show some professional thing here. good to know those standards. But for yangyi , I personally thought it's better to share his articles happily and not too seriously. And another problem is translation. It's difficult to translate the total meaning. Sometimes even the same (verbatism) setence has very different meaning in different language (and culture).
I don't speak Chinese, so I cannot read the original versions of what Yang Yi reports. But from what has been translated here, he does in no way sound like a worse or better journalist or columnist than Peter Vecsey, David Aldridge, Chad Ford, Charley Rosen. It just seems surprising to us sometimes how much out of private conversations he purports to report, but we cannot say for sure if it is true or untrue, which is just the same with a lot of what the aforementioned guys write. That is why I was a little surprised that Jeff seemed a lot more critical of Yang Yi's stuff than of that coming from Aldridge, Ford, or similar guys. Maybe it just seemed that way. The fact that they recently took a picture together AFTER all the reports Yang Yi has written and that Yao Ming has never denied any of that stuff being true, plus the fact that Yao Ming sometimes makes surprisingly open statements on his own website, plus some of his quotes in English like when he said Shaq is a mountain in his way he wants to overcome or something like that - all that together does seem to make it a little more probable that the conversations actually did take place in a similar fashion as Yang Yi reports them. Therefore, I sometimes find it interesting to hear about them.
Can someone who frequents yaomings official site, just ask yaoming how true yangyi quotes are...that would settle the issue
I am a Chinese, I trust this Yang Yi Guy. It may be difficult for your American or ABC to believe him because this Yao is much diffence to what you know from your main stream media. I personally believe that those message from this guy's article is a ture intension by Yao to tell the Chinese public he is the leader of Rockets, supported by the organiszation and he has great confidence to lead the Rockets to Playoff and championship.
I think one thing that iscoming in the way of us reaching a understanding is this one simple thing.. alot of you are assuming that YY is everything to Yao that he claims. we have never seen proof of that. alot of you assume that just becasue he claims to talk to Yao all the time...that it must be true. How do we know for a fact that he is everything he claims? show me proof written by someone other than YY...preferrably Yao...and I will believe it...but until then...I side with JEff on this guy. btw SJC....is there any way of dating that pic? Yao meets with m\hundreds of people over the lasttwo years...how do we know that was a intimate dinner, and not some occasion that he got to get a pic with Yao?
Could be...I have no idea...I just assumed that someone took it from some newspaper article or something, but I really don't know.
One thing to note: I very much enjoy reading what he has to say. I only believe about half of it, but I enjoy reading it nevertheless. It is entertaining. I just don't think it is 100% accurate. And, I agree that he isn't that much different from Vescey or Ford or whomever. But, with them we ALL think that most of the time they are full of crap. With Yi, there seem to be an awful lot of people on this BBS who treat his words as the gospel truth. That's why I said what I did.
Culture barrier. And another good reason is that will leave room for the Francis to be the hero of Rockets, at least to the American community.
