Yao goes through these funks every single year. Usually when a bunch of games are clustered together over a short period of time. He'll break out of it after this road trip and be dominant again. This I have little doubt. The team will get him the ball as soon as he becomes effective again.
You can say Yao doesn't get enough touches, or whatever, but as long as the team is winning, who cares. What's the measurement of enough touch? 10? 20? or 30? The Rockets have been winning, that means the coaches and the players have been doing the right thing. If it means Yao get less touches for the team to win, then maybe be that's the way it should be. This is the worst time to bring up this subject. You might have a point if the team is struggling, but not in the face of the fact that this team has been playing well & winning, even with Yao's poor showing in the last 10+ games. No one is bigger than the team.
Yao ming doesn't 'deserve" anything. He'll get more touches when he acts like a MAN and demands them. JVG nor any other coach in the NBA would willingly deny Yao the ball if Yao asked for it. Unfortunately, Yao acts like a 7'6" vagina most of the time and does not ask for the ball and ends up running up and down the court aimlessly until being felled like some kinda sequoia by a 6'8 twizzler with legs. If Yao Ming wants to be anything more than option 4B, which he clearly is at this point, he needs to grab his teammates and threaten them with bodily harm if they don't pass him the rock. Of course he won't do this since apparently endorsing random crappy products (which people wont even buy once they figure out that Yao is starting to be just a roleplayer) is the number 2 priority on his list, with being a dominant go-to guy on the Rockets way down at number 34 or something.
I think you made a good point about the endorsements. How many endorsements do you see Tim Duncan make in a given year? Tim Duncan spends his time developing his game. I know Yao likes doing endorsements to make money, but money will come if he plays well. Yao is accepting any and all endorsements as if he is struggling for money. This is a reason why I think Yao's skills have virtually disappeared. His hook shot percentage is maybe 10%. His turnaround jumper percentage is 5%. His set shot jumper percentage is 0%. I'm not even sure Rik Smits is a fair comparison with those percentages. Ostertag sounds more reasonable.
A perfect example of good coaching, and I'm not a big fan of Van Gundy. You feed the hot hand. As Clutch so clearly pointed out, that is exactly what's happened with Sura during the games when he was hot, and feeling good. And yet some of you are complaining?? Isn't the objective to win games? Yao needs to get his sh*t together, grow a pair, and be consistent. I'm not sure what games some of you are watching, but you seem eager to blame someone, anyone, for Yao's poor production when he's struggling, which he's been doing far too much. Get over it. Yao isn't going anywhere, but the Rockets are. And it's fun to watch them again. Keep GARM Civil!! And Readable!
I will believe it when I see the ink on the contract extension. BTW, when I watched last night's game. Sura made exactly ZERO pass inside to Yao even when Yao is wide open and has the position. Yup, ZERO pass! I don't care how much energy the journeyman guard brings, he better start passing the damn rock!
I can understand Yao deferred Mobley, but if he couldn't get the ball from Sura, then it's his own problem. I believe CD and JVG would trade anyone beside Tmac to make Yao more assertive.
If Yao were assertive enough but couldn't get the ball from Sura, I am sure JVG would bench his ass. JVG probably has been waiting a long time for Yao to speak out his mind and demand the ball like a real star of the team. But that never happens. If you think we are frustrated, how about JVG? This guy is probably frustrated like hell with Yao. How many times he urged Yao to demand the ball? How many Cats do we need to trade to make Yao more assertive? Yao doesn't need to grow a pair and dunk the ball. He already dunks a lot. He need to play like a man rather than being content as a good pupil of the coach. In fact, I dont think JVG is satisfied with this pupil.
I think you are underestimating the desire to win by TMac and Sura now. They are killing themselves out there. Yao was screwing up early in the game, so everyone thought it was going to be another rerun of the Nets game with Yao. Everyone is always ready to defer to Yao at the beginning of the game. These guys are beat up, and they would rather sit back and let Yao hit some shots. Imagine what is going through TMac and Sura's minds when they see Yao effing up right at the beginning. They then have to put the burden of the game on their shoulders. After that much hard work, they'll be damned if Yao is going to screw it up for them. If the Spurs had won a close game because the Rockets kept on going to Yao in the low post to see him miss or turn the ball over, Yao would never regain the confidence of his teammates. TMac and Sura would have blamed Yao for the loss, and Yao would be isolated even more. Yao needs to get his accuracy back so his teammates can once again feel that Yao is a legitimate go-to guy. I guarantee that if Yao starts hitting hook shots and turnaround jumpers at a good clip, his teammates will pass to him.
As long as we win the game, I am happy. I don't care whether Yao is happy or not (he is not), we can trade his sorry ass for someone like Milm who grows two pairs. Yao is indeed getting less and less shots as the season goes on. But again, as long as we are winning, no one should care about it. If we can win the next 45 games with Yao averaging 3 shots/game, everyone except Yao should be happy.
For the first time in years, we have a team that is willing to pass the ball to the open, effective man w/o hesitation. We had 35 assists just a few games ago! Now if some guy cannot even hold a pass, he won't get them. Pretty simple. More than once a game, Yao simply misses a pass. On other occassions, he gets out-wrestled for the pass. It's not the rest of the team with the problem.
Why should we care?! I regard that as Yao's problem. Yao needs to confront Sura if Sura doesn't defer. It is that simple. Yao played himself into current situation by behaving as everyone's nice guy. That's what he deserves!!! If he doesn't feel happy, kick some ass both on court and off court. If he wants to be the force on the team, demand it!!! No one will give it to him volunteerly after the first 20 games. Many people think Yao has very high basketball IQ by being a good teammate sharing the ball at the right time. I started to doubt it more and more after the first game with Laker. In that game, Yao carried the team to the last second but he passed the potential-game-winning shot to JJ, who was as cold as ice in the whole game. We lost that game. Yao seems to put being a good person above winning the game. This so-call BB IQ is not good for his development and ROckets. If Yao thinks giving him more touches is better for Rockets to win, he needs to speak out, not by wasting his energy running and pretending happy. If he knows better way to get points and doesn't force his roleplayers to do so, he doesn't have a high basketball IQ and he deserves the 4th-fiddle treatment.
Yeah. I really doubt Yao's so-called high basketball IQ now. JVG said it best: Yao needs to figure it out himself. Right now he's just wasting Rox's time.
Why don't you just get over it, and get away from his back? What's your problem? He's NOT going to LA. Period. You just grab every possible or impossible way you can find to bash him not practicing? How the heck do you know? YOu are the janitor in their training facilities? If he took every endorsement he's offered, he would be on promotion every single minute even if he has 48 hours a day, not to mention playing basketball. He only took like 7 endorcement, yes they are big ones. But himself and Yao team emphasized many times that they evaluate those offers very careful, to make sure those are good products, and positive for youth, etc, of course there are time limits. I still remember that they said it would be a mistake to have wrong priority. Now, just quit being self-loving, day dreaming that you are the smartest guy in the world. TD is a great guy, just not that marketable, that's why he didn't have those heavy endorsements, not like he's practicing every single minute, that he doesn't even have time to put a damn watch on his wrist. By the way, do you know what 5% mean? 5 out of 100! or 10 out of 200! How many turnaround jumpers he made against Brad Miller alone? 5 or 10?! Yao is averaging 12 shots per game, that's 444 shots in 37 games. Even those 400 something shots are all turnaround jumpers, he also made much more than 5%. Yeah right, 10%, 5%, and 0%, it's just beyond me, how ignorant one can be. Pull your head out of the sand, think for once before you throw out those "data". There is no doubt, he's in a slump, and it's not the touch, but mentally. He's lost out there. He has to figure it out and confront with people, with the refs for bad calls, with JVG for plays, with teammates for passes, and with himself for lacking of determination and aggression. But one thing is clear, he is NOT going to LA.
I am using exaggerations when I stated the percentages. However, they are not far from the truth. I suggest you actually watch a game and not just look at the box scores. I presented the Herschel Walker scenario last season, and I still hold that scenario to be the best scenario for the Rockets in order to drastically improve the roster to make it championship caliber. The Dallas Cowboys were garbage before they sent Herschel Walker to the Vikings for a ton of players and draft picks. They were wise enough to know that Herschel Walker was worth more to someone else than he was to them. Yao's marketing value is worth ten times more than his on-court value. I am pretty sure Les Alexander will sign him to an extension though. Yao is a cash cow.
