i'd pay money to see shawn bradley do that. that definitely is not easy. while he is using his lumbar strength, similar to a deadlift, his arms are not locked and he is not grasping a bar with a closed grip. hes holding a ball and his arms tight to his chest. i would say its pretty impressive for yao.
He's straightening his back up with Ariza holding on. Given Ariza's size yes it does take strength but Yao is huge too and given Yao's size I don't think this was some amazing feat. Plus he pulls Ariza up so they are basically chest to chest. If he had picked up Ariza and the ball over his head now that would be amazing.
did you actually type this? is this actually the words that were in your head before you started to type? dont even know really where to start pointing out the misconceptions in your statements they're so wack... kind of sounds like you heard something about leverage once but it go so terribly muddled in your head. leverage has nothing to do with yao lifting ariza since yao's body is not a fulcrum but a moving part itself. and leverage actually works IN REVERSE even than you think. for a long dude like yao it's actually much HARDER to perform actions like doing a barbel curl or a bench press. basically everything you wrote is not only wrong but actually lol... like a 5 year old kid saying rain is God's tears or some **** yao is STRONG. yao is one of the strongest dudes in the NBA. seeing articles with him bench pressing or w/e actually vastly underestimates yao's strength. in terms of APPLICABLE strength (moving ppl around, inflicting bodily hard, lifting ppl etc) Yao has huge advantages that only make him stronger than him pushing weights in the weightroom would indicate. he's got a HUGE base (lower body strength > upper body in any sort of fight) plus he has a huge mass. you could take a dude who lifts the identical amount of weight in the weightroom and due to yao's size and distribution yao would toss him around on the court or in a fight if it came to it gentle. giant.
ya, only if yao does that, it would be amazing. lifting a guy over your head on a basketball game. wow, just by thinking of it, wow... wut would be more amazing is if Yao could lift Ariza (o, the ball, and the ball of course) over his head and dance ballet, while the other team's players were all attackng him (o ya, throw in a couple of refs too). And it ended up all the attackers were taken down Jackie Chan style by Yao when the song ended. Now that is amazing.
Maybe leverage wasn't the right term but take a strong little guy like Nate Robinson. If he ties the ball up with Ariza while they are both standing up straight, he won't be able to lift Ariza. He would have to push upward to do that and wouldn't be able use his midsection and lower body as much. On the other hand, if Ariza is on the ground while Robinson is crouched over him, he could lift him. Yao's height was a big factor in his ability to lift Ariza a few inches of the ground. I don't think it takes as much strength as some people think to do that. When I said leverage, I meant Yao's midsection would act as a lever since he is lifting upward as opposed to what would happen in the Robinson situation described above. Even if it wasn't the right term, my point remains the same. Yao's height advantage over Ariza made that look more impressive than it actually was.
