i don't think anyone's every going to accuse me of being a YOF, but i think yao is clearly better than miller. it's not a big difference, but it's clear. brad miller is a very nice player who puts up very nice stats (15.8/9.2/3.8), even comparable to yao's, but he is not near the presence yao is. defensively i don't think it's close. yao gets 1.8 versus 1.1 bpg and keeps a lot of other people from ever driving (even if he gets dunked on a lot, you can just see guards not wanna go inside just b/c they know if nothing else the shot will be a lot tougher). offensively, he is the focus of a defense if there's even a chance we're trying to get him the ball. miller benefits from having lots of other options on his team that allow him many open jumpers. miller is great for a system like that due to his jumper, but he's just not in yao's league as far as impacting a game, imo. yao is the west's starting center for the foreseeable future unless someone comes along we don't know about yet.
Yeah I would love to see Boykins posting up AI in the paint. Perhaps we can play Yao and Shaq at the 1. Lets see how well Yao throws the entry pass into Boykins.
We have this debate every year and until Yao starts putting up Hakeem like numbers we'll probably continue to have this debate. I'm curious does anyone know if the coaches have ever voted on whether Yao should be on?
Well said!! Although, with Stoudemire playing centre, it is not "clear" that Yao is the best centre in the West "by far" (I know that the ballot listed him as a PF etc). You could at least make a semi-reasonable argument that Yao shouldn't be in the All-Star game (just like Steve shouldn't have been last year) - but you could probably make that same argument about Grant Hill (why is he never mentioned as a luck all-star?) - when you give fans the vote they will choose the most popular players, and there's not a thing the media can do about it!! Most popular players by position are all-stars, end of story!
I just really want to NBA stop the internet vote and just count the vote from the arena. So no one will say yao get 1.3 billion vote from somewhere. we should know this: In china, maybe less than 1/100 familys have computers. and this is in the city. I don't konw how many will vote for NBA. I remember last year, yao got more vote than shaq just in US. It's fans decision, then who got more, who deserve it.
if Amare is such a great center, why are the Suns looking for a starting center? Maybe because he's actually a forward? If we matched up TMac against the opposing team's center every night, he would still outscore his counterpart by a lot and probably get 20+/7/5 That doesn't mean he'd be the best center in the West.
Well whatever his faults, Yao is definitely a star, in multiple senses, both on and off the court. Brad Miller is not. Przybilla gets a few blocks against Yao, which fires up his confidence after years of mediocrity, and all of a sudden goes on a monster rampage and plays like an all star, for a game or so at least. I cannot imagine that blocking Brad would have the same effect. The journalists are really just doing their job - making a story. Which is that the star centre in the west is not playing quite as well as he/we/they would like.
Well one 1 out 100 families in a population of 1.2 Billion is still a lot and you forget people can vote multiple times.
Can we put to bed this notion that Yao gets all or most of his votes via internet voting. It's just not true. Check this quote for last year's all star voting: http://www.nba.com/allstar2004/allstar_game/starter_040129.html Chinese voters are not the reason that Yao dominated all-star voting. He's just a very popular player, and his opposition isn't. Period.
