was watching the news last night... either 2 or 11 and at the moment jvg was being interviewed about yao. it went something like this... reporter: do you think yao's commitment in china is making him more tired as the season progresses? jvg: (shakes his head and says with a smirk) that has got to be the biggest cop out. peja and... (other players mentioned too, but can't remember) do it year around also. so many eastern european players play year around. it has to do with yao's conditioning. you never know which yao will show up on game night... the aggressive one or... anyway... watching the game last night and seeing yao huffing and puffing four minutes into the third quarter only to have jvg sit him down... have any of you ever thought about yao overexerting himself and having major health problems? i mean the guys this tall are known for having heart problems and aren't necessarily known for having long lifespans. a lot of things pop into my head and sometimes i get fustrated when he has to come out of the game when he's tired instead of foul trouble or an unusually large lead, but then i figure that it can't be easy for him to lug around those tree-trunk like legs at such a fast pace... i mean the guy isn't slow like muresan or anything. some of the things that pop in my head are reggie lewis, andre the giant, and marfar syndrome. right now it seems that 38 minutes is his limit and even that's sorta pushing it. it would seem that team doctors would have looked into any heart problems or other similar health issues. question of the thread------> anyone else worry more underlying health issues instead of the "year around playing" excuse? it's just unbelievable seeing how quickly he as a basketball player can get tired, but then again most of them aren't 7'6". maybe i'm just paranoid. again, you hear about athletes collapsing on the court/field and the heart murmurs and marfar's and...
JVG is using a perfect rotation w/ yao MIng. Those breathers come at the right time and often, so he has strength enough for the fourths quarter.
You know I thought the same thing last night watching him. He seems to be displaying signs of major exhaustion early in the game after on sprint down court in which he looks like he is not moving.... I will say that all the rib and lower back and kidney shots he takes, I am not surprised he gets out of breath moving around the paint. We really need someone to teach him to position like Hakeem. I remember he would just set up right outside the block and not move and players would try to get around him or push him an dcould not do so...this is what Yao needs to aspire to and this requires strength, quickness and physical fitness....
I think the reason Yao generally plays better and more minutes in games on national tv is because the timeouts and breaks in general are longer, not enormously so, but enough to make a difference.
Well, JVG, you are the coach, so you better get that in order, then. OmegaSausage, all NBA players get a very thorough physical before they sign their huge contracts, and if Yao had any such heart disease or serious ailment, I would think it would have been discovered.
I am an M.D. and yes, I've been concerned about Yao's lack of stamina. I've posted the question before: has Yao had a comprehensive physical exam and diagnostic workup? There are times when I wonder whether he's anemic, or has something treatable. Maybe--and I hope--he's still a growing boy, and his strength and stamina will soon improve. It'd certainly be nice if something as simple as an iron pill would bring him around.
really? not trying to be a smartarse or anything, but what about reg lewis? okay, fine... he started playing 17 or 18 years ago... but, i vaguely remember hakeem sitting out several games because of a minor heart issue. edit: nevermind. found it... irregular heartbeat... and it was minor, but i dunno... maybe fd kahn (if i'm not mistaking...he's a doc) maybe a heart abnormalty isn't necessary for a guy as large is yao to have heart problems.
Veterans learn how to conserve energy. But Yao is not a veteran and he's awful big. Seems natural to me that he wil sometimes waste energy.
Yao needs to stop chasing the guards. He needs a summer off to get his conditioning up. The Chinese NT team coach does not know how to condition players. Rox needs to get better at perimeter defense. Even though we are tops in opponent FG percentage, we are not as good at 3 pointer percentage.
Thank you so much for this input; I posted before the season about this issue, but no one responded. There were rumors of very high blood pressure in the off-season, not confirmed. Surely, Ming gets regular work-ups. But I too think there is a physical problem responsible for his lack of stamina.
OMG. I'm sure Yao has a physical before every season. You don't spend multimillions on an athlete and not find out any medical conditions he might have. Cmon people quit trying to turn this into some kind of conspiracy, its ridiculous.
yeah... my bad, severe. my intention wasn't for this to be some kind of conspiracy issue. i know physicals are performed, which is why i posed the question if a heart abnormalty necessary for heart problems. solid, i forgot about the unconfirmed high blood pressure issue. it just seems ridiculous that he gets that tired compared to other players in the nba. i can't think of another seven footer that plays year around and that puts up with such physical abuse in the post, but still... have you seen any other nba player that gets out of breath as quickly as he does?
I've wondered the exact same thing Omega. JVG is going to look like a total arse if something serious happens to Yao as a result of overexertion. He should really see the best few heart, lung, circulatory system etc. doctors out there just to make sure there's nothing serious is afoot. Hopefully what we see is just the result of some really huge dude running around. Yao has said his stamina has always been bad.
Well, think about it, Yao has only been playing NBA ball for one and a half seasons. Before that, while it was always reported that he 'loved basketball', was by all accounts a 'gym rat', and pretty much just ate and slept hoops, and has been playing the game for several years, it should be remembered that the brand of ball he had been playing was 'genteel', at best. He has been able to compensate for his complete lack of physical preparedness for the rigors of being pounded on by 300-pound bloodthirsty millionaires by using his already considerable pure basketball talents, BUT.. he is still clearly swimming upstream against all this physical abuse he takes, and dealing with it has not approached the level of instinctive response that will allow him to sort of aerodynamically slide through all that mess without having to expend so much energy. Yao's problem right now is not physical, it's mental. So, IMO, while resting him during the offseason may help SOME, we would still see almost the same kind of exhausted fatigue from him.. it will remain the case until he learns how to avoid the pounding and control the situations, instead of them situations always being dictated to him. That's the real problem. Considering he has only been at it for a little over one full season, he has actually done remarkably well, and one can see glimpses of his slow but constant improvement. Ideally, of course, would be for him to stay away from the International ball for a few offseasons, and instead stay here and bang on all the guys at Fonde all summer long, or whatever passes for Fonde nowdays.. get someone like Moses in there, maybe team him how to be a bit meaner and give him some killer instinct.. But don't fret about his heart or anything.. everything is still just so unnatural and non-instinctive to the way he originally learned how to play.. but he is getting better. It's just gonna take a while.
That improvement has been so much faster than you guys think. The guy has been a beast. Two years ago the projection was maybe 5-10 points a game right now.
One thing that I really like to see Yao and the coach do is to ask Yao stops chasing the guards at the perimeter. It's ridiculous. If our guards get burnt, let the opposing guards shoot. I would rather have Yao inside the paint to protect penetration instead.
the air pressure is higher up there. Seriously though, Im not a doctor, but one would think his lungs are much larger than the average mans, and they work much harder than the average mans, so maybe it's not a bad idea to get the guy an oxygen mask he can use while on the bench or during timeouts. Its like when the Rockets had to go to Denver in years past and Hakeem, who was in prime condition at the time, had to huff and puff his way to another 20 and 10. Yao is more than twice the size of Hakeem though, so every game for Yao probably feels how those games in Denver felt to Hakeem. I always tried to promote the idea of rowboating for Yao since he was said to have a nice sized lake behind his house. That type of excercise may just give him Rocky Balboa like stamina. speaking of Rocky Balboa, Yao Ming may want to listen to eye of the tiger before some games to get him really pumped up. if you have the eye of the tiger, then you don't need rowboating or any of that to overcome stamina, when you have the eye of tiger, you have eternal stamina.
