Yao vs Amare for Feb Rookie of the Month

The battle for Western Conference Rookie of the Month between Yao Ming and Amare Stoudamire in February has been a close one. Here are their stats for the month in comparison:

--------------Yao-----Amare
GP(Road)--13(8)----10(4)
TeamRec---5-8-------4-6
Min/GP-----35.5------34.7
PPG--------16.5------15.5
RPG---------8.8-------10.3
APG---------2.4-------1.0
BPG---------1.5-------0.5
SPG---------0.2-------0.5
TPG---------2.0-------2.3

These are very close by any standards, and I think Yao deserves at least a share of the honor. The PPG and RPG are basically a wash when considered together, but Yao has the advantage in APG and BPG. Neither player has many steals and both turn the ball over about the same (even though Yao handles the ball significantly more than Amare does). A closer look though, also shows that Yao has put up numbers just as good, if not better, than Amare despite playing 13 games (8 on the road on 4 different trips) in 28 days (almost a game every 2 days overall), as opposed to only 10 (just 4 on the road all in 1 trip) in the month for Amare (only about a game every 3 days overall). So a case can be made for Yao winning the award outright. Because the Rookie of the Year race between these two excellent rookies is also very close, I think it'll be a real advantage to the player who wins more Rookie of the Month in their respective candidacy for ROY.

I hope Yao wins the Rookie of the Month outright, because there's been a lot of knock on Yao's lack of aggressiveness lately, and a lot of the media and other players are very vocal about their opinion that Amare is the ROY over Yao. There're probably many reasons for this apparent backlash ever since he proved everyone wrong about his ability to be a good player in the NBA, from plain ignorance to uninformed opinions to envy to racial/ethnic bias. And Amare's good play has given all of Yao's previous detractors and doubters a good excuse to resume stomping on him some more. I hope Yao's personality will eventually win over all of these doubters and detractors, though, because he really has proven to be a talented basketball player, a loyal teammate and a true gentleman. He doesn't talk trash, never complains about not getting his shots, and always admits his own shortcomings. Only time will tell what each will accomplish in their careers, and it'll be fun to see how these players develop and what people think of them in a few years. Hindsight is always 20-20, but it's foresight that makes the difference in this world. And I believe that Yao will be the better all-around player and the better ambassador for the game of basketball. I don't think Yao will be compared to Amare in a few years, because comparisons of Yao will be to players like Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabber and Olajuwon.

 

I think Kenny's ass deserved more credit than Yao's play and personality in winning Chucky over

 

T-Man and jsun, your comments bring up an interesting point. Even though Yao had 7 double-doubles out of 13 games and Amare had only 4 out of 10, Amare averaged a dub-dub but Yao didn't.

Practically, I feel that the concept of double-doubles can be useful for measuring a player's consistency, but like all statistics, can be misleading. As Mark Twain said, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics". Stats can be manipulated and shown in a manner to sway opinions one way or another. This is a good example of that. Yao supporters say their man had a higher % of dub-dubs in the month; Amare supporters say their guy averaged a dub-dub for the month.

Does 10.0 RPG really deserve that much more credit than 9.9 RPG? The stat of double-double overemphasizes this minute difference when practically, 9.9 or even just 9 RPG over a low number of games is worth just about the same as 10 RPG.

 

ROM may be meaningless to you, but it's not entirely meaningless, as the player who has won or tied for the most Rookie of the Month has won the Rookie of the Year the last 3 years (and nearly all years before that if you bother to check). In fact, more than a few Rox fans will remember that when Francis and Brand shared the ROY in 00, they each won 3 ROMs a piece.

Just because the Rockets are in a close playoff race with a few other exciting teams, it doesn't mean that Rocket fans should not spend time rooting for and celebrating the achievements of individual players. It's up to you if you choose to root only for the team's accomplishments.

 

Yao is the best free-throw shooter on the team over February. If he keeps it up, maybe Rudy should consider letting Yao shoot some Ts. He certainly doesn't seem to have problems hitting FTs in critical moments of games.