Yao Ming to retire

I wonder what this will do China's interest in the NBA.

 

Yao is old and broken. Yi Jianlian is the new hotness. Sun Yue could make another NBA bench at some point, too.

Regardless, China's interest in the NBA will be just fine. The standard of soccer there is terrible, baseball is non-existent, hockey is a niche sport and one Chinese-American lineman for the Bills will not stoke interest in the NFL.

 

Makes you wonder how many future Yaos are waiting in the wings in China?

 

Is Jianlian good enough to be the "new hotness"

 

Yao is to basketball in China what Steve Nash is to basketball in Canada. Only difference is there are about a million times more Chinese people out there.

 

He's Chinese, he's the focal point of the national team and he's starting in the NBA. Plus, there's no one coming through the Chinese system who has his game or drawing ability, so unless Yao gets bored with running the Shanghai Sharks, he's the man for the foreseeable future.

 

It's not the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame, it's the Basketball Hall of Fame. Walton had a much broader arc, including UCLA, and was in the league much longer than Yao (12 years vs. eight, essentially).

 

Walton still played beyond 30, he was a dominant player for about 10 years, spanning UCLA and the Blazers, and was in the picture for about 16 or 17. Yao still has a much shorter window, even counting international play.

 

Love Yao, but no way does he belong in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Even though he deserves credit for the wildly increased interest in the sport in China, he was more a product of an already ingrained basketball popularity there than that popularity was a product of his NBA success.

I challenge anyone to write a more awkwardly worded sentence than that. If you drop-step, shot-fake, pivot and hook, you get bonus points.

 

I remember reading once that there were over a million people in China that are over 7 feet tall.

You have to figure that eventually there will be another Yao type talent.

 

Only if "one" happened to be an idiot.

Are you kidding me? Walton was arguably the greatest collegian ever. Led UCLA to two national championships, three final fours, two undefeated seasons, an 88 game winning streak. As for Yao's international career, well I guess there's a couple 8th place finishes in the Olympics and, umm ....can someone help me out here? In no manner whatsoever does Yao's international career = Walton's college career.

And his NBA career doesn't either. Before his feet broke down, Walton was an NBA MVP and carried the Blazers on his back to the 77 NBA Championship. And, even after his feet were shattered, he came back and won a second NBA championship with the Celtics. Yao only got past the first round of the playoffs once in his entire career. He was never first team all NBA. He was never a realistic MVP candidate. He is not Bill Walton.

Yeesh, I like Yao, but this HOF talk is nonsense.

 

Yao was on his way to the Hall, in my opinion, when the injuries struck down his career. He had gotten to the point where he was pretty much unstoppable inside. I'd say he was the most unstoppable force inside post-Shaq.

If he stayed healthy, he had a chance to make teams re-evaluate how much they value dominant post play (right now, they don't value it much at all) and, as a result, make people involved in player development re-evaluate how they develop big men. I still think it's inevitable that we'll again see an era where dominant big men will be deemed essential, but Yao's decline in health and subsequent retirement put it on hold.