- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The stress fracture in Yao Ming’s ankle extends his six-year streak of season ending injuries, with the harsh realisation that even if he is able to continue his career, he will be a poor facsimile of the dominant big man he once was.
While Yao will not be the first athlete to have his career derailed by injury, what makes his case a little more unique – almost a byword for the life of a charming and humble 7’6” professional athlete – is what seemed to derail his career was the quest for improvement and his unwillingness to accept time away from the game.
In the early years, Yao was roundly criticised for being too passive to be an MVP calibre player. We were at the tail-end of the Shaq era, and centres were expected to be physical beasts that dunked on powerless forwards, bowled over those daring to take the charge, and get the points around the rim.
Meanwhile, Yao had instead used his height in a different manner to the 7’0” American pit-bulls which roamed the paint in the NBA.
Already standing at 7’6”, Yao’s rationalisation was that he didn’t need to be close to the basket as his mid-range game was near unblockable.
By his third season, his per game averages were already impressive, but a deeper look at the advanced stats showed that Yao’s approach to apply his superior shooting and passing touch had him firmly in the elite of the NBA, with the fourth best true shooting percentage in the league, seventh best defensive rating, and the seventh best “win shares” per 48 minutes.
But the criticism of his game continued, so after playing 244 of his team’s first 246 NBA games, Yao did what so many of his contemporaries never considered during their off seasons. Yao went away and changed his game.
Over the coming years Yao would attack the basket more and seek out contact on both ends of the floor. It was a decision that turned him from merely elite to at times the best player on the hardwood, as his size punished his opponents physically, and his shooting guard free-throw percentage rattled the scoreboards.
However, with every attempt to punish his smaller opponents came another moment of risk for the large athlete, and another sudden collision for bones carrying 310 pounds.
And so the injuries came.
First was a likely unavoidable freak bone disease, but from there a broken foot, then a knee injury, then his first stress fracture in his foot, and so on and so forth.
Of course it wasn’t just the drawing contact and awkward landing in a crowded NBA key that contributed to Yao’s demise, it was the unrealistic expectations by both China and the NBA that Yao should be available to play basketball all year round.
Listen to any NBA source regarding the matter and the American view is clearly China was selfish and tyrannical – forcing a player to play for his country, whilst the best US athletes refused to play for theirs, was unjust.
Of course, the NBA paid his bills, so their expectations that he be available to play from at least November to April were reasonable and fair.
It never occurred to the NBA, who had agreed to the requirement to play for the national team at the outset, to look after their investment in the most commercially important player since Michael Jordan. Instead they too selfishly asked him to push forward until he broke.
Build your own ultimate team! Pick your key players and take a shot at big cash prizes every day with Draftstars. For great odds on NBA games every day head on over to PlayUp. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.