# Has to be done: Yao Ming - HOF?



## Tragedy (Dec 9, 2002)

HOF Career?

I say yes. His career may be cut short due to injury, but he's done a lot for the game in China, and has been an Ambassador of the NBA to China.

What say you?


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## Dre (Jun 20, 2003)

That's not that far off from saying Manute Bol should be in there. He worked himself to death for Sudan...

And on the court he's 14th in all-time blocks and first in BPG and Blocks per 48. He was an ambassador for the NBA to Africa.

And noone would part their fingers to make that thread.

Yao's not really close. 

He only had 4 years of what one would consider HOF production, only one of which he played past 60 games.

No doubt in my mind if he was completely healthy he'd be a shoo-in, but his body of work is just too small.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

no


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## seifer0406 (Jun 8, 2003)

Considering he brought in at least 500 million more fans for the NBA he should be in the HOF. I don't think anyone has done more to help the sport of basketball to reach more people than Yao since MJ.

Career wise he has had a disappointing career but he's done so much more off the court that he should get the recognition. Frankly it would look bad for the NBA if they don't do something to acknowledge what he has done for them.


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## Dre (Jun 20, 2003)

Well if we're giving merit awards like that then let's not ever have 11 page discussions about Reggie Miller again please.


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## seifer0406 (Jun 8, 2003)

Well I don't think anyone expected this discussion to focus on Yao's career numbers. You're not going to find one person that would think his numbers thus far are HOF worthy especially with all the injuries. If we're going to talk numbers you'll only have a 2 letter thread with the first letter being N.

I would bet anything that he makes it in though. Maybe not first ballot but a definite 2nd time around for sure.


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## Ballscientist (Nov 11, 2002)

Let's say nba has 1,000 million fans, Yao bring 600 million - 60%.


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## OneBadLT123 (Oct 4, 2005)

I dont think what he brought to the NBA in terms of exposure and audience can really offset how incredibly short his prime was.

So no, I dont think Yao is a HOF candidate. Another example of this would be Ralph Sampson, and he never sniffed the hall.


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## Floods (Oct 25, 2005)

lol what


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## Dre (Jun 20, 2003)

Is there a way to give him some kind of induction under a community serviceish pretense while ignoring his actual in-uniform situation?


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

He could go in as a "contributor" but I don't know if they realy differentiate between players, coaches, contributors and so on when they induct. So if he was inducted, they'd have to really go out of their way to distinguish that it was not his playing career, which would be insulting to Yao. Yet putting him in there as a player would be insulting to players who have had and will have had better careers. 

I think you just have to leave him out altogether.


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

Yao isn't anywhere close to being a HOFer. People hype him up because he's 7'6 but has never been all that good. He's slow and not very physical. Totally overhyped player. He's not even the best of his draft class. Both Boozer and Amare have been better players in the NBA than Yao has.


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## Dre (Jun 20, 2003)

This is about as useful as supporting Oden in here but the little bit of time Yao actually had it together the Rockets wouldn't even have traded Boozer and Amare for him, and it has nothing to do with marketing or that BS. He was that good, just couldn't stay healthy. 

There's no maybes about his ability.


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## GNG (Aug 17, 2002)

I appreciated him more the last few years than I did at the start. He's a completely unique player in NBA history but I wouldn't put him in the HOF.


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## futuristxen (Jun 26, 2003)

Is Zydrunas Ilgauskas a HOF? He's an ambassador to Lithuania afterall. 

I like Yao, but I like Vlade Divac too. There's no way he's a HOF. His career was too short, and he didn't do enough in it.


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## Dre (Jun 20, 2003)

Talk to me when Lithuania votes Z in as an all-star starter year in and year out. I wouldn't be surprised to see Yao retire this year and still lead Western centers off write-in votes next year. 

You can't underplay how untapped China was before he showed up, and how it's probably the second most important country to the league now.


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## seifer0406 (Jun 8, 2003)

futuristxen said:


> Is Zydrunas Ilgauskas a HOF? He's an ambassador to Lithuania afterall.
> 
> I like Yao, but I like Vlade Divac too. There's no way he's a HOF. His career was too short, and he didn't do enough in it.


If every Chinese person takes a dump and mail it to Lithuania, there would be no more Lithuania. You can't compare the 2 because of the population.

The type of exposure that Yao Ming represents is unmatched and there might never be another person that can bring in as many fans as Yao brought in in the future.


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## Dre (Jun 20, 2003)

*Won't be


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## HKF (Dec 10, 2002)

It's the basketball HOF and since he's not from this country he has a chance. However, if it were me, I would not vote him in. Great person, player, but wasn't great long enough for me. Never really did much in the playoffs either.


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## edabomb (Feb 12, 2005)

If he'd won a chip he'd be a lock.

I personally don't see him as having had an HOF career at this point. Plenty of guys with better careers have missed.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Yao Ming was not a Hall of Fame level player even when he was healthy.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

in answer to the original post? no

and you know who should be way before him? Sabonis


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## Seanzie (Jun 9, 2003)

Yao was a great guy, an ambassador to the league, and was a top 2 C in the league for three and a half years. But that doesn't make him a Hall of Famer. It's not like people are going to forget about Yao Ming because he's not in the HoF. He just doesn't have a Hall of Fame resume. It would be a slap in the face to other HoFers and non-HoF players with better careers.

He has his legacy, and I think we'll see the residual effects through influxes of Asian talent in the future as the young generation who watched Yao grow up.


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## Brutus (Dec 15, 2009)

Theres no way hes not getting in. He brought the NBA to Asia, which is the biggest market in the world and something the NFL and NHL still dream about. Somone comparing Big Z and Divac to Yao just because they brought NBA exposure to their countries is the most retarded thing ive ever read But im not gonna argue about this, the fact is that hes getting in, he is the most famous basketball player in the world.


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## Ron (May 8, 2002)

Not HOF material.

If injuries had not been such a problem, and he had a full career, I would say yes, because he was (in my estimation) a special player.

But he just wasn't around long enough and didn't do enough for the HOF.


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## Ron (May 8, 2002)

Brutus said:


> Theres no way hes not getting in. He brought the NBA to Asia, which is the biggest market in the world and something the NFL and NHL still dream about. Somone comparing Big Z and Divac to Yao just because they brought NBA exposure to their countries is the most retarded thing ive ever read But im not gonna argue about this, the fact is that hes getting in, he is the most famous basketball player in the world.


That's political and has nothing to do with the HOF.

HOF is for what he did as a player, not as an ambassador to the game.


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## Dre (Jun 20, 2003)

I find it hard not to believe I won't see Yao on that stage 10 years from now with them playing a clip about him bringing the NBA to China...it's going to happen. Maybe they'll be cute and add him in with a Team China or something, but his contribution in that regard will be acknowledged.

Should it? I don't know but it will.


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## seifer0406 (Jun 8, 2003)

Ron said:


> That's political and has nothing to do with the HOF.
> 
> HOF is for what he did as a player, not as an ambassador to the game.


If Dennis Rodman isn't in the HOF because of non-basketball related reasons Yao will be in the HOF because of non-basketball related reasons. I always felt that HOF is more than what the player did on the court. Whether I agree with it or not it is what it is.

I'm pretty sure Yao will be in the HOF as either a 1st or 2nd ballot. Someone mentioned that by having him in the HOF it may be insulting to other HOFamers but at the same time you have to think of the millions of people that the HOF may offend by ignoring Yao.

Also imagine the type of media attention the HOF will get globally at Yao's HOF induction. It will easily the most attention that the HOF have ever gotten and I just can't imagine them turning that down.


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## Floods (Oct 25, 2005)

Ron said:


> That's political and has nothing to do with the HOF.
> 
> HOF is for what he did as a player, not as an ambassador to the game.


That's what it should be. If Yao got in, there would be no reason to take the HOF seriously anymore (if there is already). He played less than 10 years, put up some pretty numbers, and never came close to winning despite an ample roster around him. Those are the facts. Did the team have serious injury issues? Yes. But if we're going to enshrine a guy for playing basketball, we should at least stick to facts and not conjecture.

But this extra-curricular crap like 'ambassador to the game' and 'bought the NBA to asia' crap needs to stop. Come the **** on.


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## Gx (May 24, 2006)

Ron said:


> That's political and has nothing to do with the HOF.
> 
> HOF is for what he did as a player, not as an ambassador to the game.


The HoF has always been political and about how voters view a player not just as a player, but outside of the game. Just because you guys want to ignore off the court stuff, doesn't mean voters will. I think he'll get in, I'd bet on it.


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## Diable (Apr 26, 2005)

The Hall of Fame has different standards for International Players than it does for NBA players. As an NBA player Yao doesn't cut it, but neither does Manu Ginobili. However Manu's International career will get him into the Hall of Fame. It's really hard to say that definitively about Yao because noone would be good enough to make up for China's dearth of backcourt talent. He obviously made China relevant, but that doesn't seem comparable to the sort of resume guys like Manu have amassed.


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

It's a basketball hall of fame, not a pro hall of fame, nor an nba hall of fame. As a basketball player, absolutely. As an nba player, marginally.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Dre™ said:


> That's not that far off from saying Manute Bol should be in there. He worked himself to death for Sudan...


that's not even close to being the same thing.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Hyperion said:


> Yao isn't anywhere close to being a HOFer. People hype him up because he's 7'6 but has never been all that good. He's slow and not very physical. Totally overhyped player. He's not even the best of his draft class. Both Boozer and Amare have been better players in the NBA than Yao has.


that's ridiculous.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that yao ming will be in the hall of fame. and while it can be questioned whether or not he deserves it based on his nba career, i don't think it can be questioned with his overall impact on the nba and basketball in china.

and the only thing holding him back with his nba career is the injuries. when healthy, he played at a level high enough to be a hall of fame player. saying yao's play when he was healthy wasn't hall of fame worthy is like saying that a guy like patrick ewing's play wasn't hall of fame worthy either.


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

It's ironic and a tad unfortunate that his amazing commitment to the national team in large part undermined his nba career. 

He never learned to say 'no,' and never gave himself the chance to heal during offseasons and therefore lost the opportunity to have the extra-ordinary nba career that Yao and his fans so richly deserved. 





rocketeer said:


> there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that yao ming will be in the hall of fame. and while it can be questioned whether or not he deserves it based on his nba career, i don't think it can be questioned with his overall impact on the nba and basketball in china.
> 
> and the only thing holding him back with his nba career is the injuries. when healthy, he played at a level high enough to be a hall of fame player. saying yao's play when he was healthy wasn't hall of fame worthy is like saying that a guy like patrick ewing's play wasn't hall of fame worthy either.


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## jayk009 (Aug 6, 2003)

If Bill Walton can make it to the HOF with 3 good seasons then why can't Yao Ming?


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## R-Star (Jun 13, 2002)

Dre™ said:


> Well if we're giving merit awards like that then let's not ever have 11 page discussions about Reggie Miller again please.


I came in here to read about Yao, and now you're starting a fight with me?

I'll punch your keyboard out of your god damn hands.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

I don't know whether Yao will get in or even whether he deserves to. But if he does, the underlying reason wouldn't just be that he was the first successful Chinese player, but that he has been so well-liked and respected. Merely being from China wouldn't have won Yao (and NBA basketball) this many fans this quickly if he hadn't been so marketable, charitable, loved by teammates and coaches, and committed to his national team.

And while no doubt he struggled to stay healthy, it's not like we don't have enough of a sample size to determine whether he was a great player. His prime lasted 240 games. People are forgetting the guy averaged an efficient 25/10 while drawing Shaq-level defensive attention.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

jayisthebest88 said:


> If Bill Walton can make it to the HOF with 3 good seasons then why can't Yao Ming?


because given the way the Hall works Walton probably would have made it just based on having arguably the greatest individual college career ever?

that said - and its something I didnt think about in my previous post - you have to take Yao's international play for team China into account so Im changing my 'no' to a 'maybe'


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## Brutus (Dec 15, 2009)

Yao Ming is the most famous basketball player in history only behind Michael Jordan, hes making the HOF.


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## Lynx (Mar 6, 2004)

jayisthebest88 said:


> If Bill Walton can make it to the HOF with 3 good seasons then why can't Yao Ming?


Big Red-Head led Blazers to their only 'chip in 1977.


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

Do you guys even know what type of people make the Hall of Fame?

http://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/tag/texas-western



> Playing with confidence, determination, and intensity, Texas Western made history on March 19, 1966 when the Miners became the *first team in history to win the NCAA championship with five African-American players in the starting lineup*. By beating an all-white Kentucky squad in the title game, 72-65, the Miners contributed to a sea change in intercollegiate athletics. Regarded by many as a key turning point in the civil rights movement in general and in the integration of college athletics in particular, the team's victory was seen as instrumental in transforming the history of college basketball. In the mid-1950s, Texas Western became the first college in a southern state to integrate its intercollegiate athletic teams. The highly publicized and inspirational 1966 championship game capped an amazing season for Texas Western. Coached by Hall of Famer Don Haskins and led by Bobby Joe Hill and David Lattin, Texas Western swept through the NCAA Tournament by defeating Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, Kansas, and Utah en route to the championship game. In 2006, forty years after the Miners captured the national title, the story was made into a major motion picture, the team visited the White House, and was honored at halftime of the 2006 NCAA national championship game.


Obviously there is some slightly deeper stuff since there is Civil Rights and stuff involved but other inductees include good high school basketball coaches, international coaches, women's basketball players and coaches, the ****ing Harlem Globetrotters and there are a lot of special cases like Maurice Stokes who became paralyzed during his career but got in because he was inspired others.

So YES. Yao does get into the basketball hall of fame. This is not the new "NBA's 100 greatest players" it is the Basketball Hall of Fame. Yao Ming drew a giant audience of viewers (including myself) and has arguably made the biggest impact in basketball since Michael Jordan. During his prime he was the best center in the NBA and when we played, he deserved every All-Star start that he got except the ones where he started over Shaq.

Don't even try to compare him to other players. I know guys like Hedo Turkoglu are well-liked in their home countries but a lot of these other nations have had some history in basketball. For every Zydrunas Ilgauskas there is an Arvydas Sabonis, and for every Vlade Divac there is a Drazen Petrovic. For Yao, the closest thing was Wang Zhi Zhi.

Yao Ming is definitely going in.


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## sonicFLAME6 (Dec 19, 2006)

Brutus said:


> Yao Ming is the most famous basketball player in history only behind Michael Jordan, hes making the HOF.


:baseldance:


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

It has to be done: *"what kind of NBA career does Yao have sans international play?"*


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

That, and his broadcast career. 



e-monk said:


> because given the way the Hall works Walton probably would have made it just based on having arguably the greatest individual college career ever?


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## seifer0406 (Jun 8, 2003)

Not that I'm equating boxing to basketball, but boxing hall of fame just inducted Sly because of his contributions to the sport.


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## E.H. Munro (Jun 22, 2004)

Dre™ said:


> Is there a way to give him some kind of induction under a community serviceish pretense while ignoring his actual in-uniform situation?


It's not the NBA Hall of Fame, it's the Basketball Hall of Fame. There are players in their for their non-NBA contributions to the game; including many Europeans and many members of the Harlem Globetrotters. Despite what you may think of his NBA career, there's a strong likelihood that he gets a nod for his contributions to the game overall.


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## E.H. Munro (Jun 22, 2004)

Ron said:


> HOF is for what he did as a player, not as an ambassador to the game.


Meadowlark Lemon says hi.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

E.H. Munro said:


> Meadowlark Lemon says hi.


so do Pat Summitt and Chick Hearn (and just for coining 'slam dunk' he deserves it)


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## Porn Player (Apr 24, 2003)

I got a Meadowlark Lemon jersey. I love that thing.


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## E.H. Munro (Jun 22, 2004)

Maybe I would have been clearer had I said Ann Meyers?


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## Ballscientist (Nov 11, 2002)

Ann Meyer is a lady who played in the nba?

What does the locker room look like? Is she topless in the locker room?


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

yet another stroke of genius in a long and illustrious career


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

simply_amazing said:


> That, and his broadcast career.


I know a lot of people didnt like him as a broadcaster but I thought he was hilarious - you just had to understand that he didnt mean it when he would say things like 'Olden Polynice has just made the greatest play by a center in the history of the association'


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

smh at the 19 people that said no. If this was the NBA Hall of Fame I'd say no. But Basketball Hall of Fame? 10 times out of 10 yes.


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

^Why? What exactly has he done?


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## E.H. Munro (Jun 22, 2004)

What did that Hungarian doctor that's in there do?


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

HB said:


> ^Why? What exactly has he done?


things that count according to how the hall does it's business:

popularize the sport for 20% of the world's population

bring his national team to prominence in international play

first significant player from his country


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

I still say Sabonis should get in


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

Chinese national team is prominent? For what? What have they won?


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

HB said:


> Chinese national team is prominent? For what? What have they won?


multiple quarters and semis finishes in Olympics and FIBA world tournaments after being non-existent, non-factors ever previously


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## Ballscientist (Nov 11, 2002)

Next summer, one of the championship will give him a contract to play in the playoffs only.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

e-monk said:


> things that count according to how the hall does it's business:
> 
> popularize the sport for 20% of the world's population
> 
> ...


add to that being a hall of fame caliber player when he was healthy and it's really a sure thing that he's going to get in.

i'll say this again. it can be debated whether his nba career was good enough for him to get in only based on that because of the injuries. he would have a very small chance if his nba playing career was all that mattered. but that's obviously not all that matters with the basketball hall of fame and he's basically a lock at getting in.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

did anyone read the wilbon article on yao?

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=wilbon/101220



> Almost certainly, Yao Ming has introduced more people to professional basketball, surely the NBA brand, than any one man in the history of the sport. While it's difficult to get exact ratings of the 39 NBA games broadcast in a season in China on CCTV (China Central television), the best available evidence is that approximately 200 million have frequently watched when the Rockets play, which is about one-third of the time. That's 195 million more than watch an NBA playoff game, on average. It's nearly two Super Bowls worth of eyeballs on any game. Or as former Rockets guard Sam Cassell said, "Let's just say for the sake of arguing, its 50 million people. That means Yao attracts a major market all by himself. Actually, that's five major markets. And we all know it's a lot more people than that. It's hundreds of millions watching games for the whole time he's been in the league."


i mean what's the argument against him getting in the hall?


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## Ballscientist (Nov 11, 2002)

Entire Asia + some in US + some in Europe.

Yao = 600 million fans

Super bowls = 100 million fans


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Yao was not a Hall of Fame caliber player when he was healthy.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> Yao was not a Hall of Fame caliber player when he was healthy.


he absolutely was. being one of the top offensive options in the league commanding enormous defensive attention while also being among the top defensive anchors in the league?

if yao's play wasn't of hall of fame caliber, then there are a bunch of people there that don't belong either.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

rocketeer said:


> he absolutely was. being one of the top offensive options in the league commanding enormous defensive attention while also being among the top defensive anchors in the league?
> 
> if yao's play wasn't of hall of fame caliber, then there are a bunch of people there that don't belong either.


Artis Gilmore - end of discussion


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## OneBadLT123 (Oct 4, 2005)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> Yao was not a Hall of Fame caliber player when he was healthy.


WTF are you crazy? Yes he was arguably one of the most dominant player in the league between 04-07 behind maybe Lebron and Kobe.

It's amazing how people forget these things. The guy was getting defensive attention of the likes of a PRIME Shaq and had PER's over 32. To think he was never a HOF caliber player is laughable.


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

OneBadLT123 said:


> WTF are you crazy? Yes he was arguably one of the most dominant player in the league between 04-07 behind maybe Lebron and Kobe.


KG, Duncan, Nash, Dirk, Wade, Ben Wallace and Shaq say hello. Hell, even Amare will send a text of 'hi' on this one.

It's amazing how people forget these things. The guy was getting defensive attention of the likes of a PRIME Shaq [/quote]So did Jake Tsakalidis. I don't see your point.


> and had PER's over 32.


No he didn't. No one in the HISTORY of the NBA had a PER over 32. Yao's highest was 26 (but that was for half a season so he gets a 13 for the whole season).


> To think he was never a HOF caliber player is laughable.


I didn't know that 7'6 and having career of <10rpg and <2bpg, more turnovers than assists and steals combined with a career sub 20ppg scoring average is a slam dunk HOF candidate.

EDIT: Just out of curiosity, how many All NBA 1st teams has he been selected to? None is the answer. Zero.


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

Some of his career highlights.

7× NBA All-Star (2003–2009)
2× All-NBA Second Team (2007, 2009)
3× All-NBA Third Team (2004, 2006, 2008)
NBA All-Rookie First Team (2003)
2002 FIBA World Championship All-Tournament Team
3× FIBA Asian Championship MVP (2001, 2003, 2005)

I think based on his achievements for the NBA and his international career for China, the case for Yao is arguable.

He is the best basketball player from his continent and I think because of him, he has solidified basketball as the world's second most popular sport. He has broken a barrier that Asians can't play basketball. He is a good role model- no drug, DUI, sex or other scandals, he has donated his money to various causes and I don't understand how he does not make the hall of fame.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Hyperion said:


> No one in the HISTORY of the NBA had a PER over 32.


the closest I came at a quick glance was Wilt with a 31.8 for 3 consecutive seasons (which given that PER ratings pre 79 or so are fudged might just qualify) MJ had a 31.7, Lebron too - that's about it

PER is funky anyway - cant believe Kareem never topped 30 for instance - makes it seem hinky to me


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

Hyperion said:


> KG, Duncan, Nash, Dirk, Wade, Ben Wallace and Shaq say hello. Hell, even Amare will send a text of 'hi' on this one.
> 
> It's amazing how people forget these things. The guy was getting defensive attention of the likes of a PRIME Shaq


So did Jake Tsakalidis. I don't see your point.
No he didn't. No one in the HISTORY of the NBA had a PER over 32. Yao's highest was 26 (but that was for half a season so he gets a 13 for the whole season).

I didn't know that 7'6 and having career of <10rpg and <2bpg, more turnovers than assists and steals combined with a career sub 20ppg scoring average is a slam dunk HOF candidate.

EDIT: Just out of curiosity, how many All NBA 1st teams has he been selected to? None is the answer. Zero.[/QUOTE]

I think the case that most people are making for Yao to get into HOF is that he has made a giant impact on the NBA by making it so much more popular, while his NBA career is good enough to be considered based on basketball.

OneBadLT123 clearly states a specific time frame (his prime) and then you go and say he sucks because his career averages aren't that high.

Keep in mind that while height certainly helps with rebounding and blocking, at a certain point it stops and goes against you because your body frame isn't too coordinated.

If you want to compare career averages

http://www.basketball-reference.com...tat=&c5comp=gt&c6mult=1.0&c6stat=&order_by=ws

Yao is 14th All-Time in career rebounding average for players 7 feet or taller, and is 12th All-Time in blocks for players 7 feet or taller. Once you adjust the parameters to players 7'3 or taller (since there have been a lot of productive players that are just around 7 feet flat), Yao is clearly the best player that is in that 'extremely tall' category.

And yea Yao hasn't been selected to an First Teams but he has been selected to 2 second teams and 3 third teams. You're making it sound like it's first team or bust.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Yao was definitely not a Hall of Fame caliber player while he was healthy. He was a low 20 point scorer and decent rebounder. He never received close to the same attention as a prime Shaq. That is truly ridiculous. The Rockets were first round fodder (though they did get out of the first round once) or they missed the playoffs entirely. He just wasn't anywhere near as dominant as you think he was.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> Yao was definitely not a Hall of Fame caliber player while he was healthy. He was a low 20 point scorer and decent rebounder. He never received close to the same attention as a prime Shaq. That is truly ridiculous. The Rockets were first round fodder (though they did get out of the first round once) or they missed the playoffs entirely. He just wasn't anywhere near as dominant as you think he was.


Yao was certainly a hall of fame caliber player when healthy. He was a 22-25ppg score on the low block, who attracted all kinds of attention and was a very good passer. He was also an incredible free throw shooter for his size and position (83% for his career) and while not an outstanding shotblocker, he played great position defense and contested well. He made his rotations and was a great help defender. He didn't block a lot of shots because he stayed down and just used his height to contest (ala Tim Duncan). He grabbed 10 boards per 36 for his career, and if there is a knock on him besides health, it's that he couldn't really play in the high 30's in terms of minutes on a consistent basis. 

When he was on the court, he was beastly. Unfortunetly, injuries kept him in and out, and size/fatique kept him from playing heavy minutes. Those are biggest setbacks.


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

He did this for what? How long was he playing at this level? Am I missing something here, didn't Yao and Tmac have a bunch of seasons they were tossed out in the first round?


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

From 2004-2007, when healthy, Yao was a beast when he was on the floor. He was not healthy enough, and couldn't play enough minutes, but you can't deny his impact when he was out there.


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

No not denying that, but is 20/10 good enough criteria for the hall of fame?


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

HB said:


> No not denying that, but is 20/10 good enough criteria for the hall of fame?


no it is not - Should Chris Webber be in the Hall of Fame? he was a better NBA player than Yao


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

HB said:


> No not denying that, but is 20/10 good enough criteria for the hall of fame?


Certainly a player with a prime of 22-25ppg and 10+rpg is good enough. Of course, I said already I don't think he should make it because he didn't play long enough but at his best when healthy he was easily the kind of player who would have been a hall of famer (based on his play, not ambassador stuff) if he were durable. 

I guess we'll never know.


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## OneBadLT123 (Oct 4, 2005)

Hyperion said:


> KG, Duncan, Nash, Dirk, Wade, Ben Wallace and Shaq say hello. Hell, even Amare will send a text of 'hi' on this one.
> 
> It's amazing how people forget these things. The guy was getting defensive attention of the likes of a PRIME Shaq So did Jake Tsakalidis. I don't see your point.
> No he didn't. No one in the HISTORY of the NBA had a PER over 32. Yao's highest was 26 (but that was for half a season so he gets a 13 for the whole season).
> ...


You need to stop looking at basketball reference and take a look at the big picture. You guys simply don't remember how Yao played when healthy from '05 to '08.

After the All-Star break in '06, he averaged 27/12 on ridiculous efficiency, while facing more defensive attention than I have ever seen any player endure on a game-to-game basis. His offical PER for that year was 29, but at one point he had it above 32, which was best in the league. He had a rebound rate of 19 which at the time was 2nd best in the league. The last guy to achieve those numbers was young Kreem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1970's.

The thing about Yao is that he always raised his game against quality opponents. He repeatedly outplayed both Dwight Howard and Tim Duncan (everyone remembers him outplaying Howard, but no one remembers that he owned Duncan head-to-head for three straight years at the tail of Duncan's prime). Every year Yao was improving his game. Time and time again he outplayed his opponents, and even added additional offensive and defensive abilities to his game. His ceiling was limitless talent wise. He had the fundementals of Tim Duncan, the power of Shaq and the shooting touch of Ray Allen all rolled into one package.

In his prime, Yao drew a ton of defensive attention (at his best, the most in the league), and offered stellar statistical production (top 5 in the league), defensive impact (anchored an elite defense for five straight years – a defense that has clearly collapsed without him last season and this season), and rebounding value (solid individual rebounding, tremendous team rebounding impact).

No big man in the league could contain Yao those years. NONE. Do you have no memory of Yao dropping 35/15's on those guys while having defenders hang off him?

The Issue is that Yao missed many games during his prime. Hence, over the course of his career, he was not as valuable as several other guys. But in terms of what he delivered when on the court he was truly an elite, first-tier player. We saw this over 200 games. It takes more than having watched 5 Rockets games a year with zero memory of any specifics to form an assessment of a guy's career that's of any value.

So GTFO outta here with your jibberish about wannabe "awards", stats from basketball-reference, and some cloudy memory of Yao's production and give me a real analysis as to why Yao wasn't a HOF caliber player. 

Otherwise move on


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## Ballscientist (Nov 11, 2002)

Houston will extend Yao's contract at VLE. He'd likely to start the season on March each year.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

HB said:


> He did this for what? How long was he playing at this level? Am I missing something here, didn't Yao and Tmac have a bunch of seasons they were tossed out in the first round?


right. the only problem with yao is that his prime where he played at a hall of fame level wasn't long enough. which is why it's questionable whether or not he would get in based on just his playing career(with it probably being unlikely). that's where all the other factors come into play which combined with him being a hall of fame caliber player while healthy make it an easy decision.

and guys like bill walton and drazen are in the hall of fame, so i'm not sure pointing out how long yao did it is all that relevant.

and no, yao and tmac didn't have a bunch of years where they lost in the first round. it actually only happened twice and one of the years was with yao just coming back from his broken leg.


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

I simply want to reiterate that the hall of fame is not an nba hall of fame, but a basketball hall of fame. Let's review Yao's basketball credentials...

He was a force in the international game and was one of a handful of players (along with Nowitzki and Garnett) to revolutionize big man play in this century. 

He was also the game's biggest draw internationally since Michael Jordan. 

On top of that, he was averaging 20-25 pts a game, 10+ rpg and 2+ bpg in just 33 mpg, averaging just a dozen shot attempts per game or less. 

He possesses a gorgeous, cat quick drop step, a fadeaway that Hakeem would envy, consistently shot 85% from the stripe, and commanded doubles with each touch. I see elements of Hakeem, Shaq's drop step, McHale's snake moves, among others in his offensive repertoire, the finest in the game still among contemporary centers.

And yet some compare him to Chris Webber?????




rocketeer said:


> right. the only problem with yao is that his prime where he played at a hall of fame level wasn't long enough. which is why it's questionable whether or not he would get in based on just his playing career(with it probably being unlikely). that's where all the other factors come into play which combined with him being a hall of fame caliber player while healthy make it an easy decision.
> 
> and guys like bill walton and drazen are in the hall of fame, so i'm not sure pointing out how long yao did it is all that relevant.
> 
> and no, yao and tmac didn't have a bunch of years where they lost in the first round. it actually only happened twice and one of the years was with yao just coming back from his broken leg.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

simply_amazing said:


> I simply want to reiterate that the hall of fame is not an nba hall of fame, but a basketball hall of fame. Let's review Yao's basketball credentials...


you're welcome for how many times I've pointed that out - here's the problem: you're taking it a step further and saying that Yao deserves it just on the merit of his nba career and you're wrong



> He was a force in the international game and was one of a handful of players (along with Nowitzki and Garnett) to revolutionize big man play in this century.


there is nothing revolutionary about his game, at all - and turn the orchestra down "handful of players... this century" come on down from the stage there pal - first of all those other two you mention came on the scene in the last century - second of all Chris Webber - third of all Wilt played guard with the globetrotters



> He was also the game's biggest draw internationally since Michael Jordan.
> 
> On top of that, he was averaging 20-25 pts a game, 10+ rpg and 2+ bpg in just 33 mpg, averaging just a dozen shot attempts per game or less.


he did that for about a year's worth of minutes over the course of two injury plagued seasons - Chris Webber did it for about 6 straight years and threw in 5 assists a game while he was at it



> He possesses a gorgeous, cat quick drop step,


nice verbiage - but who cares? because really? you're leading with the drop step? I suppose that's fine, as long as it's "gorgeous" and "cat quick" - I mean a drop step isnt really a move in anybody's repertoire - it's more of a counter for someone over-playing you and well, most bigs with a semblance of a post game can pull one off seeing as all you have to do is step backwards and to the side away from the defensive pressure - but as long as Yao's was "gorgeous" and "cat quick" go ahead and lead with it I guess



> a fadeaway that Hakeem would envy,


ah, but is he as good as Moses McLovin?



> consistently shot 85% from the stripe, and commanded doubles with each touch. I see elements of Hakeem, Shaq's drop step, McHale's snake moves,


apparently you never watched either McHale or Hakeem (or for that matter Yao himself) play the game - snake moves? jesus



> among others in his offensive repertoire, the finest in the game still among contemporary centers.


I see Nate Robinson slapping his crap back in his face and I want some of whatever your taking if you think he's better than Dwight Howard



> And yet some compare him to Chris Webber?????



I know it's silly - Webber was a much better NBA player and had a vastly superior career (20+ ppg 10+ ppg 4+ apg for 5 or 6 straight FULL years - lead his team out of the first round occasionally, even got as far as the conference finals once) and probably he wont be in the Hall


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

OneBadLT123 said:


> You need to stop looking at basketball reference and take a look at the big picture. You guys simply don't remember how Yao played when healthy from '05 to '08.


I do, and I seem to recall a really weak NBA at the time and people STILL were bitching that the only reason Yao was an All Star starter was because of China and that Duncan and Stoudemire were more deserving.



> After the All-Star break in '06, he averaged 27/12 on ridiculous efficiency, while facing more defensive attention than I have ever seen any player endure on a game-to-game basis. His offical PER for that year was 29, but at one point he had it above 32, which was best in the league. He had a rebound rate of 19 which at the time was 2nd best in the league. The last guy to achieve those numbers was young Kreem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1970's.


This is all just made up fiction. His official PER was never above 26. A rebound percentage of <18% is not very good from your star rebounder, especially if you're trying to make a HOF argument for him. The highest he's ever come to top in the league in rpg is 7th. He's 7'6 and over 300lbs! He could only grab 9 rebounds a game!?! That's not HOF material.



> The thing about Yao is that he always raised his game against quality opponents. He repeatedly outplayed both Dwight Howard and Tim Duncan (everyone remembers him outplaying Howard, but no one remembers that he owned Duncan head-to-head for three straight years at the tail of Duncan's prime).[/qoute]
> You had to know that someone was going to look this up right? From 2004-07 (your stated Yao peak) Duncan averaged 21.2ppg/11.7rpg while Yao averaged 21.1ppg/7.9rpg in head to head matchups. Oh yeah, and the Spurs won the matchups 8-4.
> 
> 
> ...


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

Chris Webber was a more skilled NBA player and in fact a better basketball player than Yao. The international accomplishment arguments I can see, but trying to even argue that he was better than Webber is a no no.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Hyperion said:


> No, we didn't see that over 200 games. We saw a center develop into what could have been a HOF center. I will grant you that before he was permanently injured this last time, he was starting to look really dominant out there. Had he not experienced these foot injuries, he could have been the best center in Rockets' history. That's not what happened though. What happened is that a career that should have arced into the realm of HOF lock was sidetracked and then derailed by injuries. As an NBA player, he just doesn't have the stats/titles/awards that are needed to be inducted. Would he have earned those over the next 5 years had he not had his feet crumble beneath him? I would say yes.


100% agree with this - could of been but was not - if Yao was some guy named Bob from Philly (or Rik from der nederlands maybe? ok that's a bit of a stretch) and had the same career #s and injury history would anyone in their right mind argue his case for the hall? no - they might say 'well he had it in him and it was just too bad he couldnt hold up to the pounding' and that would be a reasonable assessment


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

HB said:


> Chris Webber was a more skilled NBA player and in fact a better basketball player than Yao. The international accomplishment arguments I can see, but trying to even argue that he was better than Webber is a no no.


Chris Webber had a longer career, but at their best, he was not better than Yao. Not on either end of the floor. He was more skilled maybe, but he was also more skilled than Shaq. Skills aren't the whole story in basketball where physicality matters so much.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

HB said:


> Chris Webber was a more skilled NBA player and in fact a better basketball player than Yao. The international accomplishment arguments I can see, but trying to even argue that he was better than Webber is a no no.


yao was miles ahead of webber defensively and in his prime was better offensively as well. webber did it for longer.


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

You do realize Webber is one of the best passing big men to ever play the game right. Do tell when Yao has ever had a 27ppg season? Or ever topped a 3apg season talk less 5?


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## -33- (Aug 6, 2002)

Absolutely not.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

HB said:


> You do realize Webber is one of the best passing big men to ever play the game right. Do tell when Yao has ever had a 27ppg season? Or ever topped a 3apg season talk less 5?


you really don't want to compare their scoring because then you get into things like fg% and ts% and you just look really dumb. but yes, webber is the better passer.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Yao will be in the Basketball Hall of Fame, but not solely on the basis of his NBA career.


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

> you really don't want to compare their scoring because then you get into things like fg% and ts% and you just look really dumb. but yes, webber is the better passer.


Ah I knew that was coming. Yao was the better offensive player because he had better PER and efficiency numbers right? Yet if I recall passing and putting the ball in the hole are also part of offense right?

Webber's offensive skillset >>> Yao's

But please how do you plan on explaining away Chris' 27 ppg season and his multiple 4 + apg and seasons in defense of Yao.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

HB said:


> Ah I knew that was coming. Yao was the better offensive player because he had better PER and efficiency numbers right? Yet if I recall passing and putting the ball in the hole are also part of offense right?
> 
> Webber's offensive skillset >>> Yao's
> 
> But please how do you plan on explaining away Chris' 27 ppg season and his multiple 4 + apg and seasons in defense of Yao.


webber is a better passer than yao. that's the only place he's better offensively.

yes, webber scored 27 points per game one season. he did so playing 40 minutes per game, shooting 48%, and with a 51.6 ts%. we can compare that to yao's best year which was 25 points per game in 34 minutes, 51.6% shooting, and 60 ts%. please tell me that webber was the better scorer.


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

That's a tricky one to answer. Yao by virtue of his size and skillset could put the ball in the net easier but Webber could do more with the ball on offense.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

HB said:


> That's a tricky one to answer. Yao by virtue of his size and skillset could put the ball in the net easier but Webber could do more with the ball on offense.


You could say the same for Shaquille, and Webber was nowhere near his level offensively.


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## johnnyb (Nov 20, 2010)

Has there been anyone inducted because of off court reasons?

I assumed the HOF was reserved for the very best Basketball Players, not the best ambassadors, or who sold the most tickets, or who brought the most money into league coffers.

Yao will always be unrealized potential imo. I always felt he was hard pressed to finish games, and he just couldn't stay healthy.

j-


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## HB (May 1, 2004)

Sir Patchwork said:


> You could say the same for Shaquille, and Webber was nowhere near his level offensively.


That's why I had to be careful the way I worded it. Is Shaq a better offensive player than say TD or KG? probably! More skilled? Nope.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

johnnyb said:


> Has there been anyone inducted because of off court reasons?


yes.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Chris Webber was the more dominant offensive personality and in his days in Washington and Sacramento he was the primary offensive weapon. When I think of Yao, I remember the team focused more around Steve Francis' talents and then Tracy McGrady's talents. 

The closest I would say Houston was Yao-centered was in 2008-09, but that was once again because T-Mac limped to only 38 games. And then, the team leaned a bit on Ron Artest in the regular season and definitely in the playoffs when Yao went down.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Webber was much better than Yao. I don't know why you insist on remembering him as much better than he actually was.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Personally, Yao Ming reminded me of a bigger, slightly better version of Jack Sikma during Sikma's Seattle years.


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

With ball hogs like Cutino Mobley, Stevie Francis and Mo Taylor, Yao barely touched the ball. He didn't play very minutes, either. Yao was putting up impressive numbers playing 30-33 mpg and shooting the ball a dozen times a game. 

Yao is one of the most under-utilized talents in the history of the association (but not in the history of the Chinese national team). 



rocketeer said:


> webber is a better passer than yao. that's the only place he's better offensively.
> 
> yes, webber scored 27 points per game one season. he did so playing 40 minutes per game, shooting 48%, and with a 51.6 ts%. we can compare that to yao's best year which was 25 points per game in 34 minutes, 51.6% shooting, and 60 ts%. please tell me that webber was the better scorer.


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

Yao's an amazing passer. Webber's assists stats are better BECAUSE HE WAS ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO TOUCH THE BASKETBALL. 

You can call out Shaq all you want about his bitching about not seeing the ball, but he was right to do so. Especially when you compare Kobe's "stellar" 45% FGP vs. Shaq's 60% FGP. 



rocketeer said:


> webber is a better passer than yao. that's the only place he's better offensively.
> 
> yes, webber scored 27 points per game one season. he did so playing 40 minutes per game, shooting 48%, and with a 51.6 ts%. we can compare that to yao's best year which was 25 points per game in 34 minutes, 51.6% shooting, and 60 ts%. please tell me that webber was the better scorer.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Yao averaged 32.5 minutes per game for his career. The only year that his minutes per game was appreciably higher was in 2007-08 (37.2 per game).

Yao averaged 13 shots per game for his career. His highest average was in 2006-07, when he averaged 17.1.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> Webber was much better than Yao. I don't know why you insist on remembering him as much better than he actually was.


I was thinking the same about Webber. I don't know why people romanticize his career so much. He was good but people overrate him.


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## simply_amazing (Aug 23, 2009)

C Web was a straight up prodigy, both from a physical as well as from a strictly skills perspective. I'm still mad that the Stern stole C Web's ring and handed it to the unmentionables. 

Having said that, there's a difference between having a great, gifted 6'9" guy and a great, gifted 7'5" guy. 

I'm still P.O.'ed that Yao was the third option on the Rockets; so much fail.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Sir Patchwork said:


> Chris Webber had a longer career, but at their best, he was not better than Yao. Not on either end of the floor. He was more skilled maybe, but he was also more skilled than Shaq. Skills aren't the whole story in basketball where physicality matters so much.


Chris Webber had a far better career than Yao did though and it's not debatable and he's not likely to get into the hall and that's the point


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

rocketeer said:


> yao was miles ahead of webber defensively and in his prime was better offensively as well. webber did it for longer.


why does anyone think Yao was a good defensive player?


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## ShaKobe OBryant (Dec 24, 2010)

e-monk said:


> why does anyone think Yao was a good defensive player?


Because he was 9 feet tall.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Sir Patchwork said:


> You could say the same for Shaquille, and Webber was nowhere near his level offensively.


nor for that matter was Yao


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

ShaKobe OBryant said:


> Because he was 9 feet tall.


yep and at 9 feet tall you cant help but accidently block a couple shots a game - but he falls a little short of guys like Bol or Eaton who were both also 9 feet tall and averaged two or three times the blocks he did


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

e-monk said:


> Chris Webber had a far better career than Yao did though and it's not debatable and he's not likely to get into the hall and that's the point


I don't disagree with this. He had a better career and deserves to be in the hall of fame more than Yao. He was not better than Yao at his best though.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

e-monk said:


> why does anyone think Yao was a good defensive player?


They probably think that because Yao blocked roughly two shots per game that he was "a good defensive player." 

Of course, it overlooks the fact that he practically could sleepwalk to that mark because he was 7-foot-6 and with some mobility and he was playing in a league with an incredible dearth of quality big men.


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## ShaKobe OBryant (Dec 24, 2010)

e-monk said:


> yep and at 9 feet tall you cant help but accidently block a couple shots a game - but he falls a little short of guys like Bol or Eaton who were both also 9 feet tall and averaged two or three times the blocks he did


lol, and Hell No Yao shouldn't be in the Hall Of Fame. You put him in, then you gotta put Vlade in, and Dikembe is definitely going to be in the hall if Yao is in.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Sir Patchwork said:


> I don't disagree with this. He had a better career and deserves to be in the hall of fame more than Yao. He was not better than Yao at his best though.


well that's the thing - Yao will probably get in the Hall but if his name was Bob from Philly no one would even think to argue that he should be in the hall - in other words he wont get in on the basis of his nba career nor does he deserve to - there are other reasons and ways that he contributed and those will be the reasons he gets in if he does, not what he did in Houston


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

People who don't think Yao was a dominant defensive player just weren't paying attention. It's amusing when people think that Yao is respected on defense for his shotblocking. That is telling. You'll never hear someone who thinks Yao is a great defender talk about his shot blocking. That's because Yao prided himself on contesting every shot and not chasing blocks. Much like Duncan in that way. He didn't care if he got dunked on, he contested every shot in his area. The defensive rating numbers speak for themselves when he was healthy.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

e-monk said:


> well that's the thing - Yao will probably get in the Hall but if his name was Bob from Philly no one would even think to argue that he should be in the hall - in other words he wont get in on the basis of his nba career nor does he deserve to - there are other reasons and ways that he contributed and those will be the reasons he gets in if he does, not what he did in Houston


I don't think he deserves to be in the hall. The only reason I'm on the pro-Yao side of the argument is because people are underselling the player he was when healthy. He was dominant. Just not healthy often enough and unreliable.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Defensive rating numbers, like most other numbers, need to be taken into context. Particularly advanced metrics that cannot be explained to most people how it is quantified. 

I believe Yao's defensive rating is 30th all time, according to basketball-reference.com:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/def_rtg_career.html

According to the site, Dikembe Mutombo's rating is 33rd and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's is 36th. Manu Ginobili's is 27th, slightly behind Dwight Howard. Dennis Rodman is ranked 56th, Scottie Pippen is 95th and Michael Jordan is ranked 146th.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Najee said:


> Defensive rating numbers, like most other numbers, need to be taken into context. Particularly advanced metrics that cannot be explained to most people how it is quantified.
> 
> I believe Yao's defensive rating is 30th all time, according to basketball-reference.com:
> 
> ...


The Rockets were a great defensive team when Yao was anchoring the middle. He was slow, but that was never really a problem. Opposing big men typically struggled to score him. I'd like to see someone look up Amare's career numbers on Yao. He has had some stinkers against Yao. 

Like all stats, defensive rating is just part of the equation. Observation tells the same story though, unless you just freeze the picture of him with his hands on his knees and assume his defense is bad.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Most of the quality big men in the NBA during Yao's prime were power forwards, not centers. Guys like Kevin Garnett, Rasheed Wallace and Dirk Nowitzki didn't have to come near Yao to be effective offensively. 

Yao also enjoyed a huge size advantage, even against people like Shaquille O'Neal. Yeah, guys like Shaq and Amare Stoudemire in a halfcourt game would have to contend with his size, but it's not like the guy is some Alonzo Mourning type of intimidator. He was a guy who was bigger than nearly everyone else, had a long wingspan so he could put his hands up and some mobility to make a wall in front of the basket.

I'm sorry, but defensive rating is another one of those vague advanced metrics that can't be quantified. How else can anyone explain how defensive demon Charlie Ward is ranked 45th and Michael Jordan is 100 positions behind him?


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Who cares if he is an intimidator? If his size is something to contend with and he is forcing misses, then that makes him a great defensive player regardless of his dimeanor. That is afterall the point of defense, to force the other team to miss.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Sir Patchwork said:


> Who cares if he is an intimidator? If his size is something to contend with and he is forcing misses, then that makes him a great defensive player regardless of his dimeanor. That is afterall the point of defense, to force the other team to miss.


You're distorting "a big guy who formed a wall in front of the basket as the result of his sheer size" into "Yao was one helluva a defensive player." That's a big difference. If Yao was six or eight inches shorter, he would have been no better defensively than Rasho Nesterovic.

Seriously, there weren't a whole lot of big men for Yao to guard on a nightly basis, particularly when Shaquille O'Neal went East after the 2003-04 season. The center spot in the middle part of the decade was largely nondescript and filled with role players and designated bruisers and some stiffs. It's not like you have to game plan to keep people like Erick Dampier from going off.

I'm sorry, but you lost me when you pulled out the defensive rating stat. Any stat that states Charlie Ward rates defensively ahead of Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan (and in Jordan's case, Ward is 100 rankings ahead of Jordan) has very little validity to me.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Najee said:


> You're distorting "a big guy who formed a wall in front of the basket as the result of his sheer size" into "Yao was one helluva a defensive player." That's a big difference. If Yao was six or eight inches shorter, he would have been no better defensively than Rasho Nesterovic.


Bottom line is, players are what they are. If you're happy with your hypothetical of Yao being a poor defender if he was 8 inches shorter, than I'm fine with that. I agree. It's just worth pointing out that most great players wouldn't be near what they were without a standout physical quality, whether it be height, strength, speed, quickness, etc. A 6'5 Shaquille never plays an NBA game. 

I'm dealing with Yao for what he was, and not what he would have been if he was a different person.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Dude, you created a poor strawman argument. I didn't say Yao was a poor defender; don't put words in my mouth and try to take comments out of context deliberately. 

And the non sequitur about "most great players wouldn't be near what they were without a standout physical quality" is so inappropriate it's not funny. Really, I didn't say Yao Ming is no better than Rasho Nesterovic as a player overall. I'm commenting on how you're overly exaggerating Yao's defensive prowess.

What Yao was as a defender was a very big man who didn't have to defend a lot of opposing centers, because the majority of them during his prime were basically role players and stiffs. Outside of Shaquille O'Neal twice a year after the 2003-04 season, Yao didn't have to worry about having to stop a big man offensively.

And even then, it wasn't like Yao was great defensively. He basically stood in front of the basket and stretched his arms out. He didn't show any tremendous defensive anticipation, weakside protection or any innate instinct that suggested he was some "dominant defensive player." Yao was no different than Gheorge Muresan in that respect -- at 7-foot-6 with that wingspan, *OF COURSE* you're going to fall into some semblance of a defensive presence.

But a "dominant defensive player?" No way. Unless you figure facing off against the likes of Erick Dampier and Mark Blount on a regular basis counts while overrating his defensive reputation.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

So he was a good defender mainly because he was tall. I don't disagree. He was still a good defender though is the point. You can lessen it and rationalize it down all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that he defended the way a 7'6 guy should. I disagree that he didn't have good defensive instincts. He positioned himself well, was a very good help defender, and protected the paint. He had a high IQ, contested every shot and used his size properly. He wasn't Dikembo Mutombo, but he was clearly more valuable on defense than Chris Webber.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Sir Patchwork said:


> So he was a good defender mainly because he was tall. I don't disagree. He was still a good defender though is the point. You can lessen it and rationalize it down all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that he defended the way a 7'6 guy should. I disagree that he didn't defensive instincts. He positioned himself well, was a very good help defender, and protected the paint. He had a high IQ and used his size properly. He wasn't Dikembo Mutombo, but he was clearly more valuable on defense than Chris Webber.


You're either misconstruing what I said on purpose or you really don't understand what is being said.

You said earlier Yao Ming was a "tremendous defender," when in reality he did nothing tremendously on defense. For a man who was 7-foot-6, he wasn't an exceptional shot-blocker. 

He really didn't have to worry about defending other centers outside of Shaq, so he really didn't have to work hard to keep other centers from being scoring options. 

He was much taller and in most cases bigger than most opposing centers, so positioning naturally was going to be in his favor. Just like he barely got two blocks a game despite playing in an era with hardly any other prominent centers outside of an aging Shaq and an emerging Dwight Howard.

Again, nothing exceptional outside of "You're taller and bigger than most other guys, so raise your hands and be a wall to the basket." To give an analogy, it's like taking a 10th-grader and placing him on the basketball court with a bunch of 5-year-olds. *OF COURSE* by sheer size, the 10th-grader should block the 5-year-olds' shots. That doesn't mean the 10th-grader is a great defender, all things equal.

Yao wasn't terrible on defense and could be a factor simply because of his size. But that doesn't mean he was a "tremendous defensive player" -- that's something entirely different.


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## Gx (May 24, 2006)

Why are you guys still arguing about his stats and skills on the court? I'm pretty sure everyone who has said he'll get into the HoF has also said that it will be because of his overall contributions to basketball, and not his play on the NBA courts.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Najee said:


> You're either misconstruing what I said on purpose or you really don't understand what is being said.
> 
> You said earlier Yao Ming was a "tremendous defender," when in reality he did nothing tremendously on defense. For a man who was 7-foot-6, he wasn't an exceptional shot-blocker.
> 
> ...


I understand the difference. It just doesn't really matter. Using your example, I still feel the same way. At the end of the day the 10th grader is still a more valuable defender than any of the 5 year olds. You may respect one of the 5 year olds more because he does more with less, but at the end of the day the 10th grader is going to be responsible for making your defense elite moreso than any other player.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Yao's biggest contribution as a player was on offense. His defense was a byproduct of his situation, not because of exceptional play. He wasn't a better shot-blocker than Rasho Nesterovic despite having a tremendous size and height advantage while playing in an era with few quality centers; in some respects, he was simply a bigger version of Rasho on the defensive end.

Yao wasn't terrible, but calling him "a tremendous defender" is almost laughable. That could be based on the fact that I have seen great defensive centers in their prime or throughout their careers, but Yao certainly wasn't one of them.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Gx said:


> Why are you guys still arguing about his stats and skills on the court? I'm pretty sure everyone who has said he'll get into the HoF has also said that it will be because of his overall contributions to basketball, and not his play on the NBA courts.


I agree. I know the eligibility comparison has been with Chris Webber, but I would say a more valid comparison would be with Alonzo Mourning. The pre-kidney disease 'Zo was a better NBA player than Yao.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Najee said:


> Yao wasn't terrible, but calling him "a tremendous defender" is almost laughable.


You keep using quotes around "tremendous defender" like I actually said that. I said dominant, valuable, good and things like that. Not that "tremendous" really bothers me, but if you're going to insist (more than once now) that I said something and use that to argue against, at least make sure I said it.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Sir Patchwork said:


> People who don't think Yao was a dominant defensive player just weren't paying attention.


You're correct, you referred to Yao Ming as a "dominant defensive player." The problem is that it is similar to calling Yao a "tremendous defender" and equally as laughable.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Disagree.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

"Dominant defensive player" -- for centers, see Alonzo Mourning, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Dikembe Mutombo, among others. Not a guy who stood with his hands out and could not do more than, "I'm 7-foot-6; try to shoot over me."


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## BlackNRed (Feb 9, 2005)

Ballscientist said:


> Let's say nba has 1,000 million fans, Yao bring 600 million - 60%.


A thousand million

No Yao is not a HOFer not even close.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Najee said:


> "Dominant defensive player" -- for centers, see Alonzo Mourning, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Dikembe Mutombo, among others. Not a guy who stood with his hands out and could not do more than, "I'm 7-foot-6; try to shoot over me."


try Mark Eaton then

had to deal with Kareem, Moses, The Chief, Hakeem, Ewing, The Admiral, Brad Daugherty etc

300+ blocks a year for 6 years, couple of DPoY - let's use him as a model of a 7 and a half foot tall dominant defensive player - I dont think Yao's in the building and he may not be on the block (pun intended, I thank you)


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Some people clearly did not watch the Rockets enough. When healthy, for about four years Yao was definitely a HoF-caliber player.



Hyperion said:


> This is all just made up fiction. His official PER was never above 26.


After getting healthy after the All-Star Break in '06, Yao had a PER of 30. Even including the early part of the season when he was playing hurt, he finished with a PER of 26. His best two-season combined PER is 26. Compared to other big men, for some context:

Shaq: 30.5
Robinson: 30
Kareem: 29.5
Duncan: 27
Yao, Olajuwon, Moses (tie): 26
Ewing: 25.5
Mourning: 25
Dwight: 24.5
Daugherty: 22.5
Smits: 19.5

Now, PER is a great measure of scoring and rebounding ability. Where it falls short is in measuring defense, defensive attention drawn and passing (the things that make great centers more valuable than everyone else). But we know that Yao was a very good defender, drew a ton of defensive attention and was also a very good passer. He really had a complete game, and when healthy was truly an HoF worthy center.



> A rebound percentage of <18% is not very good from your star rebounder, especially if you're trying to make a HOF argument for him.


Firstly, Yao was a terrific team rebounder. He boxed out extremely well, and is the main reason the Rockets were always one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the league when he played, regardless of whether it was Juwan Howard starting at power forward or Hayes. 

And second, a rebound rate of > 18% is hardly necessary to be a very good rebounder, especially if the player is also the main rim protector. The average rebound rate in the seasons used above (ie two highest PER) for Olajuwon, Shaq, Ewing, Robinson, Duncan and Kareem is 17.2. Yao's RbR for his two seasons used is 16.8. Higher than those of Olajuwon, Robinson and Ewing. So, basically, the 18% rule is crap.



> You had to know that someone was going to look this up right? From 2004-07 (your stated Yao peak) Duncan averaged 21.2ppg/11.7rpg while Yao averaged 21.1ppg/7.9rpg in head to head matchups. Oh yeah, and the Spurs won the matchups 8-4.


What is the point of looking at Yao in '04 or '05, clearly before his prime? The stretch he is referring to, as anyone who watched either team consistently knows, is from '07 onwards. During that period, in their matchups *Yao posted 18 ppg on 50% from the field; Duncan 19 ppg on 38%*. The Rockets won 5 of those 9 games, even without T-Mac playing in 5 of them. Duncan's average against the rest of the league over that stretch was 19 ppg on 52% shooting. Pretty clear who got the best of those matchups. 

Similar story against Howard and Amare. Same stretch vs Howard: *Yao averaged 24 ppg on 54%; Howard 14 ppg on 34%*. Vs Amare: *Yao 20 ppg on 49%; Amare 20 ppg on 38%*. So, basically, during his prime Yao held each of his three biggest rivals to 38% shooting or worse while shooting 50% himself.



> As the only offensive option in JVG's Rockets, yes this is true.
> No. He had a few very good defenders helping him out since he wasn't exactly Mr Weak-side Shot Blocker.


The Rockets went from dead last in defensive rating the year before Yao was drafted to 14th in his rookie year and 5th in his sophomore season. They were elite defensively every year of his prime. Their defense fell off immediately and drastically as soon as he got hurt after '09. That, and his one-on-one defensive success detailed above are the best evidence of his defensive prowess.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

..


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

e-monk said:


> why does anyone think Yao was a good defensive player?


no idea. he was better than merely a good defensive player.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

e-monk said:


> well that's the thing - Yao will probably get in the Hall but if his name was Bob from Philly no one would even think to argue that he should be in the hall - in other words he wont get in on the basis of his nba career nor does he deserve to - there are other reasons and ways that he contributed and those will be the reasons he gets in if he does, not what he did in Houston


more like yao doesn't deserve to be in the hall based on his nba career but he does deserve to be in the hall of fame based on the precedent the hall has set.


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## syxx (Nov 20, 2005)

No. Shawn Bradley should be in the HOF though.


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## hroz (Mar 4, 2006)

Yao would be a HoF if not for the injuries.

The question is can the most hyped man to enter the NBA (sit down Shaq, Lebron and Wilt) really get through on the hype he has created for the NBA. 

Defensively he played in a system that made him a good defender. But he played great team defense. It was never about getting 5 blocks a game. But he did come for the weak side a lot and change many shots, he might not have had the speed or agility that a Hakeem had. The offensive players normally saw him coming. But he did make them change their shot very regularly.

And Basketball is the most simple of games. Take an easy shot make your opponent take a hard shot. Thats all it is. Yao did that well.


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

Sir Patchwork said:


> The Rockets were a great defensive team when Yao was anchoring the middle. He was slow, but that was never really a problem. Opposing big men typically struggled to score him. I'd like to see someone look up Amare's career numbers on Yao. He has had some stinkers against Yao.


From April 9th 2005-present he had two games where he had <20pts and 4 games where he had <50% shooting.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Hakeem said:


> Some people clearly did not watch the Rockets enough. When healthy, for about four years Yao was definitely a HoF-caliber player.
> .


this is just it - not caliber, not could of - did 

and he didnt - because of injuries, for whatever reason he did not have a hall of fame career in the nba

did he have the potential? sure - but 3 or 4 great semi seasons does not a hall of fame career make


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

e-monk said:


> this is just it - not caliber, not could of - did
> 
> and he didnt - because of injuries, for whatever reason he did not have a hall of fame career in the nba
> 
> did he have the potential? sure - but 3 or 4 great semi seasons does not a hall of fame career make


no one here is saying that yao had a long career. obviously his career was interrupted with injuries. the point is that yao was a hall of fame caliber player when healthy in his prime. but that's not even why he's going to make the hall.


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## JT3000 (Nov 3, 2004)

Do you have any idea how many players would make the Hall if you only took primes into consideration? Doesn't work that way. 

And if it did, his buddy Mr. Crazy Eyes would make the Hall long before Yao does.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

rocketeer said:


> no one here is saying that yao had a long career. obviously his career was interrupted with injuries. the point is that yao was a hall of fame caliber player when healthy in his prime. but that's not even why he's going to make the hall.


nope 

a) because 'HOF caliber player' is a meaningless phrase in the context of this converstion - the more appropriate phrase is HOF caliber career - for all we know Len Bias was a 'HOF caliber player' you dont get into the HOF because you hit some sort of quality threshold, you get in because of what you did 

and b) Yao was simply not as special as you think - running a mid 20s PER and pulling down 20-10 for a couple seasons just doesnt cut it - you want a HOF caliber player whose career was cut short by injuries? try leading a team to the finals, garnering the finals MVP award, the next season being named league MVP and later in your career get named 6th man of the year while grabbing a second ring - in the meanwhile get named to a couple all NBA #1 squads and an all D #1 squad and yet you're probably still not going to get into the Hall except for the fact that you have 3 naismith awards, 2 AP ncaa player of the year awards, 2 ncaa finals 4 MOP awards, three NCAA titles and while you're at it you may want to throw a James Sullivan award for the top amateur athlete in any sport as a cherry on top - now that is an injury diminished career that still has some HoF merit and that one gets called into question ALL THE TIME including here in this thread


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## Maravilla (Jul 6, 2010)

Meanwhile Yao ming is the leading all-star vote getter at center in the west as of last night (TNT Ticker)


Smh


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## BlackNRed (Feb 9, 2005)

Yao Ming only helped the Rockets pass the 1st round of the playoffs in one of his 7 seasons, enough said. Solid player but he was never a game changer. He doesn't get sympathy votes, nor does he get votes cause China loves him. If Yao deserves to be in the NBA HOF so does a **** ton of other players who were never inducted.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

e-monk said:


> a) because 'HOF caliber player' is a meaningless phrase in the context of this converstion - the more appropriate phrase is HOF caliber career - for all we know Len Bias was a 'HOF caliber player' you dont get into the HOF because you hit some sort of quality threshold, you get in because of what you did


The point is that he brought the NBA a staggering number of new fans, and at the same time, over about 250 healthy games, played at a level that would have got him into the HoF on on-court efforts alone if his health had allowed him to play for longer.

ie this isn't just some run of the mill basketballer who brought in hundreds of millions of fans. And similarly, he isn't just another T-Mac whose excellent prime was cut short due to injuries. It's the combination of his historic popularity and what he could do on the court when healthy that make the argument valid.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Hakeem said:


> The point is that he brought the NBA a staggering number of new fans,


yes this is one of the reasons that he may get in




> and at the same time, over about 250 healthy games, played at a level that would have got him into the HoF on on-court efforts alone if his health had allowed him to play for longer.


not necessarily - 20-10, mid 20s PER is nice but it's not good enough by itself - he'd have to lead his team to some sort of post season run, maybe a title etc etc



> ie this isn't just some run of the mill basketballer who brought in hundreds of millions of fans.


nor was he really that special - someone in this thread said he had it in him to be the best center the rockets ever had - they had Moses in his best statistical season and a career's worth of Hakeem - people have lost touch with reality if they think he was on their level 




> And similarly, he isn't just another T-Mac whose excellent prime was cut short due to injuries.


no he's not:

TMac had a run of 5 or 6 seasons where he was a top 10 MVP contender, Yao none, zero, zip, nil, nihil est, nein, bupkis 

and TMac was named to the all NBA 1st team a couple times, Yao none, zero, zip, nil, nihil est, nein, bupkis 


so you are right - it's not even close



> It's the combination of his historic popularity and what he could do on the court when healthy that make the argument valid.


in descending order of significance it's a) popularizing the sport to china/20% of the world's population and b) contributions to the international game and trailing way at the back c) an ok NBA career


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

e-monk said:


> not necessarily - 20-10, mid 20s PER is nice but it's not good enough by itself - he'd have to lead his team to some sort of post season run, maybe a title etc etc


A player's ability is independent of his team's success. You can be the best player in the world but your team will lose if you are surrounded by mediocre talent. We saw this with David Robinson, who never led his team on any long postseason run (save for '95 which shouldn't count given the humiliation of the WCF). 

There really is no other player in history who posted mid 20's PER, passed very well, anchored a defense, and drew a lot of double teams who anyone would say _wasn't_ HoF caliber. Yao only did it for 250 games, due to ill health, but the point here is that when he was on the court he did produce at that level. 



> no he's not:
> 
> TMac had a run of 5 or 6 seasons where he was a top 10 MVP contender, Yao none, zero, zip, nil, nihil est, nein, bupkis
> 
> and TMac was named to the all NBA 1st team a couple times, Yao none, zero, zip, nil, nihil est, nein, bupkis


Senseless comparison for the purpose of this argument since Yao had very few seasons in his prime in which he played enough games to officially finish the season an MVP contender (though it's worth noting that in '07 before he got hurt he was #1 in the MVP power rankings). 

Again, the point here is that _when on the court_ Yao was that type of player. If McGrady had 5 or 6 seasons in which he was a top 10 MVP contender and an All-NBA player, and Yao was better than McGrady for the majority of those seasons (as anyone who watched them play together on a consistent basis will tell you), then Yao was on that level.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Hyperion said:


> From April 9th 2005-present he had two games where he had <20pts and 4 games where he had <50% shooting.


Again, during what almost everyone would agree was Yao's prime, from '06-07 to '08-09, he held Amare to 20 ppg on 38% shooting. Amare averaged 22 ppg on 57% against the rest of the league those years.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Hakeem said:


> ie this isn't just some run of the mill basketballer who brought in hundreds of millions of fans. And similarly, he isn't just another T-Mac whose excellent prime was cut short due to injuries. It's the combination of his historic popularity and what he could do on the court when healthy that make the argument valid.


You do realize he was just tall right? Of course you can put the ball in the hoop easier if you're 7'6, you're closer to the goal! If he was like 6'4 or something he would have had to make the ball travel further and would have been way worse. 

It's not like Earl Boykins.


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## Gx (May 24, 2006)

Heated said:


> Yao Ming only helped the Rockets pass the 1st round of the playoffs in one of his 7 seasons, enough said. Solid player but he was never a game changer. He doesn't get sympathy votes, nor does he get votes cause China loves him. If Yao deserves to be in the *NBA HOF *so does a **** ton of other players who were never inducted.


That's just it. You and other people in this thread aren't realizing that it's not just an "NBA Hall of Fame". 

"The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, located in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, honors exceptional basketball players, coaches, referees, executives, *and other major contributors to the game.*"


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## OneBadLT123 (Oct 4, 2005)

Sir Patchwork said:


> You do realize he was just tall right? Of course you can put the ball in the hoop easier if you're 7'6, you're closer to the goal! If he was like 6'4 or something he would have had to make the ball travel further and would have been way worse.
> 
> It's not like Earl Boykins.


Oh yeah, you're right! Doh! He also sucks because he didn't grab 20 RPG either.


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## JT3000 (Nov 3, 2004)

Hakeem said:


> A player's ability is independent of his team's success. You can be the best player in the world but your team will lose if you are surrounded by mediocre talent. We saw this with David Robinson, who never led his team on any long postseason run (save for '95 which shouldn't count given the humiliation of the WCF).
> 
> There really is no other player in history who posted mid 20's PER, passed very well, anchored a defense, and drew a lot of double teams who anyone would say _wasn't_ HoF caliber. Yao only did it for 250 games, due to ill health, but the point here is that when he was on the court he did produce at that level.
> 
> ...


McGrady didn't even play with Yao during his real prime, and if you think Yao was a better player you're utterly mental.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Some people on this site have an incredible ability to overstate and purposely misrepresent players' production level.

Yao had two seasons where his PER was 25.6 (2005-06) and 26.5 (2006-07), but both of those seasons where injury-riddled (missing 59 games total). When looking at more complete seasons, his PER was typically between 20.6 (2002-03) and 23.2 (2004-05). It's very possible that the 2005-06 and 2006-07 PERs would have gone down had he played more games, and returned to normal levels.

When looking at Yao's seasons where he played at least 70 games, he never averaged more than 19.7 points and 9.9 rebounds per game (both in 2008-09). IMO, that was the only season where Yao was truly the best player and offensive option on the Rockets during his career.

IMO, that is the true Yao Ming -- a guy who scored about 18 points per game and grabbed a shade under 9 rebounds per game with a PER somewhere in the low 20s. An average defender despite his size advantage, but crafty enough to make himself a wall in front of a basket. People outrageously saying he could have been the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets or trying to make him into some Chinese Shaq is not close to reality.

Purposely putting up partial season numbers as if that was what Yao brought to the table regularly for years is not only an unrealistic evaluation, it's insincere.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

e-monk said:


> try Mark Eaton then
> 
> had to deal with Kareem, Moses, The Chief, Hakeem, Ewing, The Admiral, Brad Daugherty etc
> 
> 300+ blocks a year for 6 years, couple of DPoY - let's use him as a model of a 7 and a half foot tall dominant defensive player - I dont think Yao's in the building and he may not be on the block (pun intended, I thank you)


I agree, and that's my point. Mark Eaton was a dominant, disruptive defensive player. For that matter, people like Manute Bol and Shawn Bradley were also tall players who had some sort of presence on defense (namely, shot-blocking) that Yao really did not.

The reality is that Yao was not a dominant, impressive defensive player despite his size advantage. In fact, Yao struck me as an average overall defender who just happened to be 7-foot-6.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Najee said:


> Some people on this site have an incredible ability to overstate and purposely misrepresent players' production level.
> 
> Yao had two seasons where his PER was 25.6 (2005-06) and 26.5 (2006-07), but both of those seasons where injury-riddled (missing 59 games total). When looking at more complete seasons, his PER was typically between 20.6 (2002-03) and 23.2 (2004-05). It's very possible that the 2005-06 and 2006-07 PERs would have gone down had he played more games, and returned to normal levels.
> 
> ...


This 100%. This is who Yao was. He just wasn't that dominant..on either end of the floor.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> This 100%. This is who Yao was. He just wasn't that dominant..on either end of the floor.


no you just dont understand - for about 5 minutes Yao was the best center who ever lived, certainly superior to those other Rocket Wannabees Moses Malone and Hakeem Olajuwon - one time I even saw him block a shot


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

e-monk said:


> no you just dont understand - for about 5 minutes Yao was the best center who ever lived, certainly superior to those other Rocket Wannabees Moses Malone and Hakeem Olajuwon - one time I even saw him block a shot


Exactly, when I saw that comment I almost died laughing. 

Yao Ming was basically a bigger, slightly better version of Jack Sikma, IMO. When did that translate into being better than prime Moses Malone and Hakeem Olajuwon?!?


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

merry christmas


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

It really amazes me how people tend to grossly over-rate players of the past or players whose careers have been cut short by injury. Grant Hill was a great player, but he certainly wasn't LeBron before LeBron. Yao Ming was a good player, but not a dominant one. It's sad that these guys got injured, but there is no reason to remember them as so much more than they actually were.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Some of these people also have not seen a dominant big man in his prime, and have no accurate measurement of what they are saying. Some of these same people here were overrating Greg Oden before he did anything in the NBA, and still can't get over the fact that he was an average big man when he wasn't missing entire seasons or catching fouls at ridiculous rates.

It becomes even more ridiculous when they undervalue the performance levels of players they have never seen play. Anyone who saw Hakeem Olajuwon or Moses Malone in his prime would recognize how ridiculous of a statement it is to say Yao could have been the best center ever to play for the Houston Rockets.


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## JT3000 (Nov 3, 2004)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> It really amazes me how people tend to grossly over-rate players of the past or players whose careers have been cut short by injury. Grant Hill was a great player, but he certainly wasn't LeBron before LeBron. Yao Ming was a good player, but not a dominant one. It's sad that these guys got injured, but there is no reason to remember them as so much more than they actually were.


In my experience, such players also tend to get UNDERrated an awful lot. People make ridiculous comparisons in both directions. For every Yao compared to a Hakeem, there's also a Penny Hardaway compared to Brandon Roy.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

no seriously - I saw Yao pull off an up and under move this one time so that makes him as good as Kevin McHale


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

JT3000 said:


> In my experience, such players also tend to get UNDERrated an awful lot. People make ridiculous comparisons in both directions. For every Yao compared to a Hakeem, there's also a Penny Hardaway compared to Brandon Roy.


There is a bigger gap between Yao and prime Moses/Hakeem than there is one between Penny and Roy, IMO.

It's particularly funny that Yao couldn't even be named first-team all-NBA once in an era where there is hardly any depth at the center spot, but yet someone is saying he "potentially could have been the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets" -- a franchise that had perennial MVP candidates and winners in Moses Malone and Hakeem Olajuwon.


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## Pump Bacon (Dec 11, 2010)

He'll get in for his impact off the court - the amount of Chinese and Asian fans and their interest in basketball skyrocketed for one reason and one reason only: Yao's emergence in the NBA.

He also was a great basketball player. When healthy he was an all-star that was arguably the best center in the league. He has moves and an overall game that makes Dwight's game look pathetic by comparison. He shot better from long 2's and at the stripe than most guards while also having a ton of moves in the post. Makes ya wonder why most guys in the league don't shoot as well as international talents like Yao and Dirk.

Yao's impact on the game and being a highly talented and quite possibly the most unique player in the history of the NBA are going to be tough points to ignore when it comes to HOF candidacy.


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

Najee said:


> Yao had two seasons where his PER was 25.6 (2005-06) and 26.5 (2006-07), but both of those seasons where injury-riddled (missing 59 games total). When looking at more complete seasons, his PER was typically between 20.6 (2002-03) and 23.2 (2004-05). It's very possible that the 2005-06 and 2006-07 PERs would have gone down had he played more games, and returned to normal levels.


Even these numbers are Patrick Ewing-ish type numbers. Ewing was between 20 and 23 PER every season except 1 where he was 25.8. 

Yao Ming when healthy was not Hakeem or Shaquille (although I believe this was a strawman, nobody said he was that good) but he certainly played at a hall of fame level about the level of Ewing. That much is obvious. He just couldn't sustain it due to being incredibly injury prone.

Maybe you don't think Patrick Ewing should be a hall of famer? That argument is for another day because I disagree.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Pump Bacon said:


> He'll get in for his impact off the court - the amount of Chinese and Asian fans and their interest in basketball skyrocketed for one reason and one reason only: Yao's emergence in the NBA.
> 
> He also was a great basketball player. When healthy he was an all-star that was arguably the best center in the league. He has moves and an overall game that makes Dwight's game look pathetic by comparison. He shot better from long 2's and at the stripe than most guards while also having a ton of moves in the post. Makes ya wonder why most guys in the league don't shoot as well as international talents like Yao and Dirk.
> 
> Yao's impact on the game and being a highly talented and quite possibly the most unique player in the history of the NBA are going to be tough points to ignore when it comes to HOF candidacy.


"arguably best center" moment #1 of yet another dude over-valuing Yao - early it was Shaq, later it was Dwight - it was never Yao and it was never arguable

"overall game" over-valuation moment #2 - defense is half the game so overall not close, seriously

Yao and Dirk dont belong in the same sentence (let alone 'most guards' (holy crap do you really expect anyone to respond to this nonsense?)) re shooting #3 moment of your over-valuing Yao

moment #4: most unique talent in the history of the game? he set high jump and triple jump records against NCAA competition, he played guard for the Harlem Globetrotters, he lead the league in assists twice as a center - or he was 6'9" and the best point guard of all time - or half a dozen other guys - your dude was pretty much Z or Rik Smits but slightly better (and he was about .5 of a Sabonis) Jesus get a sense of perspective


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

Najee said:


> There is a bigger gap between Yao and prime Moses/Hakeem than there is one between Penny and Roy, IMO.
> 
> It's particularly funny that Yao couldn't even be named first-team all-NBA once in an era where there is hardly any depth at the center spot, but yet someone is saying he "potentially could have been the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets" -- a franchise that had perennial MVP candidates and winners in Moses Malone and Hakeem Olajuwon.


I said that to give an out that while he wasn't great, he was improving to the point where I couldn't bitch about him being selected to be an all star starter. Hakeem and other hof great centers generally peaked around 30 with consistent improvement from year to year. but that ship has sailed.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hyperion said:


> I said that to give an out that while he wasn't great, he was improving to the point where I couldn't bitch about him being selected to be an all star starter. Hakeem and other hof great centers generally peaked around 30 with consistent improvement from year to year. but that ship has sailed.


Moses Malone won the first of three MVPs at age 24. Hakeem Olajuwon was arguably the best center in the NBA at 24 after undressing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the '86 Finals and pretty much held that regard until his mid-30s.

At his best, Yao wasn't remotely in the class of Moses or Olajuwon no matter how much you try to cherry-pick. Moses and Olajuwon were much more durable, considerably better scorers and offensive weapons, much better rebounders (especially Moses on the offensive boards) and definitely better defenders (especially Olajuwon).

Yao is a better passer than Malone, but it's debateable that he was better than Olajuwon in that category. So other than the fact that Yao was inferior to Moses and Olajuwon in practically every aspect, I can see how someone could make the statement that Yao "potentially could be the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets."

I'm not even going to mention that Elvin Hayes also played center in his first tour in Houston, but that would be a case of bludgeoning this statement even more.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Sir Patchwork said:


> Even these numbers are Patrick Ewing-ish type numbers. Ewing was between 20 and 23 PER every season except 1 where he was 25.8.
> 
> Yao Ming when healthy was not Hakeem or Shaquille (although I believe this was a strawman, nobody said he was that good) but he certainly played at a hall of fame level about the level of Ewing.


No, you merely had someone say Yao potentially "could have been the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets" -- which is saying that Yao could have been better than Hakeem Olajuwon (and Moses Malone), which is preposterous.

Actually, comparing Yao Ming to Patrick Ewing is the strawman. Ewing was a 20-point-per-game scorer from his rookie season until he reached his mid-30s. Ewing had six full seasons (minimum 70 games) where he averaged at least 23.9 points per game.

Ewing was a better rebounder and defender than Yao. Ewing actually pulled down more boards per game despite playing on the same teams with established boardsmen like Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason. 

Ewing was active enough to play weakside defender and versatile enough to play on the back of Rick Pitino's trap-and-pressing teams and Pat Riley's halfcourt thuggish defensive schemes. If Yao couldn't guard the basket, he had to have players funneled toward him to have a shot at being effective defensively. Ewing was a physical presence on the defensive end, something Yao would never be accused of.

Yao certainly didn't have on-the-floor team presence of Ewing, either. It's hilarious, when you look at how Yao deferred to people like Steve Francis or played shotgun to a injury-prone and slightly to greatly diminished Tracy McGrady. Ewing was clearly the alpha dog type.

Not to mention in addition to being one of the greatest collegiate players ever, Ewing's NBA career consisted of leading the Knicks from the owning the first pick in the '85 lottery back to respectability, culminating in losing in Game 7 of the '94 Finals. With Yao, Houston made it out of the first round one time.

Patrick Ewing? Seriously, aim lower. Try "slightly better than Jack Sikma."


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

or Rik Smits


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Exactly right. But Yao had a high PER!


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

Najee said:


> Moses Malone won the first of three MVPs at age 24. Hakeem Olajuwon was arguably the best center in the NBA at 24 after undressing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the '86 Finals and pretty much held that regard until his mid-30s.
> 
> At his best, Yao wasn't remotely in the class of Moses or Olajuwon no matter how much you try to cherry-pick. Moses and Olajuwon were much more durable, considerably better scorers and offensive weapons, much better rebounders (especially Moses on the offensive boards) and definitely better defenders (especially Olajuwon).
> 
> ...


I never said he was, I simply pointed out that it doesn't matter what his potential was. He got injured too often to improve. I always felt that he wasn't even the best player in his draft.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

He clearly wasn't the best player from his own draft.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hyperion said:


> I never said he was, I simply pointed out that it doesn't matter what his potential was. He got injured too often to improve. I always felt that he wasn't even the best player in his draft.


Personally, I thought Yao Ming already had reached his maximum potential. At most, he would have been more efficient, but he already maxed out his strengths. His weaknesses were inherent things that only God could have fixed.

The injuries merely cut down his years of service. But I didn't envision Yao being much more than what he already had shown.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> He clearly wasn't the best player from his own draft.


Dude couldn't even register a first team all-NBA nod, despite playing in an era with a fading Shaq, a new version of prime Kevin Willis (Dwight Howard) that emerged at the end of the decade and little else at the center spot.


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## Idunkonyou (Feb 23, 2003)

Not even close.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> No, you merely had someone say Yao potentially "could have been the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets" -- which is saying that Yao could have been better than Hakeem Olajuwon (and Moses Malone), which is preposterous.



I love how in a thread of numerous pages you continue to focus on a single ridiculous comment made by someone who isn't even participating in the discussion any more. I guess it's easier than actually addressing the many valid points raised since then.



> Ewing was a 20-point-per-game scorer from his rookie season until he reached his mid-30s. Ewing had six full seasons (minimum 70 games) where he averaged at least 23.9 points per game.


Once again, the point is that _when healthy_ Yao played at _near that level_. There's no point bringing up Ewing's longevity. No one is saying Yao should get into the HoF purely on on-court accomplishments.



> Ewing was a better rebounder and defender than Yao. Ewing actually pulled down more boards per game despite playing on the same teams with established boardsmen like Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason.


He really wasn't a better rebounder. Rebounds per game are not a good measure, since the Knicks played at a faster pace, meaning there were more possessions available in which to grab rebounds. Yao also played fewer minutes per game due to spending parts of seasons recovering from injury. Rebound rate is a far more accurate measure of a player's rebounding ability, as it shows the percentage of missed shots a player rebounded when he was on the floor. Ewing's rebound rate in his prime ('89 to '95) was 16.5. Yao's from '06 to '09 was 16.8. 

And despite, as you suggest, Yao not having played with established boardsmen, Houston was among the best defensive rebounding teams throughout Yao's prime. (In '05, 1st. '06 - 6th. '07 - 1st. '08 - 7th. '09 - 6th. Now? 21st.)



> Ewing was active enough to play weakside defender and versatile enough to play on the back of Rick Pitino's trap-and-pressing teams and Pat Riley's halfcourt thuggish defensive schemes. If Yao couldn't guard the basket, he had to have players funneled toward him to have a shot at being effective defensively. Ewing was a physical presence on the defensive end, something Yao would never be accused of.


The Rockets immediately became a good (then great) defensive side upon drafting Yao, and returned to mediocrity as soon as he got injured. They had both the fewest points allowed in the paint and the lowest opponent fg% in the paint in '07, and were near the best in the league in those categories as well as defensive rating and defensive rebounding throughout Yao's prime. Yao consistently held his biggest rivals to well below their season averages. I watched Olajuwon play, and Robinson, and Mutombo. Yao was not as good as those guys defensively. But over the hundreds of his games I have seen, and from what virtually every defensive statistic suggests, Yao Ming was a very, very good defender.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> Yao had two seasons where his PER was 25.6 (2005-06) and 26.5 (2006-07), but both of those seasons where injury-riddled (missing 59 games total). When looking at more complete seasons, his PER was typically between 20.6 (2002-03) and 23.2 (2004-05).


 
Disingenuous. Why would you look at Yao's rookie and sophomore seasons when discussing his prime? The argument here is not that Yao Ming played at an HoF level when he was a 22-year old rookie straight out of the Chinese Basketball Association. It's that when healthy in his prime he played at an HoF level. 



> It's very possible that the 2005-06 and 2006-07 PERs would have gone down had he played more games, and returned to normal levels.


Lol. Why? Look at his monthly splits. His production remains consistent over the course of each season. In fact, his weakness was his slow start to the season - a rhythm player, Yao got slightly better as the season progressed. (Please name one other star player in the history of the NBA whose production tended to fall off significantly towards the end of the season.)



> IMO, that is the true Yao Ming -- a guy who scored about 18 points per game and grabbed a shade under 9 rebounds per game with a PER somewhere in the low 20s. An average defender despite his size advantage, but crafty enough to make himself a wall in front of a basket. People outrageously saying he could have been the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets or trying to make him into some Chinese Shaq is not close to reality.


Lets look at this piece by piece.

_"a guy who scored about 18 points per game"_
No. During his prime form '06 to '09 it was more like 22.5 ppg (and significantly higher if you exclude the games he played few minutes while recovering from injury).

_"a shade under 9 rebounds per game"_
No. During his prime it was slightly over 10 rpg.

_"with a PER somewhere in the low 20s"_
No. His PER in the four years from '06 to '09 was 24.4. 

_"An average defender"_
As has already been established, he was a very good defender by practically every metric out there. There really isn't more than a scrap of evidence to support the argument that he was merely an average defender.



> "People outrageously saying he could have been the best center in the history of the Houston Rockets or trying to make him into some Chinese Shaq is not close to reality."


I think one person may have said that near the start of the thread. Certainly not the people who remain in this discussion. Let it go; it's only going to get your blood pressure up.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> Some people clearly did not watch the Rockets enough. When healthy, for about four years Yao was definitely a HoF-caliber player.
> 
> After getting healthy after the All-Star Break in '06, Yao had a PER of 30. Even including the early part of the season when he was playing hurt, he finished with a PER of 26. His best two-season combined PER is 26. Compared to other big men, for some context:
> 
> ...





Sir Patchwork said:


> Even these numbers are Patrick Ewing-ish type numbers. Ewing was between 20 and 23 PER every season except 1 where he was 25.8.
> 
> Yao Ming when healthy was not Hakeem or Shaquille (although I believe this was a strawman, nobody said he was that good) but he certainly played at a hall of fame level about the level of Ewing. That much is obvious. He just couldn't sustain it due to being incredibly injury prone.


You have to love half-baked arguments like these, purposely misconstrued with out-of-context references. Seriously, using Yao's PER for a portion of the 2005-06 season to infer that he was a dominant player? You have got to be kidding. 

And who cares what his PER was in 2005-06 and 2006-07, when he missed 35 percent of the games played in that span? Why wasn't his PER of 2007-08 cited, when he played in 55 games (compared to the 48 he logged the previous season)? Was it because it was 22.5, which is more in line with what it was when he played in 70-plus games per year?

If you look at Yao's numbers over a long period, they are roughly the same. If you look at Yao in his prime years (basically, take out his rookie season and this season), they are no different than his numbers in games where he played at least 70 games a season (basically, take out this season and 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons).

*Prime Yao (2003-04 through 2008-09):* 66 games, 20.44 points (on .528 FG% and .834 FT%), 9.6 rebounds, 1.59 assists and 1.93 blocks per game in 2,224 minutes.

*Healthy Yao (2002-03 through 2004-05 and 2008-09):* 80 games, 17.2 points (on .531 FG% and .817 FT%), 8.8 rebounds, 1.43 assists and 1.91 blocks per game in 2,527 minutes.

There practically is little to any difference in Yao's production. It's all-star level production without any context to it, but certainly not "dominant center" category.

BTW, here is Patrick Ewing's typical production during his prime:

*Prime Ewing (1987-88 through 1996-97):* 80 games, 24 points (on .515 FG% and .748 FT%), 10.64 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 2.84 blocks per game in 3,240 minutes.

Moreover, Ewing typically took more shots from the field and the free-throw line than prime Yao or healthy Yao:

*Ewing:* 753 of 1,461 from the field; 410 of 548 from the line.

*Prime Yao:* 493 of 934 from the field; 361 of 433 from the line.

*Healthy Yao:* 510 of 959 from the field; 358 of 438 from the line.

I don't see how Yao is comparable to Ewing, particularly when Yao's numbers are practically the same in his prime as they were in his healthy years.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> Disingenuous. Why would you look at Yao's rookie and sophomore seasons when discussing his prime? The argument here is not that Yao Ming played at an HoF level when he was a 22-year old rookie straight out of the Chinese Basketball Association. It's that when healthy in his prime he played at an HoF level.


When Yao was healthy (playing in at least 70 games in a season) and in his prime is only two seasons: 2004-05 (a PER of 23.2) and 2008-09 (22.7 PER). You're counting seasons where Yao missed 25, 34 and 27 games as "hall of fame level." 



Hakeem said:


> During his prime form '06 to '09 it was more like 22.5 ppg (and significantly higher if you exclude the games he played few minutes while recovering from injury).


Yao's first all-NBA season was in 2003-04, so it stands reasonable to count that. For that matter, the 2004-05 season is also reasonable to count. Both seasons he played 82 and 80 games, respectively.

So you've got three full seasons including 2008-09, and portions of three seasons where he missed roughly 25 percent of the games played during that span.



Hakeem said:


> I think one person may have said that near the start of the thread. Certainly not the people who remain in this discussion. Let it go; it's only going to get your blood pressure up.


Don't flatter yourself. It's actually pretty silly to think you can infer someone's disposition merely by reading words on a computer screen.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> And who cares what his PER was in 2005-06 and 2006-07, when he missed 35 percent of the games played in that span? Why wasn't his PER of 2007-08 cited, when he played in 55 games (compared to the 48 he logged the previous season)? Was it because it was 22.5, which is more in line with what it was when he played in 70-plus games per year?
> 
> If you look at Yao's numbers over a long period, they are roughly the same. If you look at Yao in his prime years (basically, take out his rookie season and this season), they are no different than his numbers in games where he played at least 70 games a season (basically, take out this season and 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons).
> 
> ...


So, basically what you're saying is that you get to define Yao's prime to suit your argument? Pretty laughable. Literally every single Houston Rockets fan will be able to tell you the exact point at which Yao hit his prime. Ask anyone. It was after the All-Star break in '05-06 after he recovered from the toe infection that had been bothering him for over a year. He transformed from merely a good center with a nice turnaround jumper and jump hook who drew semi-regular double teams, to one of the best shot-creators in the game who drew a double team nearly every time he touched the ball. Virtually two different players. 

It's not like we don't have a large enough sample size to consider Yao's prime from '06 to '09. That was 250 games. It was over the course of four years. Including games when he was playing with an injury, and others in which he was regaining his health after an injury. It is in no way skewed in his favour. It's flat out four straight years of time, and nearly 9,000 consecutive court minutes.

Looking at his rookie and sophomore seasons makes about as much sense as comparing Yao's career PER (23) with Ewing's (21). That wouldn't be fair because it considers seasons outside of each of their primes. 

For what feels like the dozenth time, the point is that _in his prime_, when healthy, Yao played at _near the level_ of Patrick Ewing.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> (Patrick Ewing) really wasn't a better rebounder. Rebounds per game are not a good measure, since the Knicks played at a faster pace, meaning there were more possessions available in which to grab rebounds. Yao also played fewer minutes per game due to spending parts of seasons recovering from injury.


The argument is still a poor one, though. Yao Ming didn't play with another teammate who would be considered a standout rebounder. In fact, some of the best rebounding teammates Yao had were guards Steve Francis and Tracy McGrady.

Conversely, Patrick Ewing had a lot of years contesting Charles Oakley and people like Anthony Mason for rebounds. Ewing still has the higher career average than Yao, who usually was paired with a mediocre rebounder like Juwan Howard or a role player like Chuck Hayes at power forward on the front line. Even then, it wasn't uncommon for T-Mac or Francis to be the team's best rebounder after Yao.

Moreover, Yao is playing in an era with hardly any center of note. Shaquille O'Neal moved to the Eastern Conference mostly after the 2004 Finals. Dwight Howard came along later. So the fact that a 7-foot-6 Yao only had two seasons where he grabbed 10 boards a game without having much competition is not that impressive.

And I'll look at the pace number for the Ewing-led Knicks teams. Last I looked, they played a physical, banging, halfcourt game.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> So, basically what you're saying is that you get to define Yao's prime to suit your argument? ... Literally every single Houston Rockets fan will be able to tell you the exact point at which Yao hit his prime.


No, the point is very apparent:

Yao's first all-NBA season was 2003-04. No ands, ifs and buts about that. Given the sample population here (namely, Yao's injury-filled and short career), it would be a little idiotic to argue that an all-NBA season should be thrown out the window simply because you don't like the vantage point.

As for Patrick Ewing, I used his first all-NBA season (1987-88) through 1996-97, his final all-star season. Nothing to cry foul over.

In fact, you want to ignore Yao's first three and a half years in order to discuss what you arbitrarily call "Yao's prime." By your selective definition, Yao's prime is part of the 2005-06 season, the 2006-07 season where he missed 34 games, the 2007-08 season where he missed 27 games and the 2008-09 season.

Moreover, you want to pick out additional games where you can say he didn't perform well because of health considerations. The problem with your argument is:

1.) You somehow want to act like the health component is not part of the equation of "prime Yao," when his durability issue is a major part of the evaluation.

2.) Outside of PER (which is being used in a purposely selective manner), there is not a ton of which you're offering statistically. In reality, there is not a whole lot of difference in what Yao did long term. 

As for the last sentence, the fact that you sound like an obviously biased Rockets fan may be the reason you seem stunned that several people are finding this "dominant center" argument a little laughable. Maybe you need to stop using the Rockets as the center of your basketball evaluation here and be more objective.



Hakeem said:


> For what feels like the dozenth time, the point is that _in his prime_, when healthy, Yao played at _near the level_ of Patrick Ewing.


Which is pretty much what you don't understand. You're cobbling together very selective pieces of seasons to try to come close to comparing Yao's prime with a player who put up better production and whose prime was playing 80 games a year like clockwork for a decade. The fact you have to use so many contingencies and heavy contextual numbers and explanations in order to present an argument should tell you that it's a reach.


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## OneBadLT123 (Oct 4, 2005)

Since when does a players 2nd year in the league count as being in their prime? Is Yao the only player with that exemption? I mean seriously Najee you are digging here trying to accumlate low level stats to support your argument. You have been proven wrong with numerous stats, yet keep trying to solidify your point of Yao being a 18ppg 9rbg player in this prime of 02-10.

We get it.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

OneBadLT123 said:


> Since when does a players 2nd year in the league count as being in their prime? Is Yao the only player with that exemption? I mean seriously Najee you are digging here trying to accumlate low level stats to support your argument. You have been proven wrong with numerous stats, yet keep trying to solidify your point of Yao being a 18ppg 9rbg player in this prime of 02-10.
> 
> We get it.


I have yet to see a stat I posted that has been proven wrong. You're free to show otherwise, but saying Yao was a guy who typically put up 18 points and about 9 rebounds was a general summation of his production.

You're talking about a guy with an injury-riddled seven-year NBA career. Not a whole population size to begin with. 

What is laughable is you're trying to say the same guy who was an all-NBA player in that second year should not "have that second year count" -- particularly when it's not that far off from his career averages.

IMO, when players start registering all-NBA seasons regularly, it's fair to say "they are in their prime." I don't see what is so outrageous about that; LeBron was a perennial all-NBA level player starting in his second season. Players like that generally better only by being possibly more efficient, but at that point they already are among the best in the league.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

JT3000 said:


> Do you have any idea how many players would make the Hall if you only took primes into consideration? Doesn't work that way.


is anyone saying that's how it should work?



e-monk said:


> a) because 'HOF caliber player' is a meaningless phrase in the context of this converstion - the more appropriate phrase is HOF caliber career - for all we know Len Bias was a 'HOF caliber player' you dont get into the HOF because you hit some sort of quality threshold, you get in because of what you did


it's really not that hard to say that he was hall of fame caliber in his prime but that his prime was long enough to warrant making the hall based on his nba playing career. i don't understand why you're having so much trouble with that.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

how are all these people popping up actually pretending that yao wasn't a very good defensive player?


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## OneBadLT123 (Oct 4, 2005)

rocketeer said:


> how are all these people popping up actually pretending that yao wasn't a very good defensive player?


I dont get it. He was the anchor and teams best defender on the top 3 defensive team. Yet people still think he somehow sucked. And when they are shown he was indeed a good defender, its because he's tall

It just never ends with these people. I just dont get it.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

No one is saying Yao Ming sucked on defense. However, implying or saying that he was this dominant defensive player with innate and uncanny instincts and an itimidating force like he was Alonzo Mourning or Mark Eaton is stretching it.

The only stat was shown is one that has been proven vague and specious (defensive rating). The same stat that states that Charlie Ward was a much better defender than Michael Jordan, and didn't even rate Alvin Robertson in the top 250 defenders.

But I understand. Most of you people are in your early to mid-20s and didn't actually see many or any dominant big men play in your lifetimes. Even Shaq's dominance is a little ahead of some people here, so Yao is part of your frame of reference for "dominant big man." 

Of course, in an era where Kendrick Perkins starts on a championship-caliber team and Tyson Chandler has no problems starting everywhere he bounces, I can understand the overly generous evaluations of Yao Ming and the overhyping of Greg Oden. It doesn't mean it's an accurate assessment, though.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> Literally every single Houston Rockets fan will be able to tell you the exact point at which Yao hit his prime. Ask anyone. It was after the All-Star break in '05-06 after he recovered from the toe infection that had been bothering him for over a year. He transformed from merely a good center with a nice turnaround jumper and jump hook who drew semi-regular double teams, to one of the best shot-creators in the game who drew a double team nearly every time he touched the ball. Virtually two different players.
> 
> It's not like we don't have a large enough sample size to consider Yao's prime from '06 to '09. That was 250 games. It was over the course of four years. Including games when he was playing with an injury, and others in which he was regaining his health after an injury. It is in no way skewed in his favour.


Yao Ming's numbers in his prime, according to Hakeem:

*Yao Ming, post-All Star Game break 2006 through the 2008-09 season:*

51 games, 22.4 points (on .527 FG% and .863 FT%), 10.3 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks per game in 34.8 minutes per game.

What I posted earlier:

*Prime Yao (2003-04 through 2008-09):* 66 games, 20.4 points (on .528 FG% and .834 FT%), 9.6 rebounds, 1.59 assists and 1.93 blocks per game in 33.7 minutes per game.

Once again, not a big difference here. Even by Hakeem's selected vantage point, Yao averaged only 2 more points and 1 more minute per game. His blocks and assists averages were incrementally increased and he grabbed less than one more rebound per game.

Not a whole lot of difference for the whining by Hakeem and OneBadLT123 that I picked a premature "prime years" reference point, IMO. The way you two were whining I would have thought Yao put up Kareem- or Wilt-like production during his "golden age."


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

And since Hakeem and OneBadLT123 want to make a poor argument by putting words in people's mouths, here is what I said:



Najee said:


> When looking at Yao's seasons where he played at least 70 games, he never averaged more than 19.7 points and 9.9 rebounds per game (both in 2008-09). IMO, that was the only season where Yao was truly the best player and offensive option on the Rockets during his career.
> 
> IMO, that is the true Yao Ming -- a guy who scored about 18 points per game and grabbed a shade under 9 rebounds per game with a PER somewhere in the low 20s.


The first paragraph was actually quoting Yao's stats. The second paragraph was my very general summation and personal assessment of Yao's production over his career. I'm well aware that Yao's career averages are 19 points and 9.2 rebounds per game, but to me those numbers are slightly boosted by his "out of his mind" production of the second half of the 2005-06 season and the 2006-07 season.

In four seasons where he played at least 70 games, Yao sports averages of 17.2 points and 8.85 rebounds per game. Throw out his rookie season, and his averages are 18.5 points and 9 rebounds per game. IMO, the 2003-04, 2004-05 and 2008-09 seasons seem to be closer to reflecting Yao's performance level.

Hakeem and OneBadLT123 are the ones cherry-picking certain segments of Yao's career and trying to misrepresent his production as being much greater than it was.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Sorry, but I couldn't let this statement pass me:



Hakeem said:


> (Patrick Ewing) really wasn't a better rebounder. Rebounds per game are not a good measure, since the Knicks played at a faster pace, meaning there were more possessions available in which to grab rebounds. Yao also played fewer minutes per game due to spending parts of seasons recovering from injury. Rebound rate is a far more accurate measure of a player's rebounding ability, as it shows the percentage of missed shots a player rebounded when he was on the floor. Ewing's rebound rate in his prime ('89 to '95) was 16.5. Yao's from '06 to '09 was 16.8.


Oh, is that the rationalization for Yao Ming finishing in the top 10 in rebounds and defensive rebounds for a season ONCE his entire career? Keep in mind, Yao had four seasons where he played in at least 77 games and for several seasons his top rebounding teammate was a guard like Tracy McGrady or Steve Francis.

Patrick Ewing finished in the top 10 in rebounds and defensive rebounds for a season EIGHT times in his career. And keep in mind, he was doing on teams where he was sharing the rebounding duties with Charles Oakley and occasionally a third glass-eater in Anthony Mason. Not to mention in an era where he was competing against elite centers on a much more regular basis.

The rebounding rate really doesn't make a case for Yao, given he didn't have teammates who could board like Oakley or Mason (or lesser versions of Xavier McDaniel and Buck Williams, at various stages) competing with him for the ball. Much less fighting off prime versions of Hakeem, David Robinson, Robert Parish, Bill Laimbeer, a young Shaq, etc., on a regular basis.

Sometimes, you can use analysis by paralysis with numbers -- so much that you actually don't watch the games and start making comments that don't jive with simple observation and actual performance.


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## Pump Bacon (Dec 11, 2010)

e-monk said:


> "arguably best center" moment #1 of yet another dude over-valuing Yao - early it was Shaq, later it was Dwight - it was never Yao and it was never arguable


Disagreed, a healthy Yao > Dwight. This was especially evident in their head to head matchups. Yao's height really neutered Dwight's offensive game as well. Plus Yao's own offense was lightyears ahead of Dwight's. 



> "overall game" over-valuation moment #2 - defense is half the game so overall not close, seriously


Yao's defense was good so nope, disagreed again.



> Yao and Dirk dont belong in the same sentence (let alone 'most guards' (holy crap do you really expect anyone to respond to this nonsense?)) re shooting #3 moment of your over-valuing Yao


Yao did shoot very well and not just for a big. Looks like you replied although I'd rather you didn't since your posts have zero substance.



> moment #4: most unique talent in the history of the game? he set high jump and triple jump records against NCAA competition, he played guard for the Harlem Globetrotters, he lead the league in assists twice as a center - or he was 6'9" and the best point guard of all time - or half a dozen other guys - your dude was pretty much Z or Rik Smits but slightly better (and he was about .5 of a Sabonis) Jesus get a sense of perspective



He's the only arguable HOF Chinese bball player and the dude was a giant on and off the court - makes him pretty damn unique. He was a huge pop culture icon and I doubt the NBA ever sees another giant like him but yes there are plenty of other cases for a player being "quite possibly the most unique player in the history of the NBA", hence the the word "possibly"


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> When Yao was healthy (playing in at least 70 games in a season) and in his prime is only two seasons: 2004-05 (a PER of 23.2) and 2008-09 (22.7 PER). You're counting seasons where Yao missed 25, 34 and 27 games as "hall of fame level."


Why would 48, 55 or 57 game seasons not be considered large enough sample sizes to be included in his prime? Add the 77-game season following that stretch, and it's _four years_ of time. Hardly cherry picking. Why is the line drawn arbitrarily at 70 games? Once again, _when healthy_, in his prime Yao played at an HoF level. That's a four-year stretch in which he played 250 games. Not before that, not since. That was his prime. I'm sorry if it doesn't suit your argument.



> Yao's first all-NBA season was in 2003-04, so it stands reasonable to count that. For that matter, the 2004-05 season is also reasonable to count. Both seasons he played 82 and 80 games, respectively.


All-NBA selections are affected by factors outside of a player's actual performance - primarily the performance of other players. A player's prime is the stretch of time during which he plays his best basketball. Yao's basketball was clearly worse in '04 and '05, therefore those years do not fall within his prime.



> The argument is still a poor one, though. Yao Ming didn't play with another teammate who would be considered a standout rebounder. In fact, some of the best rebounding teammates Yao had were guards Steve Francis and Tracy McGrady.


Yao Ming didn't play with another teammate who would be considered a standout rebounder, true. Yet the Rockets were consistently among the best rebounding teams when Yao played, then fell off a cliff as soon as he got injured. You don't think that speaks for Yao's rebounding prowess?



> Moreover, Yao is playing in an era with hardly any center of note. Shaquille O'Neal moved to the Eastern Conference mostly after the 2004 Finals. Dwight Howard came along later.


True, there weren't many centers of note. But you're confusing great centers with great rebounders. There were many excellent rebounders such as Howard, Okafor, Camby, Duncan, Chandler, Garnett and Wallace. Furthermore, Shaq's rebound rate in the mid '90s was no worse than it was in the early and mid 2000's.



> So the fact that a 7-foot-6 Yao only had two seasons where he grabbed 10 boards a game without having much competition is not that impressive.


1) The fact that he is 7'6" is irrelevant. 2) I like how you just ignore the whole Rebound Rate thing. It's indisputably a better stat that rebounds per game and there's really no excuse for using Rpg in lieu of RbR. Yao's Rbr in his best four-year period of basketball was higher than Ewing's in Ewing's best four years. It was also higher than Olajuwon's in his best two seasons ('94 and '95) and Robinson's in his best two (also '94 and '95).



> And I'll look at the pace number for the Ewing-led Knicks teams. Last I looked, they played a physical, banging, halfcourt game.[/FONT][/color]


Feel free to look it up. The pace in general was higher in the '90s than in the mid 2000's. The Rockets in the Yao years also played a halfcourt game. 



> Moreover, you want to pick out additional games where you can say he didn't perform well because of health considerations.


Not at all. All the statistics I've quoted are for whole seasons. I've only mentioned that these numbers include games in which he played hurt, but I haven't removed these games or adjusted the stats for them in any way. As I've already stated, Yao's PER in the period of '06, '07, '08 and '09, over 250 games, _including games in which he played hurt_, was 24.4.

For context, in Ewing's best four-year stretch his PER was 23.6.



> Outside of PER (which is being used in a purposely selective manner), there is not a ton of which you're offering statistically. In reality, there is not a whole lot of difference in what Yao did long term.


I've offered the two most relevant individual statistics out there for centers: PER and rebound rate. I've used figures from one-on-one matchups against Duncan, Howard and Amare (which you still haven't addressed yet). I've also used the Rockets' rankings in various team defensive statistics before, during and after Yao's time there, such as team defensive rating, team points in the paint allowed, and team defensive rating (which you also haven't addressed). 



> What is laughable is you're trying to say the same guy who was an all-NBA player in that second year should not "have that second year count" -- particularly when it's not that far off from his career averages.


Just step back and think for a moment. Why would we be insisting that Yao's second year was outside the boundaries of his prime? Could it be because Yao _wasn't as good_ that year? And, if he wasn't as good, wouldn't that mean he wasn't yet in his prime then?

The more you insist that '04 and '05 were part of Yao's prime the clearer it becomes that you flat out didn't watch the guy play much at all. There was a huge difference in Yao's game pre '06 and post '06. It went beyond the numbers - defensively, drawing double teams, shot-creating. The guy clearly figured it out in '06 and stepped into the most productive phase of his career. That was when his prime started.



> No one is saying Yao Ming sucked on defense. However, implying or saying that he was this dominant defensive player with innate and uncanny instincts and an itimidating force like he was Alonzo Mourning or Mark Eaton is stretching it.


No one said he had uncanny instincts. He just had phenomenal size, tremendous lower body strength, surprisingly good lateral movement, and he studied his opponents' games very thoroughly. Different players have different keys to their success. That was how Yao did it.



> The only stat was shown is one that has been proven vague and specious (defensive rating). The same stat that states that Charlie Ward was a much better defender than Michael Jordan, and didn't even rate Alvin Robertson in the top 250 defenders.


Again with the focus on a throwaway comment made pages ago, while disregarding the important stuff. I agree that individual defensive rating is crap. But what about the impact of Yao's presence on the Rockets' team defensive rating (which is an exceptionally useful stat), or Yao's one-on-one matchup results against his biggest rivals?


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

OneBadLT123 said:


> I dont get it. He was the anchor and teams best defender on the top 3 defensive team. Yet people still think he somehow sucked. And when they are shown he was indeed a good defender, its because he's tall
> 
> It just never ends with these people. I just dont get it.


it's really like we're back in yao's rookie season with people throwing rik skits name around.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Unless Hakeem is actually John Hollinger, he likely doesn't know how to calculate PER. Taking the PER of a certain number of seasons and dividing them by the number of seasons doesn't mean anything.

Not to mention throwing around numbers without any context like these players are in a vacuum, such as rebounding rate. Despite the fact that Patrick Ewing played on the same teams for years with Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason (not to mention various years with other renowned rebounders like Larry Johnson and Buck Williams), Ewing ranked in the top 10 in rebounding (total and defensive) eight times during his career. Yao Ming did that one time in his career -- and that's including four seasons where he played in at least 77 games.

Keep in mind, Ewing was doing this consistently with Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Karl Malone as his peers. Not to mention with Oakley (who finished in the top 10 in rebounding six times) as his teammate. But Yao consistently doesn't rate in the top 10 of his peers despite playing in an era with hardly any quality centers beyond a fading Shaq and an emerging Dwight Howard and guards like Steve Francis and Tracy McGrady as Houston's second best rebounder.

But yet he wants to make the argument that Yao was a better rebounder than Ewing?!? Assuming he actually calcuated the rebounding rate (taking the number of rebounds grabbed vs. rebounds available over a certain number of years) vs. taking the annual numbers and dividing them by a number of years, of course. If you ask me, I would argue that Yao's rebounding numbers are ones that are actually inflated.

But of course, that would mean you actually have to watch the game and actually put some numbers into context.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> Why would 48, 55 or 57 game seasons not be considered large enough sample sizes to be included in his prime? Add the 77-game season following that stretch, and it's _four years_ of time. Hardly cherry picking. Why is the line drawn arbitrarily at 70 games?


Using your own defined parameters for Yao Ming's prime (post-2006 NBA All-Star Game through the 2008-09 season), Yao's numbers were incrementally different from the numbers I posted as his prime (2003-04 through 2008-09). Yao only averaged 2 more points per game and less than 1 more rebound per game in your definition of Yao's prime (which was 205 games in which he played, BTW) vs. my definition of Yao's prime (which was 399 games that he played).

Seriously, the way you were going on you would have thought there was a huge difference. In nearly five seasons (my prime definition), Yao produced very similar numbers to what he produced in two and a half seasons (your prime definition) but you're acting Yao is being robbed. WTFever.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> Unless Hakeem is actually John Hollinger, he likely doesn't know how to calculate PER. Taking the PER of a certain number of seasons and dividing them by the number of seasons doesn't mean anything.
> 
> Not to mention throwing around numbers without any context like these players are in a vacuum, such as rebounding rate. Despite the fact that Patrick Ewing played on the same teams for years with Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason (not to mention various years with other renowned rebounders like Larry Johnson and Buck Williams), Ewing ranked in the top 10 in rebounding (total and defensive) eight times during his career. Yao Ming did that one time in his career -- and that's including four seasons where he played in at least 77 games.
> 
> ...


Hahaha Najee, man, I never realised you were such a stickler when it came to the stats. But ok, technically you're right. We can't simply add up rebound rates for each season then divide by the number of seasons. We need to weight for the number of minutes played. Recalculating Yao's PER and rebound rate in the four-year period from '06 to '09, weighting for minutes played each season:

PER: 24.1 (previous calculation 24.4)
RbR: 16.8 (previous calculation 16.8)

And for Ewing: 

PER: 23.6 (previous calculation 23.6)
Rbr: 15.9 (previous calculation 16.5)

So, yeah, the argument stands.

There's also that annoying little point about how the Rockets were an excellent rebounding team during Yao's prime despite having no quality rebounders other than Yao, then plummetting as soon as he got injured.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> Using your own defined parameters for Yao Ming's prime (post-2006 NBA All-Star Game through the 2008-09 season), Yao's numbers were incrementally different from the numbers I posted as his prime (2003-04 through 2008-09). Yao only averaged 2 more points per game and less than 1 more rebound per game in your definition of Yao's prime (which was 205 games in which he played, BTW) vs. my definition of Yao's prime (which was 399 games that he played).
> 
> Seriously, the way you were going on you would have thought there was a huge difference. In nearly five seasons (my prime definition), Yao produced very similar numbers to what he produced in two and a half seasons (your prime definition) but you're acting Yao is being robbed. WTFever.


You said 18 ppg and "a shade under 9 rpg". When in actual fact, over what almost anyone who watched him play would agree was his prime, it was actually 22.5 ppg and 10 rpg. That's not an enormous difference, but it's significant enough. Not to mention the difference in his defense and in the defensive attention he drew from '06 onwards.

Btw, while he only really turned his game on after the Break in '06, the numbers I've been using include the entire '06 season.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem, what are you not understanding? Patrick Ewing should have a lower percentage of his team's rebounds in a particular period because he played the bulk of his career beside Charles Oakley, a guy who consistently placed in the top 10 in rebounding himself. Not to mention playing with other guys like Anthony Mason and declined versions of Xavier McDaniel, Larry Johnson and Buck Williams (who also could board).

Meanwhile, Yao is playing on teams where at times his best competition for rebounds were guards Steve Francis and Tracy McGrady.

Here is what is more relevant -- where they ranked vs. their peers during their primes. Despite playing with Oakley, Mason and an occasional third glass-eater, Ewing still finished in the top 10 in rebounds and defensive rebounds for a season eight times in his career. And keep in mind, Ewing's career paralleled with the likes of Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman, Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone and David Robinson, among others.

Yao could only do that ONCE -- and that's including four seasons where he played in enough games to be eligible to be counted among the league leaders. And that's despite playing with teams where guards were the second best rebounder on Houston's teams, there were hardly any other quality centers during his time and Yao enjoyed a tremendous size/height advantage over those guys.

What part of that isn't making sense here? A guy who can't place in the top 10 regularly vs. relatively weaker competition is NOT a better rebounder than a guy who consistently placed in the top 10 vs. better peers AND playing with one or two other prominent glass-eaters on his team. Once again, how is Yao a better rebounder than Ewing?

Seriously, stop. When you're trying to make an argument that Yao was a better rebounder than Ewing despite the obvious facts, you really are overrating Yao.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> You said 18 ppg and "a shade under 9 rpg". When in actual fact, over what almost anyone who watched him play would agree was his prime, it was actually 22.5 ppg and 10 rpg. That's not an enormous difference, but it's significant enough. Not to mention the difference in his defense and in the defensive attention he drew from '06 onwards.


You purposely are not reading statements and inventing stuff here. I never said Yao's prime was 18 points per game and a shade under 9 rebounds. I said that was my general impression of his career overall.

In fact, what I posted as Yao's prime vs. your definition of Yao's prime is on this very page (Post 199). Since you purposely are not reading this correctly, let's post it for you:



Najee said:


> Yao Ming's numbers in his prime, according to Hakeem:
> 
> *Yao Ming, post-All Star Game break 2006 through the 2008-09 season:*
> 
> ...


Despite the fact Yao played in nearly twice as many games in my definiton vs. your definition, his numbers were largely similar across the board. Can you explain how you missed that post when it's on this very page?


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Yao Ming is not comparable to Patrick Ewing in any way, shape, or form and he certainly wasn't a better rebounder or even a comparable one. As Najee keeps saying, there is a big difference between actually watching these guys play and just looking at PER.

As far as level of player, not that he is similar to either, but I would put Yao at his peak at a level below Alonzo Mourning and maybe right around the same level as Dikembe Mutombo. Even that might be over-rating him a little bit.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

It's an insane argument, GrandKenyon6. This is what Patrick Ewing did in his prime in a typical year of production:

*Prime Ewing (1987-88 through 1996-97):* 80 games, 24 points (on .515 FG% and .748 FT%), 10.64 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 2.84 blocks per game in 3,240 minutes (40 minutes per game).

The closest Yao came to that level of production was the post-2006 All-Star Game to the 2006-07 season. During that stretch, he averaged 25.3 points (on .527 FG% and .867 FT%), 10.18 rebounds, 1.89 assists and 1.89 blocks per game in 34.26 minutes per contest. But even, it's tempered by the fact that Yao missed 34 games in the 2006-07 season.

Keep in mind, Ewing did that production for a decade. Here, we're talking about Yao playing out of his mind to get to that level and Yao only could do that for the equivalent of one season.

Really, Yao is basically a bigger, slightly better version of Jack Sikma. Or a bigger version of Brad Daugherty with shot-blocking ability. Those guys were also perennial all-star level players, whose style of play and numbers were comparable to Yao's. There is nothing wrong with putting Yao in that ball park. But trying to make Yao out to be better than that is pure comedy.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

There should be a poll to see if Amare Stoudemire should be a Hall of Famer. I'd be willing to bet the people who think Yao was a HOF level player (ignoring the extra stuff and focusing strictly on ability) would vote no for Stoudemire.

Yet Stoudemire has been a better player than Yao for his entire career. Yao wouldn't even win the "I don't need to see what he actually does on the court, he has a high PER!" argument over Stoudemire.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> There should be a poll to see if Amare Stoudemire should be a Hall of Famer. I'd be willing to bet the people who think Yao was a HOF level player (ignoring the extra stuff and focusing strictly on ability) would vote no for Stoudemire.
> 
> Yet Stoudemire has been a better player than Yao for his entire career. Yao wouldn't even win the "I don't need to see what he actually does on the court, he has a high PER!" argument over Stoudemire.


At least Amare Stoudemire has one season under his belt where he was a legitimate MVP candidate (2004-05), not to mention this season so far -- you don't have to do any of this, "For this period of weeks, Yao was an MVP-level player" type of crap rationalization.

You can create the same poll for 2001 draft graduate Pau Gasol, for that matter. It's not like Yao has the "He has a high PER argument" against Gasol, either, and Gasol actually has helped a team win two titles while putting up similar numbers to Yao and playing many more games. And surely they can't ignore Gasol's international play, including being part of the silver medal team at the 2008 Olympics.

I would be willing to bet Gasol and Stoudemire would get a lot of "Hell, no!" type of responses, including from some of the Yao backers.


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## johnnyb (Nov 20, 2010)

rocketeer said:


> yes.


Poor question on my part...has a player been inducted as a player due to off-court reasons? If so, who? 

If he was inducted as a contributor, that's something different to me...but everyone is talking about his ability as a player, which is just not HOF worthy imo.

j-


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Najee said:


> At least Amare Stoudemire has one season under his belt where he was a legitimate MVP candidate (2004-05), not to mention this season so far -- you don't have to do any of this, "For this period of weeks, Yao was an MVP-level player" type of crap rationalization.


amare has never been a legitimate mvp candidate. in 04/05, he finished 9th in mvp voting.



Najee said:


> I would be willing to bet Gasol and Stoudemire would get a lot of "Hell, no!" type of responses, including from some of the Yao backers.


really, there would be a decent amount of people saying "hell, no" but the reasonable response would be it's too early to tell. amare has none of the off court positives that yao has in his favor, so him making the hall will be entirely dependent on where his career goes from here. gasol would be an interesting case with his international play and championship success.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> amare has never been a legitimate mvp candidate. in 04/05, he finished 9th in mvp voting.


I checked what I said, which was "At least Amare Stoudemire has one season under his belt where he was a legitimate MVP candidate (2004-05)."

That's a little different than saying how many votes Stoudemire got.

P.S. Stoudemire also finished sixth in league MVP voting in 2007-08, so I guess that is at least two seasons where he was a legitimate MVP candidate (personally, he should have gotten more votes in 2004-05, but that was a case of the media's crush on Steve Nash).



rocketeer said:


> really, there would be a decent amount of people saying "hell, no" but the reasonable response would be it's too early to tell. amare has none of the off court positives that yao has in his favor, so him making the hall will be entirely dependent on where his career goes from here. gasol would be an interesting case with his international play and championship success.


It actually shows how inconsistent your argument is for Yao Ming. Yao's positives spring mostly from media perception and hype (not to mention an inordinate amount of All-Star Game votes); I don't see how "it's too early to tell" on Stoudemire whose career started the same year as Yao's (including Stoudemire winning the Rookie of the Year award).

The same thing with Gasol, who not only has similar numbers to Yao but that production stayed the same to slightly increased since being traded to the Lakers and being Kobe Bryant's wingman.

But hey, keep going with the ESPN memo that Yao's impact is immense "because so many Chinese people watch the NBA because of him."


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

I don't care about the off the court nonsense. On the court, Amare has been better than Yao Ming, who absolutely was not a Hall of Fame caliber player.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> I don't care about the off the court nonsense. On the court, Amare has been better than Yao Ming, who absolutely was not a Hall of Fame caliber player.


The best way to sum up Yao Ming's career:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0Ve5j7w26I

While people were singing the Yao Ming song and he undeservedly was in the All-Star Game as a rookie, Amare Stoudemire was winning the 2002-03 NBA Rookie of the Year song. 

While Yao's teams made it past the first round once, Stoudemire's teams made it to the Western Conference finals twice.

While Stoudemire has finished twice in the top 10 in league MVP voting, Yao has one season where he finished 12th (2008-09) and another where he finished 14th (2003-04).


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

If you want to argue Yao should get in based on off the court contributions, fine (though I don't necessarily agree), but if you think Yao was a Hall of Fame caliber player, even when healthy, you are flat out wrong. The reality is that he was never even as good as Alonzo Mourning (a great player who likely won't make the HOF).

He was never the dominant force that some of you think he was. Again, it is sad that he got injured, but you are romanticizing and celebrating him as something much more than he actually was.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

I'm still trying to figure out how do they think a guy with one season in the top 10 in rebounding is a better rebounder than a guy with EIGHT top 10 seasons vs. better competition AND a teammate who also was among the top rebounders in the NBA.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> I don't care about the off the court nonsense. On the court, Amare has been better than Yao Ming, who absolutely was not a Hall of Fame caliber player.


amare has not been a better basketball player than yao ming. you can say they've been comparable level players.

and it's fine that you don't care about the rest of the picture with yao's international game and all the foreign interest he's brought to the nba. but if that's the case, there's really no reason for you to be involved in this argument at all. those will be large factors in yao making it to the hall.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Najee said:


> I checked what I said, which was "At least Amare Stoudemire has one season under his belt where he was a legitimate MVP candidate (2004-05)."
> 
> That's a little different than saying how many votes Stoudemire got.


amare isn't a legitimate candidate if he finishes 9th in the voting. i think you can see that. yao never finished a season as a legitimate mvp candidate. that's true. but it's also true that he was a legitimate candidate at times during seasons he had interrupted by injury.



Najee said:


> It actually shows how inconsistent your argument is for Yao Ming. Yao's positives spring mostly from media perception and hype (not to mention an inordinate amount of All-Star Game votes); I don't see how "it's too early to tell" on Stoudemire whose career started the same year as Yao's (including Stoudemire winning the Rookie of the Year award).


there is absolutely no inconsistency. i've said multiple times that yao would probably not be getting in based on his playing career. amare's career has been the same length and of similar caliber. he likely isn't getting in if his career ends right now, so his candidacy would depend on where his career goes from here. yao is a lock because of the international aspect and exposure he brought to the game. if amare had those same things going for him, he'd be a lock. but he doesn't so he's not.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> and it's fine that you don't care about the rest of the picture with yao's international game and all the foreign interest he's brought to the nba. but if that's the case, there's really no reason for you to be involved in this argument at all. those will be large factors in yao making it to the hall.


Because that is the only way Yao Ming would be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. It's surely not on his NBA career solely, as what some people have been arguing.

And PS, Yao is NOT a better player than Amare Stoudemire. Even by league recognition standards, Yao is not a better player.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> amare isn't a legitimate candidate if he finishes 9th in the voting. i think you can see that. yao never finished a season as a legitimate mvp candidate. that's true. but it's also true that he was a legitimate candidate at times during seasons he had interrupted by injury.


You're illogically changing the argument whenever it suits your convenience.

According to you, a guy finishing in the top 10 of MVP voting is not a legitimate MVP candidate (particularly when he was second-team all-NBA that season). But according to you, a player who never finished in the top 10 in voting AND only plays portions of a season was "a legitimate candidate."

Once again, you continue to show some of the most questionable thought process on this site. 

Keep in mind, Amare Stoudemire has had two seasons where he has finished in the top 10 of league MVP voting and is working on a third season. Yao has never had one such season and likely never will be an MVP candidate in the future.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> there is absolutely no inconsistency. i've said multiple times that yao would probably not be getting in based on his playing career. amare's career has been the same length and of similar caliber. he likely isn't getting in if his career ends right now, so his candidacy would depend on where his career goes from here. yao is a lock because of the international aspect and exposure he brought to the game. if amare had those same things going for him, he'd be a lock. but he doesn't so he's not.


You are aware that basketball has been played in China for more than a century before Yao Ming came around, right? All Yao did was become a big-name player from a country that has a billion people in it.

You're free to tell us what was Yao's actual international relevance, other than being the first Chinese player to have an impact on the NBA and having the Chinese nation watching him play on TV. What's likely going to happen is that estimated number of people who watch him play will stop once he retires.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> Hakeem, what are you not understanding? Patrick Ewing should have a lower percentage of his team's rebounds in a particular period because he played the bulk of his career beside Charles Oakley, a guy who consistently placed in the top 10 in rebounding himself. Not to mention playing with other guys like Anthony Mason and declined versions of Xavier McDaniel, Larry Johnson and Buck Williams (who also could board).


1) Ewing played most of his prime with one other quality rebounder - Oakley. You are overrating the impact of having one other quality rebounder. Realise that the extra rebounds taken up by his teammates are partly offset by the additional box-out benefits of having another strong body in there. 

Take the '91-92 season, smack bang in the middle of Ewing's prime. Oakley: 28 mpg, RbR 17.4. Ewing's rebound rate was 16.8 - exactly the same as it was the previous year and very close to his overall RbR avg for his prime. The next-best rebounder of the rotation players was Mason: RbR 14.9 in 27 mpg. That's a weighted avg of 16.2 between them.

Compare that to the Rockets in '08. Their power forwards were Carl Landry with an RbR of 16.4 (17 mpg), Chuck Hayes with 15.3 (20 mpg) and Luis Scola with 14.6 (25 mpg). That's a weighted average of 15.3. So, OK, I'll give you that Ewing had a PF on court who rebounded 0.9% more missed shots than Yao's teammates did. Wow, I'm sure that made a huge difference to Ewing's rebound rate.

2) You haven't addressed the point repeatedly made that Yao was terrific at boxing out and helping his team get rebounds. This was almost purely a result of his size and strong base. The Rockets were among the very best rebounding teams every year of Yao's prime, but now are 21st with Yao out. The year before he was drafted they were 25th. His rookie season they were 11th. His sophomore season 2nd. And all this with, as you say, no other particularly good rebounders on the side. 

3) Why do you keep saying Ewing was a top 10 rebounder, going by Rpg when you should be going by RbR? Furthermore, why look at how he ranked that year instead of what his RbR actually was? Rankings are more dependent on the _distribution_ of rebounds across players and the _number_ of players in the league rather than Ewing's actual rebounding ability. It makes a lot more sense to straight up compare RbR.



> Can you explain how you missed that post when it's on this very page?


I'm sorry, I was just flabbergasted at why you would have said the 18 ppg & 9 rpg statement, so my attention was drawn to that in particular.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> Because that is the only way Yao Ming would be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. It's surely not on his NBA career solely, as what some people have been arguing.


Who's saying it's on his NBA career solely? Everyone's only saying that it's the _combination_ of the enormous number of fans he brought to the NBA and the fact that when he was healthy he played at an HoF level for about 250 games. Neither of those factors alone would be enough, but together they make a strong case.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Hey, Najee -- please address the following key points which have been repeated ad nauseam to little response:

1) Yao's PER over the best four-year stretch of his career (253 games) is higher than Ewing's over the latter's best four-year stretch. 

2) After drafting Yao the Rockets went from the worst defensive side in the league to one of the very best for the next 6 years, then plummetted as soon as he started missing seasons with injury.

3) In his prime Yao ouplayed Duncan, Howard and Amare (his three biggest rivals) and held them to very much below their season averages.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

It's hilarious reading someone trying to use out-of-context advanced metrics in some roundabout effort to say Yao Ming was a better rebounder than Patrick Ewing.

Ewing had eight seasons where he ranked in the top 10 in rebounds. In four of those seasons, he did it with a teammate -- Charles Oakley -- ranked fifth (1988-89), fourth (1990-91), fourth (1993-94) and 10th (1996-97) in the NBA in the same category.

Yao Ming only had ONE season where he ranked in the top 10 in rebounds. Keep in mind, Yao played in a league with few quality centers and on Houston teams where he didn't have to compete with anyone the quality of Oakley (or Anthony Mason, who as a reserve had seasons where he grabbed 7.0, 7.9 and 8.4 rebounds per game) on the glass.

And keep in mind, Ewing was doing this not only with two glass-eating teammates but was ranking among the best in the NBA along with the likes of Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone and David Robinson.

You can keep regurgitating vague numbers all you want, but it still doesn't explain how Yao has only one season among the top 10 in rebounds when he's facing few quality centers and his only competition for a rebound at times was Steve Francis and Tracy McGrady. It's simply not reflected in Yao's work, because he wasn't a better rebounder than Ewing.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

He never played at a Hall of Fame level.

David Robinson had seven seasons with a PER higher than Hakeem Olajuwon's highest season. No one that saw them play would argue Robinson was better than Olajuwon.

PER is not what defines a player's ability.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> 1)Take the '91-92 season, smack bang in the middle of Ewing's prime. Oakley: 28 mpg, RbR 17.4. Ewing's rebound rate was 16.8 - exactly the same as it was the previous year and very close to his overall RbR avg for his prime. The next-best rebounder of the rotation players was Mason: RbR 14.9 in 27 mpg. That's a weighted avg of 16.2 between them.
> 
> Compare that to the Rockets in '08. Their power forwards were Carl Landry with an RbR of 16.4 (17 mpg), Chuck Hayes with 15.3 (20 mpg) and Luis Scola with 14.6 (25 mpg). That's a weighted average of 15.3. So, OK, I'll give you that Ewing had a PF on court who rebounded 0.9% more missed shots than Yao's teammates did. Wow, I'm sure that made a huge difference to Ewing's rebound rate.


See, this is the problem with your logic. You're under the impression that a Carl Landy is somehow on par with a Patrick Ewing as a rebounder. It's primarily based on the ill-formed logic in using some advanced metric without any context.

Landry played 16.9 minutes per game in 2007-08 and averaged 4.9 rebounds per game. While you're ogling over it like Landry is some beast of a player, you're overlooking the very obvious: Landry's play overall is not good enough to warrant major minutes. In that season, he's a role player and his role was to come off the bench and knock a few heads around without worrying about fouling out.

When given an expanded role or more minutes, Landry's role changed and his rebounding numbers dropped. in 2008-09, he played 21.3 minutes per game and his rebounding averaged stayed the same (5.0). His scoring average went up to 9.2 points per game.

Last year, his role expanded to include scoring and his rebounding average was only 5.9 per game despite nearly doubling his minutes (30.9 minutes per game) from two years ago. His scoring average at Houston and Sacramento was 16.8 points per game.

This year, his rebounding is at the same level as his rookie season (5.0) despite averaging 27.6 minutes per game. His scoring average is 12.1 per game.

That's the thing about role players -- they excel when given one specific focus for a short time. They go all out when they know their time is limited and they only have to do one or two things. When a player like Landry's role is expanded to play more minutes, he not only has to change his approach but contribute in other ways.

If he was the rebounder Ewing was, he would be averaging double-figures rebounding when he moved up to the 30-minute-per-game territory. He didn't, because he's not that good of a rebounder. He was just a role player who excelled at that one aspect for the few minutes he played.

Now that Landry has been given more minutes, he now has to do what most other starters do. The problem is that Landry is an average NBA player, not a perennial all-star like Ewing was. In addition to being one of the league's best scorers and the centerpiece of the Knicks' defense, Ewing consistently put up rebounding numbers that consistently ranked him among the best in the NBA. But for some reason, all those relevant things don't make sense to you.

That's the problem with solely relying on vague numbers and in the manner that you use them. You also skate around using context and observation to use them appropriately.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> PER is not what defines a player's ability.


Exactly. All it is is an offensive efficiency number, one that doesn't give a full and necessarily accurate context by itself. It's particularly bad when it's used purposely to conceal a player's observed play. 

For instance, quite a few people on this site used to throw around Greg Oden's PER numbers as validation for his play. They totally overlooked the fact that he was foul-prone, had no offensive game outside of a dunk and Portland didn't really run any plays for him because he was unreliable outside of five feet. I don't know how many times I got tired of reading, "Look at his PER! What are you talking about?"

If we're doing the "PER is a pathway to the Basketball Hall of Fame" talk, then Amare Stoudemire has had runs where his PER was even better than Yao Ming's over the same stretch. Yao's two highest PERs -- 25.6 in 2005-06 and 26.5 in 2006-07 -- came when he missed 35 percent of his team's games. Yao's third highest came in 2004-05 (23.2), but Hakeem doesn't seem to count that as a prime Yao year.

In 2004-05, Stoudemire's PER was 26.6. In 2006-07, it was 23.1. In 2007-08, it was 27.6. During that time, Stoudemire was named to the all-NBA second team twice (2005, 2008) and the first team once (2007). Yao was named to the third team in 2006 and the second team in 2007.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> (Yao Ming) never played at a Hall of Fame level.


It's hilarious to read that ridiculous argument that Yao Ming is a better rebounder than Patrick Ewing. I mean, when you get to the point where you're trying to place Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason on the same plane as Carl Landry and Chuck Hayes, you clearly have entered "The Twilight Zone."

Not only that, Yao's numbers from 2004-05 through 2008-09 are only marginally different from what Hakeem is calling "Yao's prime" of 205 (note, NOT 250) games from the post-2006 All-Star Game to 2008-09. Not to mention Yao's two-and-a-half year production didn't keep pace with what Ewing did for a decade.



Hakeem said:


> Why do you keep saying Ewing was a top 10 rebounder, going by Rpg when you should be going by RbR? Furthermore, why look at how he ranked that year instead of what his RbR actually was? Rankings are more dependent on the _distribution_ of rebounds across players and the _number_ of players in the league rather than Ewing's actual rebounding ability. It makes a lot more sense to straight up compare RbR.


You use it because you clearly want to masquerade the fact that Yao Ming is not nearly as good of a rebounder as Patrick Ewing, despite Yao playing in an era with fewer quality centers and enjoying a tremendous size/height advantage over his peers.

The bottom line is Yao has one season where he placed in the top 10 in rebounding. Forget the fact that Ewing did it eight times against a better quality of centers and glass-eating power forwards like Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and Ewing's own teammate, Charles Oakley.

You still have yet to explain if Yao is the better rebounder, then why he's finished in the top 10 in rebounding exactly ONCE in his career despite his size advantage and at times having guards as his best rebounding teammates. My goodness, Tyson Chandler and Emeka Okafor have placed in the top 10 in rebounding in a season three times each! Carlos Boozer has done it four times. But "Hall of Fame level" Yao could only do it ONCE?!?

Do you not see how hilarious this is?


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

Najee said:


> While Yao's teams made it past the first round once, Stoudemire's teams made it to the Western Conference finals twice.


Ok buddy first of all the Phoenix Suns were NEVER Amare's team. Remember the year the Suns won 50+ games with Boris Diaw in the place of Amare?

And because stats do not tell everything, here is how Yao used to rank historically with this whole forum at different points in time.

http://www.basketballforum.com/nba-forum/436651-top-30-nba-players-revisited.html



> *11. Yao Ming
> 12. Carmelo Anthony
> 13. Kevin Durant
> 14. Chauncey Billups
> ...


http://www.basketballforum.com/nba-forum/294729-top-50-players-nba-41-rule-change-added.html



> 10. Yao Ming
> 11. Paul Pierce
> 12. Tracy McGrady
> 13. Gilbert Arenas
> ...


http://www.basketballforum.com/nba-forum/398768-top-30-players-nba-30-a.html



> 10) Yao Ming
> 11) Amare Stoudemire


http://www.basketballforum.com/nba-forum/378221-best-center-07-08-a.html

Interesting poll here... Yao with 34 votes, Dwight is second with 6 votes.

So yea, when you're one of the almost consensus best centers in the league, even within a relatively short window, I'd say it is arguable to get in based on basketball. Yao was the best Center in the NBA from the period of Shaq's decline to Dwight Howard's rise (which coincided with Yao's injuries).

But the people who don't think Yao should get in the basketball HOF at ALL even if you don't think he should get in because of basketball. The case for Yao Ming is his impact outside of the court. If Al Jefferson was Chinese and bought in 6 million fans, I'd say he's HOF worthy. If Grant Hill was Chinese, he'd be in the HOF. Take any pretty decent NBA player that isn't in the Hall of Fame, and put them in Yao Ming's situation. He is in the Hall of Fame. That is the case for Yao Ming. In his prime he was a pretty good NBA player, he bought in a large international fanbase, and he is the face of Asian basketball. Chris Webber is not the face of any basketball. Amare Stoudemire is not the face of any basketball. Patrick Ewing is not the face of any basketball. Yao Ming has done the most for basketball for the continent of Asia. Arguing against Yao Ming is like arguing against Drazen Petrovic or Arvydas Sabonis. If you think Petrovic and Sabonis should be in the Hall of Fame but Yao Ming shouldn't, then there is something wrong with your brain.

Dirk Nowitzki should be in the HOF for being a great NBA player, and the fact that he is an international player is just icing on the cake. Yao Ming should be in the HOF because he is the most popular international player ever, and the fact that he did have somewhat of an All-Star career is icing on the cake.

yes. Yao is getting in as a 'special case'


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## John (Jun 9, 2002)

Sir Patchwork said:


> no


I am a chinese as well, but agree to this guy. No merits. I think we should question why he is in all star game all the time before we think he is any HOF material.


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## BeeGee (Jul 9, 2010)

Hell No.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

gi0rdun said:


> And because stats do not tell everything, here is how Yao used to rank historically with this whole forum at different points in time.
> 
> http://www.basketballforum.com/nba-forum/436651-top-30-nba-players-revisited.html
> 
> ...


The fact that you're using people on Basketball Forum as proof of anything makes this laughable. 

You have people in their teens and 20s making critical evaluations of people they never saw play commenting. You have someone on this thread trying to use advanced metrics without any context to argue that Yao Ming, Chuck Hayes and Carl Landry were on the same plane as Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason as rebounders.

It's common to come on this site and hear people try to compare Kevin Love to MVP-level Moses Malone, or hear people try to make Greg Oden some quality player based on his PER. Who cares about an informal opinion poll taken years ago, by some of the same people making the insane comments frequently on this site?

So the fact that you pulled up threads with some of the same people saying the same old inane stuff doesn't impress me whatsoever.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

hey dummies, PER is a season relative stat based on league average factors of pace and efficiencies for a specific season

so it's good at saying things like Yao was the #9 most efficient player in 2006 (mostly because of TS%)

but it's absolute ****e for comparisons across seasons/eras


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Not to mention stats don't operate in a vacuum, and must be used in context. Most importantly, they have to be balanced in accordance with the most important aspect: observation of players ACTUALLY PLAYING.

If some people on this site actually had a grasp of that concept, we wouldn't have to read some of these ridiculous debates. You would know that Carl Landry and Chuck Hayes are not on the same level as Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason when it comes to rebounding, for instance.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

and here's another truism you may want to file under inconvenient fact: it is harder to do something efficiently longer and at a higher volume


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Another truism: A player who placed in the top 10 in a category once in his era IS NOT a better performer than a person who placed in the top 10 eight times in the same category in his era.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

speaking of which:

centers in the 25 team league during which Ewing logged his highest PER: Parish, Moses, Hakeem, David Robinson, Brad Daugherty, Mark Eaton, Bill Laimbeer, Rony Seikaly, Kevin Duckworth, Mike Gminski, there's some crap after that but hell even Joe Barely Cares er I mean Joe Barry Carrol and Benoit Benjamin would look pretty good in 06


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## hroz (Mar 4, 2006)

This has nothing to do with anything but iv always thought it was cool.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

and then there's this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt5pOPn_0Ik


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## Maravilla (Jul 6, 2010)

I would be fine if Yao was inducted into the Hall as a contributor to the game for the simple fact that he brought a new continent into the game.. But if were looking at straight on the floor production, nah he shouldn't be in. Longevity matters guys. Otherwise Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and the laundry list of excellent players whose careers were sidelined by injury should be in as well. And that clearly isn't happening.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

I'm partial to these, myself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5keOBDzmMk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvXxHptH0pI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNemKXW6YcM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufaEmuRCHIU


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

e-monk said:


> speaking of which:
> 
> centers in the 25 team league during which Ewing logged his highest PER: Parish, Moses, Hakeem, David Robinson, Brad Daugherty, Mark Eaton, Bill Laimbeer, Rony Seikaly, Kevin Duckworth, Mike Gminski, there's some crap after that but hell even Joe Barely Cares er I mean Joe Barry Carrol and Benoit Benjamin would look pretty good in 06


What do you mean?!?!? You're not impressed by Yao putting up his sick PER vs. the likes of Erick Dampier, Mehmet Okur, Marcus Camby, Mark Blount, a rookie Andrew Bynum, Chris Kaman, Andris Biedrins and Tyson Chandler? 

And keep in mind, Yao put up a better PER than Patrick Ewing in only 48 games -- it probably took Ewing his usual 80 to 82 games played to try to get his PER close to Yao's! You're just a hater, man!


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

chilltown said:


> I would be fine if Yao was inducted into the Hall as a contributor to the game for the simple fact that he brought a new continent into the game.. But if were looking at straight on the floor production, nah he shouldn't be in. Longevity matters guys. Otherwise Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and the laundry list of excellent players whose careers were sidelined by injury should be in as well. And that clearly isn't happening.


So Wang ZhiZhi doesn't count?


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

gi0rdun said:


> Ok buddy first of all the Phoenix Suns were NEVER Amare's team. Remember the year the Suns won 50+ games with Boris Diaw in the place of Amare?
> 
> And because stats do not tell everything, here is how Yao used to rank historically with this whole forum at different points in time.
> 
> ...


This is absolutely 100% irrelevant. There are people on this board who think David Lee is better than Amare Stoudemire, Kevin Love is comparable to Moses Malone, Greg Oden was a great player, Yao Ming is a better rebounder than Patrick Ewing, Gerald Wallace is a better player than Scottie Pippen, and other absurdly ridiculous things.

How people voted in a silly poll has absolutely no bearing on reality. Reality is that by every single objective measure there is, Stoudemire has been better than Yao. Stats, individual accolades, team success, the great PER argument..Amare has the advantage in all of them.


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## Maravilla (Jul 6, 2010)

Hyperion said:


> So Wang ZhiZhi doesn't count?


Wang's impact was greater than Yao's in their contribution of new fans to the league?


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Najee said:


> You're illogically changing the argument whenever it suits your convenience.
> 
> According to you, a guy finishing in the top 10 of MVP voting is not a legitimate MVP candidate (particularly when he was second-team all-NBA that season). But according to you, a player who never finished in the top 10 in voting AND only plays portions of a season was "a legitimate candidate."
> 
> ...


if you aren't even going to read my posts, don't respond to them. look at my post that you responded to. read this line. "yao never finished a season as a legitimate mvp candidate."


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

chilltown said:


> I would be fine if Yao was inducted into the Hall as a contributor to the game for the simple fact that he brought a new continent into the game.. But if were looking at straight on the floor production, nah he shouldn't be in. Longevity matters guys. Otherwise Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and the laundry list of excellent players whose careers were sidelined by injury should be in as well. And that clearly isn't happening.


longevity matters if you only have an nba career to contribute to your candidacy. guys like bill walton and drazen petrovic didn't have longevity but brought more to the table than an nba career. yao is in a similar position.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

rocketeer said:


> longevity matters if you only have an nba career to contribute to your candidacy. guys like bill walton and drazen petrovic didn't have longevity but brought more to the table than an nba career. yao is in a similar position.


except, and let's just be clear - Walton lead an NBA team to the finals, was finals MVP, was league MVP, was 6th man of the Year, was named All NBA 1st team (at a time when Kareem was in his prime!), was named all NBA Defensive 1st team twice - in other words his prime was a more than a little primer than Yao's was (if shorter)


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## Hyperion (Dec 5, 2006)

chilltown said:


> Wang's impact was greater than Yao's in their contribution of new fans to the league?


He was the one who opened up china to the nba.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

as a 12th man? so ok Yao wasnt the first but he was clearly the one who changed the game and had a vastly more significant impact on it


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## Sir Patchwork (Jan 12, 2005)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> There should be a poll to see if Amare Stoudemire should be a Hall of Famer. I'd be willing to bet the people who think Yao was a HOF level player (ignoring the extra stuff and focusing strictly on ability) would vote no for Stoudemire.
> 
> Yet Stoudemire has been a better player than Yao for his entire career. Yao wouldn't even win the "I don't need to see what he actually does on the court, he has a high PER!" argument over Stoudemire.


What's funny is I would vote yes for Stoudemire and no to Yao, but the strawman arguments in this thread make it hard to continue replying because every reply is two steps backwards. People are arguing against things that aren't even being said. Yao Ming at his best was a hall of fame caliber player. He was at his best often enough to see that he was clearly something like a Patrick Ewing type center when healthy (23 and 10ish, defensive anchor), but he was healthy often enough to put together a hall of fame resume. Telling me about Ewing's great long career doesn't even counter that. I agree Ewing had a great hall of fame career and Yao didn't.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Hey, Najee, why do you keep quoting tiny sections of my posts and rebuttinig arguments I never made (Ewing is better than Carl Landry? Um... OK?), while avoiding the main arguments? To copy-paste myself:

*Please address the following key points which have been repeated ad nauseam to little response:
*
1) Yao's PER over the best four-year stretch of his career (253 games) is higher than Ewing's over the latter's best four-year stretch.

2) After drafting Yao the Rockets went from the worst defensive side in the league to one of the very best for the next 6 years, then plummetted as soon as he started missing seasons with injury.

3) In his prime Yao ouplayed Duncan, Howard and Amare (his three biggest rivals) and held them to very much below their season averages.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

I love it when people who clearly don't understand what PER actually represents or how it is calculated just dismiss it and any arguments it's used to support as "out of context". 

If it's out of context, please explain how. If you don't actually know, you can say so and I'll help you along. Thanks.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> It's hilarious reading someone trying to use out-of-context advanced metrics in some roundabout effort to say Yao Ming was a better rebounder than Patrick Ewing.
> 
> Ewing had eight seasons where he ranked in the top 10 in rebounds. In four of those seasons, he did it with a teammate -- Charles Oakley -- ranked fifth (1988-89), fourth (1990-91), fourth (1993-94) and 10th (1996-97) in the NBA in the same category.
> 
> ...


This is almost exactly the same as a post to which I already responded at length. To summarize without repeating myself again, as you haven't actually addressed any of the points (aside from the bizarre 9-para Carl Landry thing):

1) The stats show there was ultimately little difference in the quality of their power forwards' rebounding, meaning the "Oakley ate up all the boards" argument is marginal.

2) The stats also show that Yao had an enormous impact on Houston's team rebounding success.

3) Straight RbR is much more useful than comparing top 10 rankings of Rpg. And Yao's RbR was slightly better than Ewing's.



> See, this is the problem with your logic. You're under the impression that a Carl Landy is somehow on par with a Patrick Ewing as a rebounder. It's primarily based on the ill-formed logic in using some advanced metric without any context.
> [Carl Landry Carl Landry Carl Landry Carl Landry]
> ....


Seriously, wtf? Carl Landry was mentioned, along with Scola and Hayes, as a temmate of Yao, similar to how Oakley and Mason were teammates of Ewing. Of course he is not comparable with Ewing -- he was a bench player playing 16 mpg against other backups. What's your point? That RbR shouldn't be used to compare star players with minor bench guys? Ok, then. Now please move on to the real issue.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> Exactly. All it is is an offensive efficiency number, one that doesn't give a full and necessarily accurate context by itself. It's particularly bad when it's used purposely to conceal a player's observed play.


It's got "efficiency" in its name, but it's just as much a measure of volume. ie your PER will suck if you score few points and grab few rebounds and get few assists regardless of how efficient you are. It's a total measure of offense and rebounding.



> If we're doing the "PER is a pathway to the Basketball Hall of Fame" talk, then Amare Stoudemire has had runs where his PER was even better than Yao Ming's over the same stretch.


Yes, but as has been stated, PER doesn't take into account defensive attention drawn, defense, or passing (outside of assists). Yao drew a lot more defensive attention than Amare, was an infinitely better defender, and was a much better passer. I would say that more than offsets Amare's slightly better PER. 

Those three things are why great centers (in the traditional mould) are better than most other players for a given PER.



> Yao's two highest PERs -- 25.6 in 2005-06 and 26.5 in 2006-07 -- came when he missed 35 percent of his team's games. Yao's third highest came in 2004-05 (23.2), but Hakeem doesn't seem to count that as a prime Yao year.


It's not a prime year because he was clearly worse then. If a player plays basketball at a 5 of 10 level, then suddenly for the next four years plays at an 8 out of 10 level, why would that 5/10 year be considered part of his prime? It would only be the four straight 8/10 years. And how exactly does missing games matter if we still have 253 consecutive games to go by? Please answer this.



> In 2004-05, Stoudemire's PER was 26.6. In 2006-07, it was 23.1. In 2007-08, it was 27.6. During that time, Stoudemire was named to the all-NBA second team twice (2005, 2008) and the first team once (2007). Yao was named to the third team in 2006 and the second team in 2007.


All-NBA teams are useless here because Yao didn't finish the seasons with enough games. The point, for the 100th time, is that _when on the court_, for 253 games, Yao played at an HoF level.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Hakeem said:


> I love it when people who clearly don't understand what PER actually represents or how it is calculated just dismiss it and any arguments it's used to support as "out of context".
> 
> If it's out of context, please explain how. If you don't actually know, you can say so and I'll help you along. Thanks.


I find this ironic because

PER is figured factoring league and team averages in certain stats and pace for a given season 

for instance the value for DRB% is derived by taking the 'lg_trb' subtracting 'lg_orb' and dividing the difference by 'lg_TRB' the result is an averaged number that will vary from season to season (many of the variables in the basic PER equation are like this)

therefore PER is a season relative stat

therefore it is a mistake to try to use it to compare players across eras unless the question at hand is something along the lines of 'was player x as efficient as player y relative to his peers?' with the emphasis on 'relative to his peers' (and you dont want to start listing Ewing's peers vs Yao's unless you are either shameless or dumb and you dont seem dumb)

any other questions?


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> if you aren't even going to read my posts, don't respond to them. look at my post that you responded to. read this line. "yao never finished a season as a legitimate mvp candidate."


This is what you said:



rocketeer said:


> amare isn't a legitimate candidate if he finishes 9th in the voting. i think you can see that. yao never finished a season as a legitimate mvp candidate. that's true. but it's also true that he was a legitimate candidate at times during seasons he had interrupted by injury.


You said Yao Ming was a legitimate MVP candidate at times during partial seasons that he played. Yet you categorically dismissed Amare Stoudemire playing a full season at an all-NBA level and finishing in the top 10 in voting as "not a legitimate candidate."

You obviously cannot keep up with what you said.


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## John (Jun 9, 2002)

I take Mourning over Yao.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Najee said:


> This is what you said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


najee. read the post. if you can't comprehend that, then it really is pointless to have any discussion with you.

during his career, yao ming has been a legitimate mvp candidate before getting injured and missing significant time caused him to no longer be a candidate. it's impossible to say whether or not he would have remained a legitimate mvp candidate or not had he remained healthy.

my post saying that yao and amare both have never finished seasons as legitimate mvp candidates while also stating that yao has been a legitimate candidate before suffering an injury(amare has not had this happen) isn't illogical at all. you can say that it's irrelevant that yao played at an mvp level early in a season if you'd like. doesn't change amare never being a real candidate.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> 1) Yao's PER over the best four-year stretch of his career (253 games) is higher than Ewing's over the latter's best four-year stretch.


1.) Really, the only one who is stuck on PER is you. As stated, it's merely an efficiency measure of a player's relative offensive worth for that particular season vs. the rest of the league. It's the overall rating of a player's per-minute statistical production, as defined by John Hollinger.

I'm familiar and know how to use the term. However, I don't look at that as the end-all that be-all. With painting a complete picture of a player, you have to use multiple filters, including:

efficiency formulas;
raw production;
relative rankings to peers;
observation and evaluation of strengths and weaknesses; 
historical citings from peers and various sources. 

You can't use one filter but all of them concurrently -- with observation of a player's strengths and weaknesses being mandatory. There is no way you can evaluate a player if you've never seen him play, IMO.

Here is Yao's typical annual production in the prime period you chose *(post-All Star Game break 2006 through the 2008-09 season*): 

51 games
1,784 minutes (35 per game)
1,142 points (22.4 per game)
413 of 783 field goals (.527%)
316 of 366 free throws (.866%)
525 rebounds (10.3 per game)
100 blocks (1.96 per game)
101 assists (1.98 per game).

Keep in mind, Yao's numbers from 2003-04 to 2008-09 are only marginally different through that time period, but this is the period you chose in a previous post as "the time Yao hit his prime." That prime was 205 games that he played in a four-year period (with Yao missing 66 games during that span).

Here is Patrick Ewing's typical annual production in the prime period I chose *(1987-88 through 1996-97):*

80 games
3,240 minutes (40 per game)
1,918 points (24 per game)
753 of 1,461 field goals (.515%)
410 of 548 free throws (.748%)
851 rebounds (10.64 per game)
227 blocks (2.84 per game)
175 assists (2.2 per game).

My period was based on Ewing's first all-NBA season (1987-88) to his last all-NBA season (1996-97).

Given that there is very marginal statistical change in the NBA from Ewing's days to Yao's days, you can take these numbers at face value. So if you want Yao based on some formula without context, you can have him. But look at the small print on the back:

* He's going to play 29 less games per year.
* He's going to play 5 less minutes per game.
* He's going to give you slightly fewer points, rebounding, assists and blocked shots per game.
* He's going to give you considerably fewer points, rebounds, assists and blocked shots in a season.
* He's going to shoot fewer shots from the field than Ewing has made, even though Yao has the higher percentage.
* He's going to shoot fewer free throws than Ewing has made, even though Yao has the higher percentage.
* Ewing is going to do his thing in his prime four times longer than Yao (not to mention in Yao's prime he's out nearly 25% of the time).

That's not to mention defensively, where you have to funnel people to Yao to get him involved. At least with Ewing, you can also employ him in trapping situations earlier in his career (like in the Rick Pitino era) and Ewing is a more demonstrative leader than the more passive Yao.

Hope you have a good back-up center for 29 games. I'm happy with my choice.



Hakeem said:


> 2) After drafting Yao the Rockets went from the worst defensive side in the league to one of the very best for the next 6 years, then plummetted as soon as he started missing seasons with injury.


2.) Yao is a big guy that knows how to get in front of the basket and form a wall at the basket. The Rockets slowed the ball down (finishing 16th in pace in 2008-09, never above 21st in other years during Yao's time), limiting possessions. He's playing on a team that doesn't have really anyone more than an average rebounder, outside of Tracy McGrady and Steve Francis (who were good for guards, but are not going to elite league rebounders).

That doesn't mean Yao is a brilliant defender and he's definitely not some great shot-blocker. He's actually average IMO, given a man of his size. But he's a crafty guy that knows his limitations and is smart enough to maximize them and Houston played to those things. Let's not make the guy out to be a taller Ben Wallace or Alonzo Mourning, though.



Hakeem said:


> 3) In his prime Yao ouplayed Duncan, Howard and Amare (his three biggest rivals) and held them to very much below their season averages.


3.) I'll have to look up the numbers and see if I can pull up game footage -- given all the ridiculous overrating going on so far, excuse my skepticism here. But it's a little insincere to throw out Dwight Howard, who only played Yao twice per year and all 10 of their games came before Howard turned 24. Not only that, it's not like Howard even today has the most consistent offensive package -- he's as likely to score 6 points against a scrub one night as well as score 30 the next night.

Like Howard, Amare Stoudemire relies a lot on his athleticism. Stoudemire is also a power forward who played center in Mike D'Antoni's small-ball, fast break offense, so Yao is going to have an even bigger size advantage vs. Stoudemire in a halfcourt game.

I don't recall Tim Duncan being matched up against Yao much in those San Antonio-Houston games. Off the top of my head, I recall the nominal center (be it Rasho Nesterovic or Francisco Elston) guarding and going against Yao. Once again, I'll look for the games and review them.

Would it shock me if Yao frustrated them in games? No. He's a massive guy with a decided height/size advantage with Houston slowing the game down to make him a factor. We're also talking about one power forward in Duncan, a power forward out of position in Stoudemire and a guy who literally relied on nothing but his athleticism in an inexperienced Howard. But it seems you have a different memory of Yao the defender than I do.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> during his career, yao ming has been a legitimate mvp candidate before getting injured and missing significant time caused him to no longer be a candidate. it's impossible to say whether or not he would have remained a legitimate mvp candidate or not had he remained healthy.


In the 2005-06 season, Yao was out from the middle of December until the end of January. He was playing at his usual level at the time.

In the 2006-07 season, Yao was out from the end of December through early March.

So unless Yao was considered a legitimate MVP candidate one month into the season both times, that seems like a very narrow window to have been such a candidate.

But Amare Stoudemire wasn't one in 2004-05 and 2007-08, when he finished in the top 10 in league MVP voting -- correct? 

But Yao playing one month into the season before going on the shelf was MVP-quality -- correct?


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> This is almost exactly the same as a post to which I already responded at length. To summarize without repeating myself again, as you haven't actually addressed any of the points (aside from the bizarre 9-para Carl Landry thing):


You purposely are ignoring the fact that Yao Ming in his era against a weaker group of peers and having marginal competition from his teammates but still could only manage one season where he placed in the top 10 in rebounding.

Conversely, Patrick Ewing accomplished that feat eight times in his era against guys like Barkley, Rodman, The Mailman, Hakeem and David Robinson -- all the while having another top-level rebounder in Charles Oakley on his team.

Then, you pull out the rebounding rate number, to show that "Yao grabbed a greater percentage of his team's rebounds than Ewing did." Never mind that it is a metric that applies to that team and pace at that time. 

The fact that you presented a metric showing Carl Landry's and Chuck Hayes' rebounding rebounding rates with numbers similar to Ewing's, Oakley's and Anthony Mason's:



Hakeem said:


> Take the '91-92 season, smack bang in the middle of Ewing's prime. Oakley: 28 mpg, RbR 17.4. Ewing's rebound rate was 16.8 - exactly the same as it was the previous year and very close to his overall RbR avg for his prime. The next-best rebounder of the rotation players was Mason: RbR 14.9 in 27 mpg. That's a weighted avg of 16.2 between them.
> 
> Compare that to the Rockets in '08. Their power forwards were Carl Landry with an RbR of 16.4 (17 mpg), Chuck Hayes with 15.3 (20 mpg) and Luis Scola with 14.6 (25 mpg). That's a weighted average of 15.3.


By inference, that reads that Hayes and Landry are on par with Ewing, Mason and Oakley in rebounding -- that should be a question mark to most people. After all, Landry is at best an average rebounder. 

In 2007-08, Landry was a role player whose job was to come in and bang heads, be the hustle man for a few minutes. Since then, the more he's played, the less his rebounding averages climbed. Now, it's to the point Landry's rebounding average is declining even though his minutes are up -- that should tell you that 2007-08 was more of an aberration.

The point you don't seem to understand is that you have to balance, judge and evaluate statistics in balance with actual observation of these players. Knowing these players' strengths and weaknesses. It sounds like you're actually taking these formula-weighted numbers not only as the gospel, but as if they are actual performance numbers.

It simply doesn't make sense. A guy who can manage only one top 10 year in rebounding in an era against weaker competition and average rebounding teammates is NOT a better rebounder than someone who placed in the top 10 eight times in an era of comparatively stronger competition and with a teammate who was one of the best rebounders in the NBA, eras being marginally different. 

This is not comparing today's NBA with, say, Bill Russell's time. You can make some small adjustments between Ewing's time and Yao's time and it's pretty much a straight-up comparison. Moreover, that's coupled with actually having seen both Yao and Ewing play their entire careers. So those numbers aren't out of a vacuum, but with context.

By your logic, that would mean Carlos Boozer was actually a better rebounder than Charles Barkley. Because if a guy like Yao (who regularly couldn't place in the top 10 in today's NBA) was better than Ewing, then someone like Boozer who generally places in the top 10 in today's NBA should eclipse most people in Ewing's era.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Najee said:


> But Amare Stoudemire wasn't one in 2004-05 and 2007-08, when he finished in the top 10 in league MVP voting -- correct?


right. amare was never a legitimate mvp candidate.



Najee said:


> But Yao playing one month into the season before going on the shelf was MVP-quality -- correct?


in the 2006-2007, yao was unquestionably a legitimate mvp candidate before being injured. this occurred one third of the way through the season. he finished the season not being an mvp candidate because of the time he missed.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Yao was never a legitimate MVP candidate and never finished in the top ten in MVP shares - closest he came was #12 - you are talking about 48 games - seasons are 82 games long - you are talking about what might have been - we are talking about what was

"life is hard enough in this world without dealing with could have beens and hypotheticals"


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

e-monk said:


> Yao was never a legitimate MVP candidate and never finished in the top ten in MVP shares - closest he came was #12 - you are talking about 48 games - seasons are 82 games long - you are talking about what might have been - we are talking about what was
> 
> "life is hard enough in this world without dealing with could have beens and hypotheticals"


Exactly. I'm not seeing how a guy that placed in the top 10 twice (including sixth in 2007-08) is not a legitimate MVP candidate while a guy who never rated that high was a legitimate MVP candidate one month into the season.

That's the bizarre part. He says that Yao was a legitimate MVP candidate in 2006-07 before he was injured, but Yao went down a little more than a month into the season.

But then again, this is the same guy who gives all kinds of rationalizations saying Greg Oden is not injury-prone.


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## GrandKenyon6 (Jul 19, 2005)

Yao was never an MVP candidate at any point. McGrady was always the one that was talked about as the MVP candidate.

And did we forget about last season already? Many people thought Stoudemire was the MVP of the 2nd half of last season.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> in the 2006-2007, yao was unquestionably a legitimate mvp candidate before being injured. this occurred one third of the way through the season. he finished the season not being an mvp candidate because of the time he missed.


Yao went out on Dec. 23 and did not return until March 3.

I just don't see the point of you giving Yao credit for being "a legitimate MVP candidate" less than two months in the season but not giving Amare Stoudemire credit twice for being in the top 10 in league MVP voting and giving a full year of all-NBA play.

Moreover, if you're giving Yao "MVP candidate consideration" for 27 games of action in 2006-07, shouldn't we apply that to Stoudemire for this year's work so far? What about Stoudemire's second-half run with Phoenix in 2009-10?


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> This is absolutely 100% irrelevant. There are people on this board who think David Lee is better than Amare Stoudemire, Kevin Love is comparable to Moses Malone, Greg Oden was a great player, Yao Ming is a better rebounder than Patrick Ewing, Gerald Wallace is a better player than Scottie Pippen, and other absurdly ridiculous things.
> 
> How people voted in a silly poll has absolutely no bearing on reality. Reality is that by every single objective measure there is, Stoudemire has been better than Yao. Stats, individual accolades, team success, the great PER argument..Amare has the advantage in all of them.


"Thanks for adding Reputation to this user. May you be lucky enough to receive the same Reputation back in return."

BTW, don't forget the person on this board who thought Detroit era Grant Hill was as dominant of a player and scorer as LeBron James.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

e-monk said:


> Yao was never a legitimate MVP candidate and never finished in the top ten in MVP shares - closest he came was #12 - you are talking about 48 games - seasons are 82 games long - you are talking about what might have been - we are talking about what was
> 
> "life is hard enough in this world without dealing with could have beens and hypotheticals"


in all of my posts on the issue i have stated that yao never finished a season as a legitimate mvp candidate.

and no, i'm not talking about 48 games. for the first 26 games of that season, he was a legitimate mvp candidate. regardless of what najee says, that's one third of the season. after that point he was no longer a candidate because his injuries. there is no hypothetical there. that is exactly what happened.


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## rocketeer (Oct 7, 2002)

Najee said:


> Yao went out on Dec. 23 and did not return until March 3.


correct.



Najee said:


> I just don't see the point of you giving Yao credit for being "a legitimate MVP candidate" less than two months in the season but not giving Amare Stoudemire credit twice for being in the top 10 in league MVP voting and giving a full year of all-NBA play.


seriously? amare finishing in the back half of the top ten in mvp voting doesn't make him a legitimate candidate. it is a rare case that there are even 5 legitimate candidates in a season. that's why amare "gets no credit" for those years. he wasn't a legitimate candidate.

yao was a legitimate candidate that year until the point he got hurt. from that point on, he was out of consideration for that year.



Najee said:


> Moreover, if you're giving Yao "MVP candidate consideration" for 27 games of action in 2006-07, shouldn't we apply that to Stoudemire for this year's work so far? What about Stoudemire's second-half run with Phoenix in 2009-10?


yes, it could potentially apply to this year so far if you want to say that you think amare has been mvp caliber so far. i wouldn't agree though.

and no, it would not apply to amare's 2nd half run because of the 1st half that came before it. kinda like if you score 20 points in the first quarter, you are on pace for 80 points. if you score 20 in the fourth quarter, you aren't on pace for 80 points; what came before that matters. though if for whatever reason you wanted to ignore that, yao's 2nd half of the 05/06 season was better than amare's 2nd half last season.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

Hakeem said:


> 3) Straight RbR is much more useful than comparing top 10 rankings of Rpg. And Yao's RbR was slightly better than Ewing's.


Not really, because the NBA has not exactly changed dramatically in statistics from Patrick Ewing's prime (late '80s through the latter '90s) and Yao Ming's prime, which was less than 10 years later. You're not comparing, say, the deadball era of the '60s to the late 2000s.

The rebounding numbers and averages of leaders in Ewing's time (outside of Dennis Rodman's, which are incredibly high because he rebounded at an extraordinarily rate) are not dramatically different from those leaders in Yao's time. 

In 1990-91, Derrick Coleman was 10th in rebounding with a 10.3 average.

In 1994-95, Popeye Jones was 10th with a 10.6 average.

In 1999-2000, Jerome Williams was 10th with a 9.6 average.

In 2003-04, Marcus Camby was 10th with a 10.1 average.

This past season, Al Horford was 10th with a 9.9 average.

So, in terms of production and relative ranking to their peers you can make a nearly straight-up comparison. There's going to be tweaking for smaller periods, of course -- you got a spike in rebounding leader averages in the 1992-94 period and some lulls of the mid-2000s -- but over a longer period it's fairly marginal.

Yao has one top 10 rebounding season with a weak crop of centers and average rebounding teammates. Ewing had eight top 10 rebounding seasons vs. better competition at the center spot and a teammate who also placed in the top 10 regularly. Once again, how is this even comparable?


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

rocketeer said:


> yao was a legitimate candidate that year until the point he got hurt. from that point on, he was out of consideration for that year.
> 
> yes, it could potentially apply to this year so far if you want to say that you think amare has been mvp caliber so far. i wouldn't agree though.


You're basically being hypocritical at this point. 

You're giving Yao "MVP consideration" for essentially one month's worth of work in pulling Houston to a 16-11 record in 2006-07. But yet you "wouldn't agree" on Amare Stoudemire doing at least the same thing, if not better, work with a New York team that is 18-12 and that not a lot of people thought was playoff-worthy coming into the season.

But then again, why am I not surprised -- you and doublespeak go hand-in-hand. You're the same person who still argues that Greg Oden is not injury-prone and readily make arguments that Oden is better than Brook Lopez.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

Hakeem said:


> 3) Straight RbR is much more useful than comparing top 10 rankings of Rpg. And Yao's RbR was slightly better than Ewing's.
> 
> .


RbR is a horrible way to measure such things because it is wholly dependent upon a player's role and his teammates

surround Dwight Howard with 4 guards and then look at his RB%s - pretty impressive right? no

put Happy Hairston next to Wilt and watch him still manage 1000+ rebounds in a season - now Im impressed

it's all about context - Oakley was pulling down 30% of his team's defensive boards when he was with the Bulls - Scola, Landry et al aint close, not even the same building


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

GrandKenyon6 said:


> This is absolutely 100% irrelevant. There are people on this board who think David Lee is better than Amare Stoudemire, Kevin Love is comparable to Moses Malone, Greg Oden was a great player, Yao Ming is a better rebounder than Patrick Ewing, Gerald Wallace is a better player than Scottie Pippen, and other absurdly ridiculous things.
> 
> How people voted in a silly poll has absolutely no bearing on reality. Reality is that by every single objective measure there is, Stoudemire has been better than Yao. Stats, individual accolades, team success, the great PER argument..Amare has the advantage in all of them.


You can't just look back at something and then say yea Amare was better. Those polls represent the consensus opinion at the time. And there are SOME people that think that David Lee is better than Amare, Kevin Love is better than Moses etc., but this does not represent the forum's general opinion. These are various polls at different points in time that show that Yao Ming was the best Center in the NBA and was a better player than Amare Stoudemire.

Remember Amare a couples year back? People would rat on him for playing no defense and for being a bad rebounder and that all his stats were inflated playing under D'Antoni, and that the Suns were Nash's team. Just because the current Amare Stoudemire is a much more complete player doesn't mean the old one was.


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

Hyperion said:


> He was the one who opened up china to the nba.


Jesus Christ are we really going there.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

gi0rdun said:


> You can't just look back at something and then say yea Amare was better. Those polls represent the consensus opinion at the time. And there are SOME people that think that David Lee is better than Amare, Kevin Love is better than Moses etc., but this does not represent the forum's general opinion.


1.) The problem is that they are still opinions, not factual, objective information. You cannot pass off a personal viewpoint of an issue as a fact.

2.) What has been used in this discussion to make that has been actual, objective information -- statistics, team success, individual accolades -- as well as the appropriate context in using such information.

3.) Sorry, but you have to take into consideration the source of such opinions. A lot of people on this site have some absurd concept of evaluating basketball players. It's not uncommon for someone to make critical and judgmental opinions of players they never saw play (in some cases, whose career was over before they were born). There are quite a few people that actually believe Kevin Love is as good as MVP-level Moses Malone, that Detroit-era Grant Hill was as dominant as LeBron James, that James Worthy was an overrated role player, etc.

So I agree with GrandKenyon6. It makes no sense to pull up threads several years old featuring the opinions of some people who may not even be members of this site any more. Not only that, it's their opinion. Even if it is an opinion supported by or using factual information, it's an opinion. And given the track record of some of the people here, it may be a terribly illogical one.


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

e-monk said:


> RbR is a horrible way to measure such things because it is wholly dependent upon a player's role and his teammates.


Exactly. You can't present formula-calculated numbers without any context, because you're implying all things are equal. A guy playing with a top-flight rebounder in Charles Oakley (not to mention at times a very good rebounder in Anthony Mason) is not playing in the same situation as another guy whose top competition for rebounds at times are guards. 

It's apparent that Hakeem doesn't understand the formula-calcuated numbers he's throwing out and the inferences of those numbers. Evaluating players requires using multiple filters (observation, raw production, analysis of individual and team strengths and weaknesses, etc.) and he purposely is selecting slivers of such information, which is presenting a very distorted picture.

If you take those numbers he posted straight-up and saw Carl Landry's rebound rating vs. Oakley's and Mason's and did not know anything else about these guys, you would assume Landry was as good of a rebounder as Oakley and Mason. But when you actually watched them play, saw their raw production and even other metrics (not to mention read information and stories about these players), you will have an entirely different picture.


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## gi0rdun (May 31, 2007)

What is MVP voting? A poll of random people's opinions. How are All-NBA 1st teams selected? Through people's opinions. It's the same people that put Kobe Bryant and LeBron James on the defensive teams year after year ahead of guys like Shane Battier and Ron Artest. Look at 2009's MVP voting

http://www.nba.com/2009/news/05/04/mvp.release.20090504/index.html

There is a voter who thought that Paul Pierce was the third most valuable player in the league. Why don't we completely disregard the MVP voting as well?


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## Najee (Apr 5, 2007)

gi0rdun said:


> What is MVP voting? A poll of random people's opinions. How are All-NBA 1st teams selected? Through people's opinions. It's the same people that put Kobe Bryant and LeBron James on the defensive teams year after year ahead of guys like Shane Battier and Ron Artest. Look at 2009's MVP voting
> 
> http://www.nba.com/2009/news/05/04/mvp.release.20090504/index.html
> 
> There is a voter who thought that Paul Pierce was the third most valuable player in the league. Why don't we completely disregard the MVP voting as well?


A panel of sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada vote for the league MVP. The NBA coaches are the ones that for the members of the league's All-Defense teams.

We may or may not agree with their overall votes, but it is a degree of credibility and confidence in that these parties are actually involved in the games and do have a level of insight which most other people do not have. 

As for Paul Pierce receiving a third-place vote, it's balanced out by other votes from more than 120 other voters. It would have been outrageous, IMO, if he received a lot more votes (including first-place votes) but that lone third-place vote (which was not damaging to the total process) was likely by a Pierce/Celtics loyalist that wanted to make a statement.

That's a little bit different from some 22-year-old who never saw Moses Malone play, never looked up anything except a random stat, never read any historical accounts of his play and doesn't understand the numbers he or she saw and comes to the conclusion he was no bette than a black Kevin Love.

Or someone who thinks that Greg Oden was a great player simply because of his PER, and totally overlooking the fact he misses entire years because of injury and is foul-prone and has no offensive game the few times he does play.

Or someone who said Dennis Rodman would be a scrub if he didn't rebound -- and never saw him play. Or the people who try to portray James Worthy as a role player -- and never saw him play.

Or someone trying to misrepresent a formula-based stat that infers that Carl Landry in ABC year was as good of a rebounder as Patrick Ewing in XYZ year.

There is a difference between reasonable opinions and illogical statements that are devoid of common sense.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Reminding me why I stopped posting here for a while, this has become yet another debate about PER. I can't believe this is still being questioned.

Najee, you are still not clearly stating what it is that PER is missing out on here. I have listed the things I think are the biggest issues (the same three things I've mentioned in posts here for years): defensive attention drawn, defense, and passing. What else is your concern?

PER is an excellent overall measure of a player's offensive and rebounding production (not simply efficiency), though it does have the abovementioned gaps. As long as you take those into account - ie as long as you assess those three aspects of a player's game separately - PER is a better measure of a player's performance than anything else we have. 

Observation is 100% subjective. I watched probably 200-220 of Yao's games in his prime. In fact, I've probably seen more combined Ewing and Yao games than all but maybe two or three posters in the history of this forum; yet my observations carry no more weight in an argument than yours. If I were to come in here and say Yao was very nearly as good as Ewing over that 4 year stretch "because I observed it" I'd be laughed out of here. 

Most of us can only watch a fraction of a player's games. From that fraction of games certain parts will be more memorable and be given undue weight in our minds. And as time passes we remember less and less. Therefore our conclusions based on observation are extremely shaky.

If his PER is worse, it doesn't matter if you or I think player X is a better offensive player than player Y, unless we can state the _specific reasons_ why their respective PERs are presenting an inaccurate picture. 

If we're unable to do that, or if those reasons are unsatisfactory, and player Y has cold hard numbers to support his case, it just means that we got it wrong. We observed the two players in action, and our countless biases and influences - most of which even we couldn't pinpoint - led us to an incorrect conclusion. We can't be blamed for that, really - we're human. But what we can be blamed for is rejecting the numbers when they're presented to us without having any good argument as to why they're colored. At that point we're in the same league as global warming deniers, clinging to a thesis that has been proven factually incorrect.

It's inexcusable in this day and age to engage in involved debate comparing players with similar roles on their respective teams _without_ PER being a core part of one's argument.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

e-monk said:


> I find this ironic because
> 
> PER is figured factoring league and team averages in certain stats and pace for a given season
> 
> ...


I think you may have missed this - I can understand why you want to ignore it

but since you want to keep asking the question despite it being already answered ('asked and answered' as they say in courts of law) I think I'll just save myself some typing....


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

Najee said:


> 1.)
> 51 games
> 1,784 minutes (35 per game)
> 1,142 points (22.4 per game)
> ...



Two things fundamentally wrong with this argument:

1) My argument is that _when healthy_, over 250 consecutive games, Yao played at Ewing level. Again, the argument is not whether he flat out deserves to make the Hall based purely on on-court performance. It's that we have enough evidence that _when he was on the court_, in his prime, Yao played at a level that would have been good enough. The fact that he missed 29 games a season is irrelevant to the argument.

2) Once again you're using raw numbers. Remember, Houston wasn't playing 4 on 5 for those 5 fewer mpg Yao played. The impact is only that of the difference between Ewing and a backup center for 5 minutes of the game. And even this is marginal to the argument, since the real point we're making is that Yao wasn't some stiff, but rather a HoF caliber talent _when on the court_, whose production was stifled by injuries.



> Given that there is very marginal statistical change in the NBA from Ewing's days to Yao's days, you can take these numbers at face value. So if you want Yao based on some formula without context, you can have him. But look at the small print on the back:


Lol. Formula without context? Please explain the lack of context in pace-adjusted numbers. I'm begging you.

And why dismiss it as a marginal statistical change when we have pace-adjusted numbers free for use? That's just being disingenuous.



> Yao is a big guy that knows how to get in front of the basket and form a wall at the basket. The Rockets slowed the ball down (finishing 16th in pace in 2008-09, never above 21st in other years during Yao's time), limiting possessions.
> 
> That doesn't mean Yao is a brilliant defender and he's definitely not some great shot-blocker. He's actually average IMO, given a man of his size. But he's a crafty guy that knows his limitations and is smart enough to maximize them and Houston played to those things. Let's not make the guy out to be a taller Ben Wallace or Alonzo Mourning, though.


I don't get it - Houston drafted Yao, played his strengths to their advantage, becoming a grind-it-out side and one of the best defensive teams in the NBA, and then collapsed defensively when he missed the season... and this is an argument against Yao's defense how, exactly? Anytime you can use _one player_ to transform into a great defensive side, it's a pretty good indication that that player is very impactful defensively.



> 3.) I'll have to look up the numbers and see if I can pull up game footage -- given all the ridiculous overrating going on so far, excuse my skepticism here.



If you're going to cast doubt on the numbers, kindly follow through and post the results of your audit.



> He's playing on a team that doesn't have really anyone more than an average rebounder, outside of Tracy McGrady and Steve Francis (who were good for guards, but are not going to elite league rebounders).


Then why were the Rockets always among the best rebounding sides in the league if they didn't have any other good rebounders? Could it be that Yao was an extremely valuable rebounder himself??



> But it's a little insincere to throw out Dwight Howard, who only played Yao twice per year and all 10 of their games came before Howard turned 24. Not only that, it's not like Howard even today has the most consistent offensive package -- he's as likely to score 6 points against a scrub one night as well as score 30 the next night.
> 
> Like Howard, Amare Stoudemire relies a lot on his athleticism. Stoudemire is also a power forward who played center in Mike D'Antoni's small-ball, fast break offense, so Yao is going to have an even bigger size advantage vs. Stoudemire in a halfcourt game.
> 
> I don't recall Tim Duncan being matched up against Yao much in those San Antonio-Houston games. Off the top of my head, I recall the nominal center (be it Rasho Nesterovic or Francisco Elston) guarding and going against Yao. Once again, I'll look for the games and review them.


So basically your argument discounting Yao's effectiveness guarding Howard, Amare and Duncan is as follows:

1) Howard was too young
2) Howard's offensive game is not impacted much by who's actually guarding him
3) Yao's height gave him an unfair advantage against Amare
4) Duncan didn't guard Yao
5) Those guys were power forwards / undersized centers

Allow me to address your concerns:

1) Howard may have been young, but he averaged 20 ppg on 59% against the rest of the league over that span. Against Yao, 14 ppg on 34%.

2) Not sure how to respond to this one, other than Go download the games from sports-scene. I watched every one of those games. Yao guarded him largely one-on-one and frustrated the hell out of him. If you don't want to download the games, perhaps dig up some old game threads.

3) Yao's height is part of what made him so effective! That's like taking credit away from Shaq for his strength, or from Olajuwon for his athleticism!

4) True, Duncan barely guarded Yao at all. However the discussion is about Yao's defense. Yao spent nearly all his time on the court guarding Duncan. 

5) Which means Yao was out of position guarding those guys because he was the best option the Rockets had defensively. And he still did a great job. If all centers could guard power forwards, every team would start two centers. But they can't. Those guys were among the league's star players, and are all excellent big men. Yao held them to sub-par performances over the course of numerous games. No one else in the league was able to accomplish that.


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## Hakeem (Aug 12, 2004)

e-monk said:


> I think you may have missed this - I can understand why you want to ignore it


Thanks for reminding me - although it doesn't address exactly what I was asking (ie what specifically in the comparison with Ewing is PER missing out on), I was looking forward to replying to this one!

True, PER is a season-specific stat. But to ignore it for that reason, you would effectively be saying that the quality of the NBA from '90 to '95 was better than it has been from '06 to '09 in a significant way. Which is pretty dubious.

From '90 to '95 you may have had superior centers and more super-duperstars (ie the league was top heavy), but there were serious issues at SG and SF (beyond three or four big names), as well as a lack of depth. Remember, PER compares against every player in the league, not just centers, and not just superstars.

This isn't 2001 we're comparing it to either, remember. Mid 2000's onwards has seen a large influx of talent, both as a result of population growth and the influx of foreign talent. The number of teams grew by only 11%, but the population of the USA grew by 25%. And we've had the Euro (and South American) talent explosion. The league is nearly as talented as it has ever been.

The other argument is that Olajuwon went up against a just-before-his-prime Shaq, who held his own. And Yao held his own against a just-past-his-prime Shaq. Similar story at other positions (eg Malone vs Duncan vs Amare, or Drexler vs Hill vs Kobe vs Lebron). If there was ever a significant drop in the quality of new talent, the players who succeeded before the talent drop would seriously outplay the players post the talent drop. But this has never happened (apart from the ABA players numbers taking a massive hit when they went to the NBA).

The final thing is that while the centers were great back then, if you think about it Ewing didn't have to go up against great defensive centers very often. Robinson, Olajuwon and Mutombo ('93 draft) were in the West. Eaton didn't play many minutes, plus he was before Ewing's prime, and was also in the West. 

One final thing - your point in another post about rebound rate was a little off. Rebound rate is a measure of the available rebounds that a player grabs when on the court - not just those available to his team, but those available to both teams. So there's not a great advantage to having poor rebounding teammates.


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## e-monk (Sep 10, 2010)

re RbR true but therefore even more provisional and so relative


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## Ballscientist (Nov 11, 2002)

One source says Yao Ming's salary equal to 80% of China's GDP.

The other source says US borrowed 870 billion US dollars from China this year.


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## edabomb (Feb 12, 2005)

Ballscientist said:


> One source says Yao Ming's salary equal to 80% of China's GDP.
> 
> The other source says US borrowed 870 billion US dollars from China this year.


Summing up the whole thread in two sentences there, excellent work BS.


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