Houston Sports - Yao Ming

Yao Ming

Born: September 12, 1980

Sport: Basketball (8-time NBA All-Star, 4-time FIBA Asia Cup Champion, Hall of Fame)

Since my last post a few things have happened.  Each team in baseball has reached its 50th game, hockey and men's basketball have both progressed to their conference championships, women's basketball season has officially begun, and football has continued to be present in daily sports shows for reasons that continue to baffle me.  But not to be overlooked is the draft lottery held by the NBA, where the Dallas Mavericks won the right to have the first pick in the next draft despite only having a 1.8% chance of the ping pong ball numbers going their way.  This event reminded me of the last time Houston found themselves with the first overall pick, back in 2002.  Although the odds weren't quite as long that year, they still turned a 8.9% longshot chance into a player that took Rockets basketball literally around the world.  That year, they took Yao Ming and watched him transform from a local celebrity to a global icon for the sport.

Houston's Summit in 2002 when the Rockets selected Yao Ming

Born in 1980, Yao Ming was the only son of two significant professional basketball players who were both well over 6 feet tall, Yao Zhiyuan and Fang Fengdi.  It was rumored that the couple were encouraged to marry and have a child by Chinese government officials, and even that the sports authority monitored and manipulated his growth and basketball aptitude in order to ensure his rise to stardom.  If that assertion is true, despite Yao himself having gone on the record to insist that they are not, the efforts were successful.  Yao far outgrew both parents, eventually topping out at 7' 6", and earned a spot on the Chinese Basketball Association's Shanghai Sharks junior team at the age of just 13 years old.  His training and practice regimen was intense, and after four years he advanced to the senior team.  Despite a great deal of success, injuries plagued the young man as he sustained multiple foot fractures and his team came up short of a CBA title during his first four seasons.  In 2002 Yao was finally able to lead the Sharks to a championship, averaging a staggering 38.9 points and 20.2 rebounds per game.  The decision for Yao Ming to leave China for the NBA was a difficult one, and was not entirely up to him.  The CBA and Chinese government saw him as a valuable commodity, and the only other Chinese player to have left the country to play in the US was Wang Zhizhi, who then decided not to play for his home country's national team and was therefore banned by China.  Yao's team of advisors, which included sports and finance experts, were eventually able to get assurances from both Chinese and NBA authorities that he would be drafted first overall and that he would be allowed to play in the league as long as he honored a commitment to represent Team China as he had done during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.  With the final hurdles cleared, the Houston Rockets made his selection official on June 26, 2002.

Dubbed "The Great Wall", Yao Ming joined a team that had just recently seen the career end for one of the greatest centers to ever play the game, Hakeem Olajuwon, and was now led by a young guard named Steve Francis.  Head coach Rudy Tomjanovich was unable to secure a playoff spot during Yao's first season, the fourth consecutive year that the once-proud franchise failed to make the postseason, and citing health challenges he resigned his position and was replaced with Jeff Van Gundy.  Yao performed well on the court, matching up competently against such established players as Shaquille O'Neal, but he was the subject of anti-Chinese backlash from fans who did not trust his government and thought his All-Star selections were tainted by ballots being available to international markets.  After three injury-free seasons and a trip to the Athens Olympics in 2004, Yao's incredibly-sized frame seemed to begin to show signs of wearing down.  By that point, Francis had been replaced on the roster by Tracy McGrady, and although many pundits believed that Houston should be a title contender they were unable to advance beyond the first round of the playoffs.  Both star players missed time with injuries in 2005-06 and the Rockets suffered their first losing season during Yao Ming's tenure.  The following year did result in a playoff run but much of the season was played without their star center, as Yao suffered a broken knee and was replaced in the lineup by aging veteran Dikembe Mutumbo.  After marrying fellow Chinese basketball player Ye Li during the offseason, Yao missed the 2008 playoffs under new head coach Rick Adelman but managed to return to the court in time to represent China once again in the Beijing Olympics that summer.  The 2008-09 season represented the last best chance for the Rockets during Yao Ming's tenure but despite outlasting the Portland Trailblazers for the big man's first career playoff series win, Yao was sidelined after the third game of the second-round series against the top seeded LA Lakers and they eventually fell 4-3.

It turned out to be the last significant basketball that Yao Ming would play.  Diagnosed with a hairline fracture, the injury turned out to be career-threatening.  The surgery to fix the issue cost Yao the entire 2009-10 season, during which his daughter Yao Qinlei was born, but the team built a plan to limit his playing time in order to keep him healthy.  It didn't work, however, and just seven games into the 2010-11 season the Rockets announced their center had once again succumbed to a stress fracture.  With mounting injury concerns and an expiring contract, Yao Ming announced his retirement during the summer of 2011.  Many were quick to praise his talent and influence, but it was painfully obvious that the physical limitations of his giant body had kept him from realizing his even larger potential.  Since the end of his playing career, Yao has had a wide range of activities and interests.  He enrolled in Shanghai college to earn a degree in economics, started a Napa Valley winery and restaurants in both Houston and Shanghai, purchased his former CBA team to rescue them from financial troubles, and continued a string of high-profile endorsements.  He is known to support numerous causes, including the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program, disaster relief efforts, and the conservation group WildAid.  His efforts have contributed to a sharp decline in the consumption of shark fin soup in China, and he has worked to preserve both rhinoceros and elephant populations around the world.  Yao has been involved in Chinese politics and although he is not a member of the Chinese Communist Party they nevertheless honored him with their Proletariat Award.  His support of the Special Olympics led Yao to be named a Special Ambassador for the group and member of their International Board of Directors.  He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016 as a player, despite being also nominated as a contributor, and the following year the Houston Rockets retired his number.  From 2017-24 Yao Ming was the Chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association, recently stepping down from his position and leading basketball insiders to wonder what his next role in the sport may be.  He has certainly been a central figure in expanding basketball around the world and connecting the sports cultures of the two very different nations that he has called home.

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