Yao’s legacy goes way beyond court
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Yao Ming’s gifts as a player — the incredible combination of size, skill and work ethic — will be celebrated as he takes his place in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday.
But the celebration will be just the beginning of a story that could not be contained by basketball courts or the numbers accumulated on them.
“He was the golden bridge between two countries,” said Rudy Tomjanovich, the Rockets’ coach when the team made Yao the No. 1 pick in the 2002 NBA draft. “You could see it when we went to China. You could feel it. It was all on him.”
Yao’s legacy was always destined to go beyond his skills on the basketball court, where for a time he was the best center in the world and an eight-time NBA All-Star in a career cut short by injuries.
“Yao’s impact on the game has been transcendent,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. “His on-
court success was a catalyst for the NBA’s growth and popularity not only in China but around the world.”
China’s first major sports star exported to the United States, Yao was expected to represent the people of the world’s most populous nation every day and in every way, not just in how he played but in what he said and how he carried himself. As if that were not burden enough, he represented China’s still-new economic and cultural outreach to the world. His place in the NBA and in that spotlight was a priority of the Chinese government for reasons that went far beyond displaying his shooting touch.
“When I joined the NBA in 2002, it was only one year after China joined the WTO (World Trade Organization),” Yao said this week. “The WTO was so big for China. We had to open our gates to the entire world for trade, for culture exchange, for sports exchange, for everything. That’s why everything I experienced was very, very new to China. I’m such a lucky guy to have such good timing.”
That responsibility became as much a part of him as ducking under doorways. Long groomed for stardom as the towering 7-foot-6, 310-pound son of former Chinese players Fang Fengdi and Yao Zhiyuan, nothing could prepare Yao for the role he assumed.
“You can’t think that,” he said. “I tried to stay simple. I knew, but I tried to keep that out of my mind. I knew my job, and I tried to stay focused.
“I just keep flowing. When you are in water, very strong water, you don’t fight it. You are in the flow. You let the water carry you. That is my philosophy. Sometimes, you keep yourself in a very narrow area to keep your mind clear and keep your mind focused. You do your job, your part. To think about too much does not help.”
Thrust into spotlight
Yao did not just have to play well to live up to his hype and rise above doubts as enormous as his frame. That would have been challenge enough, from facing the elbows Shaquille O’Neal promised to deliver to the bet Charles Barkley made that Yao would not score 19 points in a game as a rookie.
Every stop on the NBA schedule brought the harshest of spotlights and instant, uncompromising evaluations. There was the ritual of daily news conferences at which throngs of media treated him more as a curiosity than a player, more as a prop than a person. There were the nightly attempts of opponents to not just defeat but humiliate him on the floor.
Yao could battle that, but he never admitted his greatness to himself. Even now, he said he finds his place in the Hall of Fame as incredible as he would have the night in 2002 when the Rockets made him the first pick of the draft.
“I worried a lot,” Yao said. “The Hall of Fame is way beyond what I would have expected, not just back to 2002. Even now, I’m still thinking that’s something I cannot imagine I would make.”
His talent and drive could take him past the usual challenges. By his fifth NBA season, he averaged 25 points and 9.4 rebounds. He averaged 19 points and 9.2 rebounds in his career, with the only doubts concerning what he could have been had he stayed healthy through his prime.
“People spend so much time talking about durability, injuries, what could have been, they lose focus on what a great player he was,” former Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy said. “Yao didn’t have a lot of good luck, but that does not diminish in any way what a great player he was or how dominant he was.
“Everybody knows of his talent. But there was no question when you combine a work ethic that was unparalleled with that he got true enjoyment out of other people’s success and a sense of humor and mix all that in, it is what makes him unique and so worthy of the honor bestowed upon him.”
When the Rockets played in the inaugural China Games in 2004, they saw Beatlemania-type hysterics in Yao’s hometown. Streets filled with fans rushing to get a glimpse of the vans carrying Yao to events. Security teams locked arms, forming human walls to hold back fans as Yao was rushed off buses to and from buildings. When the Rockets reached the postgame locker room, fans had climbed through the walls to get too close for comfort to their hero.
“He never lost his patience,” said former Rockets general manager Carroll Dawson, who drafted Yao and led the negotiations to get him out of the China Basketball Association. “If he walked down the street here and someone saw him, they’d come up to them. There, they’d wait around and wait around until a really large group gathered, and they’d all come up to him. And he could handle it. He was a hero, and he lived up to every part of it.”
Icon in China
China’s pride was never clearer than during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Yao did not come close to an NBA championship. His career will be forever left undone. But if his mission was about more than basketball, his victory came when China’s Olympic Games sent that message.
“We were over there, and you could feel it,” Rockets CEO Tad Brown said. “Yao was the face of the Olympic Games for the entire country. The pressure he was under — to mean that much to your country, as well as our organization and the NBA — that takes a special person.”
Yao had carried his nation’s flag in the 2004 Opening Ceremonies in Athens, joking he was selected based on height. When the Olympics were in Beijing, he could not deny why he was chosen again. When he opened the basketbal competition with a 3-pointer against the United States, his nation rejoiced as if it had won far more than its basketball program ever could have.
“Do you remember when you were young and you just got out of college, maybe high school, maybe when you made your first paycheck? You feel excited,” Yao said. “You feel, ‘I’m independent now.’ You stretch your muscles. That’s how it was not for only me but for entire China back in 2008. As a basketball team member, I felt that. I was so pleased. We could not believe we had the blessing to represent the country.
“Before, we practiced basketball. We didn’t know the NBA. We only knew the national team and the Olympics. When the Olympics finally came to our country, that was a dream come true. Somehow, you have that feeling that your life, no matter how old you were, you prepared your life for that moment. We felt like we didn’t know what to do tomorrow, almost like our life was finished that night.”
The next season, his seventh in the NBA, Yao led the Rockets to the only playoff series win of his career. He was hurt in Game 3 of the second round against the Lakers.
“I knew the first time I saw him,” Dawson said. “You got a guy that’s 7-foot6 — he’s unguardable. If he was selfish, he could have averaged 25 to 30 (points er game) the way he shot the ball, but he was the consummate team player.
“He got hurt when he was getting to his prime. It kills me when you think about what he could have been. His career was just 8½ years. He was just coming on.”
He played just five more games.
“We don’t talk about it much because I feel badly for him,” said Brown, who remains close. “Yao is such a diligent worker and such a caring person as far as his craft, he never got the opportunity to become the player his abilities would allow him to be. He’s a guy who for a period of time was the best center in the world. He had the hands, the touch, such an otherworldly combination of skills.
“When we’re together, there is a feeling that he misses the game, he misses the locker room, he misses the camaraderie. There is a feeling of what-if. He is such a grounded, such a well-rounded person, he knows it’s time to move to the next stage of his life, and he’s going to do that to the best of his abilities.”
More to accomplish
If there had been pain from the disappointment that comes from those haunting thoughts of what could have been, Yao never showed it. He will, however, allow that in private moments, when he permits or just cannot stop such thoughts, he too feels that nagging ache of potential not quite fully realized.
“I did have disappointment, some frustrations about the injury keeping me away from the court and that it stopped my career,” Yao said. “But I’m a guy that likes to look forward instead of looking back. When I look back, I gain from experience, learn from my past and from other people, then just move on. I like to keep my eyes forward. Looking back is not going to change anything. No matter how much you think about it, it won’t change what happened already. You just move forward.”
Yao, who will turn 36 next week, works extensively with his charitable foundation, a concept new to China when he started it in 2008. He is scheduled to graduate from the Antai Economics and Management College of Shanghai Jiaotong University in June. He owns his former team, the Shanghai Sharks, works with NBA China, runs Yao Family Wines, and has worked extensively on his causes, particularly to protect African elephants, having already led the movement away from China’s taste for shark fin soup.
“For most great players, the Hall of Fame is a crowning achievement to a great career,” Van Gundy said. “With Yao, I think it will be a footnote to all the great things he accomplishes post-Hall of Fame. I think this guy is setting a course for world-changing, for being one of those guys. He has big things in him. He’s not afraid of being in the forefront of social issues that impact his country. He’s just at the start of his true greatness.”
Changing the world might be a bit much to expect, but then, basketball courts could never contain Yao’s mission. It was a fine place to start.