Team to retire Yao’s No. 11

The Rockets will hold an extended halftime ceremony Friday to retire Yao Ming’s No. 11.

Yao will become the sixth Rocket to have his number retired, joining Clyde Drexler (No. 22), Moses Malone (No. 24), Calvin Murphy (No. 23), Hakeem Olajuwon (No. 34) and Rudy Tomjanovich (No. 45), while former Rockets general manager and assistant coach Carroll Dawson was honored with a banner bearing his initials.

Murphy, the first Rockets Hall of Famer to have his number retired, said having a number retired is the greatest honor a player can receive.

“Well-deserved, No. 1,” Murphy said. “You can talk about the Hall of Fame. That’s basically done by strangers, people who have watched your career and looked at your statistics. But when a franchise retires your number, they saw the good, the bad and ugly. With that, if they think you belong up there, it doesn’t get any better than that.

“He’ll be up there with me and Mo and Clyde, Hakeem. Hall of Famers. But he brings credibility to us.”

Yao’s family, unable to be at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in September, will be part of the ceremony along with Rockets owner Leslie Alexander, Olajuwon, former teammates Shane Battier, Tracy McGrady and Dikembe Mutombo, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Many other league officials are expected to attend. It will be broadcast on NBA TV, and in China on Tencent and CCTV.

“He’s one of the all-time greats in my book,” Battier said. “Obviously, he’s an all-time teammate and an all-time guy and one of the great humanitarians of our world. But people forget how dominant he was as a basketball player. That’s what I try to remind people. When Yao was at full strength, there wasn’t anybody who could stop him in the post. I will remember him as a dominant, dominant force that made my job a heck of a lot easier.”