Yao Ming Blocks Shaq’s First 3 Shots and Scores The Rockets First 3 Shots Himself
Yao was so, so good. He had the footwork, he had the shooting touch, he was actually big enough to be a paint presence. But the body just couldn’t hold out.
having to play in china during the offseason (vs recovering and conditioning) kinda ruined him.
This is my fear with Luka — he really needs to be taking the time to recover between NBA seasons instead of playing all year round like an AAU kid.
Yeah I’m glad he’s taking time off to heal instead of playing for the national team this summer
Luka isn’t your problem anymore
He’s a fan, it’s a problem. Foh
Luckily Luka isn’t as big as Yao Ming is, so that should help a bit.
Nico Harrison disagrees.
Nico secretly moonlights as Scott Steiner.
I’ll never forgive the Chinese government for depriving us of potentially the GOAT center.
Or the Soviets with Sabonis. Healthy Sabonis goes to the Blazers and I don’t think the Bulls gets 6.
No way he does. Drexler can’t match Jordan but nobody matches Sabas. Dude is Euro Wilt: 300lbs of backboard breaking, rebound killing, three shooting madness with the slick passing no C can touch. Bulls had no answer for it even during the 2nd threepeat.
Am Missing something? Not old enough to know anything about his situation but just looking at the dates he got drafted in 86 so couldn’t he have gone over some time during 89-91? Instead of going over in 95.
He would have lost his Olympic eligibility if he had come over before then, and the Soviet Union wanted him playing for them.
That’s what I mean. The Blazers that faced the Bulls had a starting center that averaged 1.3 points that playoffs. Slot Sabonis in there and they probably steamroll the Bulls. Blazers might have 3 or 4 peated in late 80s early 90s.
He went to Europe because I believe the money was better
People WANT to play for their national team. LeBron wants to, Luka wants to, Wemby wants to, fuck it’s probably easier to list the number of NBA player who explicitly wishes NOT to play for their home country. I am damn sure if LeBron said he don’t want to play for USA Reddit would fucking explode. But when it comes to China you can just make shit up and people suddenly lose all critical thinking skills. This and the whole “Yao Ming was bred by the state to play basketball” thing are just the epitome of Reddit echo chamber.
Reddit and casual xenophobia towards China go hand in hand
I will never forgive the NBA. They are responsible for most games of him if anything
I think Van Gundy’s infamous over-done defense played an important role. Every pick’n’roll Yao had to move up to defend the 3 point line and move back to protect the rim. A real defense coach should be able to make better play.
this version of events is starting to become an echo
playing a lot in the offseason and having an injury shortened career could be an incomplete explanation at best, correlation at worst. yao ming put on a lot of weight after coming to the nba because the position, then, demanded it. 240-250lbs with nice touch was his game, not >300lbs and banging with shaq, who himself had just four more dominant seasons before fading.
Jeff Van Gundy’s style of play certainly didn’t help either. Neither T-Mac nor Yao could ever stay healthy, and he ought to have managed their minutes better. Big men of Yao’s size are always a risk of being injured at a higher rate, and the broken foot was a career death sentence for Yao, sadly.
It was also the mileage he came into the league with from years of playing in China. Y’all Yao was fun to play with in New Street vol 2
I did not know he was doing that, that’s crazy.
His body could have hold up, but that era requires you to gain weight as center. Could have been a legit superstar in this era, he can run before the weight gain. Probably prevent his injuries too
Ditto. Whenever a player (besides Steph) bulks up, it seems like they regress.
Edit: spelling
I think you’re lookin for “regress”. “Digress” means to wander off topic.
You mean regress ?
Tell that to Lebron and Giannis. 99% of NBA players put on muscle in the league, they pretty much have to
Turns out being 7’6” isn’t easy on bones, ligaments, and joints unfortunately.
He also put on a ton of weight his first few years in the league. He always had tree trunk legs but you could see how much he bulked up in his upper body as the years went along. if he comes into the NBA in today’s world, he gets the Wemby treatment where there’s doctors and physios making sure he puts on weight progressively and safely. But just naturally he already weighed like 70 pounds more than Wemby.
Cuttino Mobley said that the Rockets torched him to gain weight and to learn more of a post up game because they wanted him to play like a traditional big.
Yao actually might have been better in this era because he was more athletic and had a better touch before he gained the weight which also tied into his injuries later on.
Yao would be torched even more in PnR in this era, this was his major weakness even during his pick years - see any series against Utah where Boozer and co quite literally made him their bitch.
He was a great FT shooter with quite a soft touch tho, so he’d probably develop a great 3-pointer. Would it compensate PnR defense? Hard to say.
yeah Yao was tall af but he wasn’t a stick figure like wemby and chet, he was a biiiiig man, which is why his feet were always fucked up, trying to support that amount of weight on a structure that tall
Well, that and he was having to play year-round, the NBA season is already tough on a dude that big but then having to go back to China and continue playing on cement courts instead of recuperating absolutely destroyed him
Also shoes. Can’t find the story to link to but as I remember it, he was playing in shoes at least two sizes too small when he joined the Rockets. Nobody made size 18 shoes back home, nobody was able to get him any, and Yao wasn’t the type to complain. Add on Yao’s crazy “normal human proportions with a 7’6” skeleton” body and he had all sorts of long-term damage before he even got to the league.
There’s a bit of the reverse. Marfanoid bodies (tall, long alien bodies) often happen because connective tissue isn’t functioning properly, so there’s less resistance on your bones while you’re growing. And then your joints are hypermobile, too.
Michael Phelps, right?
He played non stop, he needed time off.
Over 300 pounds too. He was a massive player.
if this was his debut season then he should’ve had bigger hype than even wemby lol. some rookie from asia schooling shaq like that in his debut season, that’s some alien shit
They dominated Asian Games. Fucking Yao hitting 3s there.
Hopefully Wemby doesn’t have the same fate
Wemby wasn’t forced by the Chinese government to play in the off-season though. That’s a huge part of why Yao’s body broke down. He was playing like 10 or 11 months out of the year.
This commonly echoed take is bizarre. He wasn’t “forced”. He has never said anything of the sort and, instead, has explicitly mentioned his desire and pride in representing his country. Post-retirement he went on to head the CBA. Instead of conspiracies, what we actually saw was a guy who was deeply patriotic and wanted to be involved. You could argue it was because of his position being the greatest player in the country’s history and feeling a sense of pressure to play, but that’s hardly the same as being forced to by the “Chinese government”, evoking some nefarious, unfeeling bureaucracy that sacrificed his professional career (in America!) for some kind of nationalist circus. Maybe part of the reason he felt he needed to play was because China was hosting the 2008 Olympics and, again, as the country’s best player and leader wanted to get his team prepared to compete on the biggest stage.
Also, on the idea that the national team commitments lead to a shortened NBA career, why would it be the few games during the summer that would be blamed and not the 82 games (plus post season) in the NBA? Plenty of players not 7’6 300lbs get injured due to the grinding nature of the league. A more compelling theory is he put on a lot of weight after making it into the league (as was the wisdom of the time) and that lead to persistent injuries during the long NBA season. His commitments to the national team meant he had less time to recover from those issues and they compounded.
I think this is the correct take. Ask most non-American athletes in most sports if they would rather help their country win an Olympic gold (or equivalent) vs win the championship with their club team and they’ll almost always tell you winning for their country means more. The guy was already high-risk for injury due to his size, saying “the Chinese gov’t forced him to play which ended his nba career early” is such a myopic take, he clearly wanted to play in front of his people and help grow the game back home and would’ve done it regardless of what the gov’t did or didn’t want. There’s way more nuance that goes into this than people seem to admit.
That’s just cruel for someone his size…wtf
Correct. We could’ve potentially had Yao as the goat center, but now we’ll never know because the Chinese government fucked his body over.
Never seen a dude dominate Shaq on defense like he did. Plus he had serious offensive skill.
China saw him less as an NBA superstar and more as an Ivan Drago.
They paraded him around as an ambassador and burned him out entirely.
…yet.
Thicker wemby
He could handle the ball on fast breaks and was a really solid passer as well, lot of fun to watch back in the day
Wemby’s future
He was a beast Shaq and the league wasn’t ready for him
Yeah damn shame too. I was so excited when he joined the league, sad we lost a clear all time great to his own body
He was so fun to watch. Dude was amazing and once he figured it all out… He got hurt.
The body could hold out. Chinese govt said fuck that…
You know Shaq was mad as hell. Probably tried to go shit in Yao’s shoes at halftime.
Shaq went 1-2 in the shoes, raising his career shoe-shit avg to .475
There’s an interview where Shaq said he tried to humiliate Yao and got stuffed 2x. Then the 3rd time he went in there trying to body him and still got rejected.
This is why Yao is one of few Cs Shaq respects: couldn’t bully em
Ya he’s talking about this exact sequence in that interview, with Yao sitting right to him
Probably, but Yao ended up being one of the only big men that shaq truly respected
You can see the frustration on his 3rd attempt, basically falling into Yao to get position and tries to muscle it in
[deleted]
This was revisionism by Shaq lol. He was pretty rude and racist to Yao Ming when he first joined the league
Nah, he only does that to teammates
This is a post that’s worth keeping.
This was a really really big deal at the time. It also showed Shaq and the rest of the NBA world that Yao wasn’t going to get pushed around
Damn shame about his foot problems, he could’ve been an all-timer
Shaq proceeded to completely dominate Yao the rest of the game lol
It was too long ago for me to remember specifics but I looked up the stats just now. Yao got a double double with 6 blocks and the win. I think he did just fine
Lakers lost because Kobe played like ass. Yao was 2-11 the rest of the game. Shaq put up 31/13/4.
Didn’t Kobe play like ass because of Yao’s defensive impact around the paint?
Seems like Yao did his job and got the win while Shaq was too focused on trying to one up Yao.
Maryland product Stevie Francis is the reason they won. 44/6/11.
You think Yao is the reason Kobe went 5-21?
Seems likely
Kobe is an all time great player. But let me tell ya, dude would keep chucking the ball even when it wasn’t going in. It was his main flaw.
No. Yao was a big presence, but he didn’t have that “Wemby effect”. He was nowhere near as agile on his feet and didn’t have the wingspan and vertical like Wemby. Kobe just had a habit of making sure he got his. The whole “Mamba mentality” thing, he was gonna attack no matter what, even if he was ice cold, he is gonna put up 20-30 shots. Was just a bad night for Kobe.
kobe also didnt play like the modern wing, yao didnt need to be wemby when kobe’s version of the modern 3 is a contested 2 point right outside the paint, yao had 6 blocks that game when the rest of the players both teams combined had 7, he was a problem
still lost tho. empty ass stats
Just lying out here and thinking people won’t call you on it
He did the same against Andrew Bynum but that one play where Andrew bullied him and scored on him was the highlight of the game.
You’re 100% right, not sure why the guy underneath you got more upvotes than you. I remember watching the game, Yao was completely ineffective on offense the rest of the way. Yao’s double double that homeboy is gloating about was an inefficient 10 & 10 in 37 min
I just logged on to r/NBA in like four hours and I’m very confused about what is happening
What are you talking about, it’s totally normal to post Yao Ming highlights
TRUE AND BASED
You are not alone, friend.
Yao Ming is on r/nba
well, where else would he be? r/nfl? r/nhl ?
why is Yao Ming following u/A_MASSIVE_PERVERT?
r/soccer it’s world cup baby!
do you not feel chinese?
Dude i was really like what the hell is up with all the Yao Ming posting today LOL
And people call me deluded when I say Prime Yao torched Shaq
The NBA is full of guys with these amazing short peaks, that get forgotten to history. Healthy Yao was a top 5 player in the league, a league with guys like Shaq, and Duncan, Kobe, Nowitski, Nash, and early LeBron, Melo, and Wade. He was just rarely consistently healthy
Might be top 10 but top 5 is too much or you are going to have to name a year
I thought 06-07 he was pretty damn close. I’d still have him at I think like 8 but I can see the argument
Purely based on play, 06 Yao was definitely top 5. He just can’t stay on the court for a full season.
Yao was great but he was NOT better than any of the first 5 names you mentioned
Some years he was and that’s exactly what I mean. You guys look at the whole picture every time, not the random years along the way
Name the year
I wouldn’t take him over year 3 Bron and Wade either
That game:
Shaq 31/13/4/0/0 13⁄26 from the field
Yao 10/10/3/0/6 5⁄14 from the field
Yao did not torch Shaq, the Lakers lost in OT because Kobe shot 5⁄21 from the field with 4 turnovers.
Everyone forgets in this game. Steve Francis had 44 and 11 assist.
People forget about Francis in general. Dude was electrifying.
This isn’t prime Yao?
Yao’s true prime was in the latter part of Shaq’s career when he was out of the Lakers, and the only time you could say he truly torched him was in the 2007 season in the game he got injured and miss like 30⁄40 games after.
A Chinese rookie in his very first NBA game ever doing that is torching Shaq who was trying harder than he thought he had to.
This was not even close to his first NBA game ever.
IIRC Shaq still had a really good game that game.
No he didn’t lol. He had three clutch blocks against 50% Shaq that prompted Shaq to raise the bar.
Torched is a strong word. Here are the h2h stats. https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/basketball/vs/yao-ming-vs-shaq
Okay that’s is actually good
Did Yao die or something
It’s refresh bait. Everyone waiting for Giannis
What’s refresh bait?
A post for interactions since everyone is refreshing the page already waiting on something else. In this case giannis
I’m so damn ready for it to drop just so the damn bubble pops and we can get the offseason going
Both you and us have a monster of picks and moves that need to be made.
If yall take Morez I’m gonna be salty
I think If giannis gets traded then it happens tomorrow right before the draft. And i want to move up anyway, so hopefully we both get our wishes
Everyone waiting for Giannis
Giannis for Prime Yao. It’s the plot to Hot tub Time Machine
Man healthy Yao is one of our biggest what ifs.
He was so dominant. Smooth touch too
Why are the tall guys in the paint? They’re supposed to be behind the arc, jacking up 3’s.
/s
It’s amazing how casually (piss easy, really) you were able to get the ball to a star big on the low block in those days.
People talk about the unfair/extreme physicality of the defense, but in today’s league you get bear-hugged and shoved out of the low block, fronted while getting your jersey/arms grabbed, etc.
It’s crazy how this entry pass basically doesn’t exist in the NBA anymore. You see it very rarely and it’s considered a timeout worthy defensive breakdown.
With zone defense, teams, especially the Pistons back then, figured out how to cover the passing lane.
and here i thought guards just forgot how to throw an entry level pass because they became a scorer.
It seems intentional by the league at times, theyd rather make the game varied by preventing the big men from dominating the whole game.
Yao>Shaq. Case closed
The good part about all this Yao posting is that it allows us to be reminded of how great Yao Ming actually was
This after Shaq said some racist shit too lol
I love how nobody cares how incredibly racist Shaq was during this time period. His pre game interview about Yao was disgusting.
What did he say?
Wemby needs to develop that hook shot
I’m a Laker fan but Shaq got completed bitched here. He always showed his fragile ego, talked shit about Yao and never gave Yao credit. It was only until just recently he was more positive about it. He couldn’t stand anyone saying the was another center that was really good. I wish Yao didn’t have injuries derail his career because he was special.
Peak Yao was an absolute cheat code.
create a player ass
Shaq > Timid Yao
Aggro Yao > Shaq
Yea Aggro Yao was impossible to stop. Problem is he was only aggressive once in a blue moon
I remember watching this game live and thinking to myself that Shaq must have been PISSED.
In some universe Yao Ming & T-Mac win a championship together.
I’m still mad about China running him into the ground. He was awesome
So many Yao Ming posts
like could you imagine the watch parties in China during this game, man.
Yao was that dude
Rivalry aside, I used to love watching Yao back in the day. I always wondered what could’ve been between him and a prime Harden. I hate that his body couldn’t hold up.
What a time to be alive. Thanks for the memories Yao 🥲
Damn Yao was strong as hell.
I remember Shaq saying something like he didn’t respect Yao and thought he would just go right through him until he realized Yao is even bigger and stronger and he’s never encountered that before
I miss Pinstripes Rockets and that logo
Shaq is a disgusting bum.
As a Yao fan this first sequence during Shaq vs Yao Part 1 was WILD.
Shaq was making fun and underestimating Yao in the days leading up to the game. Many saw it like a big brother beating up on a little brother.
The only part missing from this video is the late game dunk by Yao to seal the win against the Lakers. Masterful 🔥
Because you are deluded, check the stats for that game
Can I write check?
Sorry, I am new to basketball. Why didn’t Shaq just fall to the ground and start complaining to the refs? Is he stupid?
Man, this must have been so necessarily humbling for Shaq lol
Never seen like any Yao Ming tape hes much more mobile than I thought
Wemby would do the same to Shaq.
Pre-reddit forums were going nuts over this. Felt like Yao was a beacon of hope to defeat the Evil
Can they edit this video the way that you can’t recognize the players, show this video to Shaq, and see if he shit talks this “random” big man?
“IF YOU ARE A GREAT PLAYER, YOU NEED TO DOMINATE EVERY PLAY!! NO EXCUSES! JUST GO TO THE PAINT AND DOMINATE, NO BEED TO PASS THE BALL OR SHOOT MIDRANGE SHOTS. YOU NEED TO BE THAT GUY TO WIN TITLES!!”
Old rockets logo and jerseys were infinitely better
Please don’t start this again we are having a good time
Wemby should take notes
Yao would be a great fit in Miami.
Ni hao!
Hey, go to bed Yao
“Yeah but how many rings do I got Chuck?”
Notice how in those days there was so much less resistance for bigs to establish the post. Nowadays its a full on push em out to the 3pt line
You guys say “they were so good” yeah that’s how UFC works too they don’t weigh or anything right to ya know make things equal - I don’t know how basketball or football doesn’t do it either:
It’s literally like having a bigger cow.
Anyways over here with chess.
if only wemby had a post game like this
God dog he was movin down the court lnao
A healthy Rockets team would’ve had a decent shot at a title in 08-09. They took the eventual champions Lakers to 7 games despite McGrady being out for the season and Yao missing the last games of the series due to injury.
Yao ming..hes soo hot.
This is awesome BUT check him out in the post. This mfer could face up, had a hook AND a turnaround fadeaway
Moochie Norris sighting
2009 Rockets were going to win it all if Yao didn’t get hurt in the playoffs.
I remember being hyped for this game. I remember being hyped while watching this game. So glad Yao didn’t let us down. He made a statement.
He sees Shaq and thinks Kung pow chicken alert
The BIF IF…
I remember watching this game while I was in high school. I think it was a Friday night. The hype over Yao was crazy. Everyone was talking about this game at school once we got back.
seeing Yao just dominate against shaq like that was one of the best basketball things ive ever seen
I was at that game. I thought we really had something.
Thats why Yao>Shaq
I watched this live back in high school on my parents 36 inch tube television. I remember thinking how good the quality of the video was on such a big screen…
My goat
Yao being Yao, yaoming?
Yao walked so Lin can run.
Yao was from Mainland China. Lin is a Taiwanese American.
Not even the same.