7-09-2011
SO YAO MING IS MUHAMMED ALI?
This article will be short and sweet. I am not sure if this is a true sign of a mediocre town, slow news day or every damn person done lost their damn eyeballs and forgot everything they seen on the court by Yao Ming. If you have been living under a rock, Friday, Yao Ming retired. Matt Thomas got it going by asking if Yao jersey should be retired. I chuckled as I thought he was about to get verbally abused on air by even asking a dumb question but little to my surprise, people called in supporting Yao Ming. To Matt Thomas credit, he didn't agree with Yao Ming's nor the Hall of Fame Talk.
Through out the day as I continued to listen to Josh Innes and Greg Koch, I noticed, Yao the basketball player is irrelevant, Yao is a swell dude that open global gateways. In other words, there are two situations here, the sport fan is judging Yao while everyone is making Yao Ming out to be a figure of Ali or Jackie Robsinon's status. Sure I recognize Yao Ming's global impact but don't come to the argument talking basketball and once you realize how foolish you sound go to the GLOBAL CARD.
Matt Thomas said it best, "I am asking you what should be not what's going to happen" because he know as well as all of us, the Rockets are going to milk the Yao train until the teet can't produce anymore nutrients. The whole Yao mania had nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with money. I like Yao but I'm not that hard up for Houston to be relevant that I'm riding this train. I have morals.
I must admit, this story broke around Noon so one of the only Big Whigs that got a fair shot at it was Matt Thomas and Josh Innes but the characters of mediocrity Barry Warner and Matt Jackson were full throttle. You know something, I refuse to blog about Barry because that's flat out porn in the way he go about kissing ass. Barry Warner has taken the phrase "ass kissing" to depths uncharted for HMW. If you have a name of celebrity in this town, Barry Warner is your hemorrhoid, he all up in it.
Matt Jackson called Matt Thomas Show and laid out one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard a Houston personality publicly say on the air. Matt believes Yao jersey should be retired because Kim Perot, Calvin Murphy, and Rudy T's jersey is retired. Man, you don't make the case of someone deserving of an accomplishment based upon someone else accomplishments. Come on Matt, Perot? You are comparing Yao to a dead cancer patient, that's where you are going? You lost so many points on that one dude. If it's that serious to the point of personalities comparing Yao to a female cancer victim then damn dawg just let him in.
I don't know the numbers but I'm a gambling man and I'm willing to say Tracy McGrady had a equal to better basketball tenure in Houston. If we are judging all of these future honors on basketball and not likability which the media loves to do, I say honor both Tmac and Yao.
In all of the coverage I heard, Josh Innes said it best and I am paraphrasing. If Yao opened the global market with the China market and money is flowing, how in the hell is the NBA Locked Out complaining about money issues? No matter how you slice it or dice it, if Yao supporters really believe Yao influenced the global market (new money) exactly who reaped the benefits?
With all of that being said, I like Yao and I hope he continues to be an ambassador of the Rockets but he's no Muhammed Ali. The difference between Yao and Ali is, Ali was the best in his sport and he took a political stand with ramifications of imprisonment.
Fan of mediocrity care about opening doors to new markets because they want to be relevant. Your production mean absolutely nothing to them as long as you made them popular. Little things like successful playoff runs or god forbid a championship is secondary in mediocrity fan's world. I am so upset right now I want to punch my screen. A local personality (I forget who) asked which is the worse sports town, Cleveland or Houston. Is Cleveland praising Lebron for making them popular?
6 comments:
I've noticed that some black folks defend Tracy McGrady by attacking Yao Ming. That appears to be the case in this post.
Aye Yo G-man, you are right I am black but you couldn't be farther from the truth. The natural comparison to me is Tmac since he was here with Yao. Compare there stats and league accomplishments, if we are talking about basketball not likability. I am not sure what black folks you are around but most black folks I know consider Tracy McGrady to be soft as toilet tissue. Thanks Bro for taking the time to check it out.
Personally, I like Yao a lot. I hate to see his career end this way. I think he was misunderstood and maybe misrepresented by a good portion of the media and the fans in the city. I have had conversations with people about Yao and the most common issue in discussion of Yao in some form of fashion is culture. Whether it is about his culture, or the culture of the fan discussing Yao. Culture is always a theme with Yao. He was marketed as a cultural phenomena. So consciously or subconsciously, we are all guilty of it in some degree of getting caught up in a cultural cross fire. I think it just goes without saying. I think for coming from where he came from, I think he did better than I thought he would do when he was at his peak. I liked his game. I just wish him the best down the road. I think taking everything into consideration, his jersey should be retired. I think he is a different situation in comparison to T-Mac. He was not be the better talent, but his value to the Rockets was greater in my opinion. I think T-Mac got a raw deal in my opinion as well. I think he didn't do himself any favors with how we went about things on and off the court sometimes. But I still think he got a raw deal as far as a legacy goes. His points per game average went up in the playoffs. He was a beast. I think in determining the value of players and their contributions, fans have too much say in someone's legacy in my opinion. Fans tend not to be rational in how they visualize events on the court or field. I guess that goes without saying as well. R.I.P Yao Ming. You were the truth!
I feel like you weren't really clear about what your point is with this post. Are you saying Yao was not a good basketball player? Or that he was good but just overrated? And are you saying he doesn't belong in the Basketball Hall of Fame, or just that he shouldn't have his jersey retired by the Rockets? I understand this site is about Houston media so you're mostly reacting to the talk out there on Friday. But I'd like to know what you personally think of Yao before I comment on the post.
I do wanna make a few points of my own about Yao and about people's perceptions of him. In my opinion, this was a solid player with a skillset that very few men in the history of the NBA have duplicated, and nobody can take that away from the man. No, he wasn't a top 50 type of player and yes, he had his weak points that opposing teams were able to take advantage of at times. And much of his production was a direct result of his sheer size. But he did produce. That's a fact bro, and I hope you weren't tryin to argue against that.
When Yao played there was tons of folks that would call into talk radio and complain that this dude was too slow or too soft or not good enough to carry the team. It sounded to me like you all were begrudging the man, because you thought it wasn't right that he got so much praise and you wanted to knock him down a few notches. Or maybe it didn't sit well with you that he was more liked than TMac or Stevie Franchise so again you wanted to hate on the man because people overrated him. To me, if you got a problem with someone's argument then what you do is you refute that argument and make good solid counterpoints using logic and facts to bring folks over to your side of the discussion. The WRONG thing to do is to hate on the person that's being discussed for things that are outta his control. Yao Ming wasn't a self-promoter. It's not his fault that people pumped him up or that Houstonians accepted him more than they did TMac. So don't tear him down... if you gotta problem then what you oughtta do is tear down the "misperception" or the "false legacy" or whatever. Don't rip the man himself, all he did was work his ass off to be the best player he could be, all while he had the expectations of a billion people on his shoulders. You think you could have done better with that kinda pressure on you? As a fan of the Houston Rockets, I appreciated the work that Yao put in. There was always a chance that this guy was goin to be another Shawn Bradley or Manute Bol when the Rockets took him number 1 overall in '02. I didn't expect much at all. But he proved the doubters wrong, he exceeded my expectations, and he became a great player which I never thought would happen.
So if we're talkin about what he did ON THE COURT, the guy was either the best player or a top 2 player at his position for 5 or 6 years that he played, and that is much more than you can say for 90 percent of the jokers that have come through this league. And that's all I got.
Lawrence my man I think i have said I like Yao and I thought he was a good player but I do not believe his Jersey should be retired and initially I said HOF but after realizing Basketball HOF don't necessarily mean basketball only, I have came down off that argument. When I think of my best Rockets of all time, Yao do not crack my top 10. You are correct, we react to othe media and my reaction is as stated in my article, don't sell me on Yao's stats and when your argument loses steam, you pull the global card. One thing I have learned in all of this, The Basketball hall of fame is flawed. Just this year, Sabonis went it and I think Yao was better than him. thanks for reading man
LM
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