Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
The "mountain" just keeps getting larger.
Six years ago, Yao Ming innocently looked at the anticipated clash of giants to come and said that Shaquille O'Neal "is the mountain in my way." It was about basketball then, and about the excitement of a new career full of promise that was about to begin.
The challenge now, however, has become far greater than any single opponent, more daunting than finally winning that first playoff series or his new goal of playing 82 games in a season again. Perhaps it always was.
He was charged with bridging two worlds, bringing the West and China closer together.
He was to be the individual, through the relatively harmless prism of sports, to help us understand and appreciate China and to bring China and its still-new relative openness closer to the West.
We learned this week that it is the peak he still has not conquered.
The stunning news that Yao will miss the rest of the season because of a stress fracture in his left foot more than crushed him and radically changed the Rockets' prospects.
It made him, through no fault of his own, a barrier rather than bridge between factions and suspicions on either side of the Pacific.
There were rapid criticisms from China that Yao was overworked, leading to his injury. Though he was playing an average of 37 minutes a game, there is no evidence that playing time could be blamed. Not when the soreness began in February, with 30 games to play. Playing 34 or 35 minutes for 82 games and then playoffs is more taxing than his 37 minutes in 50 games.
Overworked in China?
There was conjecture, equally unfounded, that he was overburdened by his duties to the Chinese national team. But he took most of June off for his individual training. He spent much of July and August on his wedding and honeymoon. He played in a few exhibitions, but with no more demands than the average player at Fonde Rec Center.The comments about his play in China would have you believe he is chasing chickens in a field and carrying teammates on his back. He does fly coach, and when he is with the national team he stays in relatively Spartan accommodations. He did not break his foot in February because he failed to stay at the Ritz on a road trip in September.
Eventually, he will have to cut back on his summer workload. There is only so much ball a player, particularly one carrying 300 pounds, has in him. His now-frequent injuries bring understandable concerns about his threshold. But much of the suppositions are based on attitudes about Chinese treatment of athletes now outdated as they relate to Yao.
Worst, and most foolish of all, there were charges that Yao was somehow wrong to have said that he would consider missing the Beijing Olympics the greatest loss of his career.
If he is not committed enough to his NBA team, no one is. No one gives more.
When Tad Brown, the Rockets CEO, went to the locker room on Tuesday to give Yao a hug, he could not get there fast enough.
"I'm sorry," Yao said. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry to the franchise. I'm sorry to the city. I'm sorry to Mr. (Leslie) Alexander. I'm so sorry."
"If there is anyone dedicated to his team in the entire league, it is Yao Ming," teammate Shane Battier said. "Anyone that doubts that needs psychiatric help. But especially these Olympics, with the magnitude of the Olympics on a global scale to showcase China as an international power, with him as the centerpiece — it's incredibly important."
Undue criticism
Yet Yao was criticized for his devotion to playing for his national team in the one Olympics in his career that will be played in China.This is the height of hypocrisy given our frequent criticism of American athletes for not representing their nation. We're supposed to be the country that understands and embraces other cultures and values, not the country that tries to change them. We don't condemn differences; we celebrate them.
Yao is Chinese. He cherishes playing for his national team. At the end of an NBA season, the last thing he wants to do is jump into a summer season. But a month later, he wants to play for China. He needs to play for China.
"He's a player that is shared among the Rockets, the city of Houston, the NBA and China," Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said. "We're absolutely OK with that. It's Yao. Yao Ming's Chinese heritage is so important to him. Him not playing, not representing his country in China would be like not playing basketball at all.
"It's who he is."
The Rockets don't merely accept that Yao plays for China.
"We love it," Brown said. "The things he embraces so dearly, we embrace. He is a man of honor, nobility, charity and humility. You look for more people like that."
Everyone does, which, in the end, is something shared. China's pride swells when Yao plays for the Rockets, just as the Rockets celebrate his play for China.
Perhaps, then, in that way, he can still bridge cultures so far apart.
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