One week of training camp, two practices and an exhibition game were all Yao Ming and the Houston Rockets had to prepare for his debut. Calling it a tall order would be a massive understatement.
Over a five-year period, Yao had only ever played basketball for the Chinese national team and the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association. So when the 7-foot-6 phenom was taken with the No. 1 pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, he became the first international player selected with the top pick who had never played college basketball in the United States.
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As a result, Houston eased Yao into the league. He didn’t score but collected two rebounds coming off the bench and playing the second-fewest minutes on the team — just under 11 — in the Rockets’ season-opening, 91-82 loss against the Indiana Pacers on Oct. 30, 2002.
Even though Yao handled it well, former Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich told The Athletic it was a tough ask for any rookie to come into, let alone Yao.
“It wasn’t the ideal situation for a new player breaking into the NBA to come in this late to training camp,” said Tomjanovich, the 2021 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee who coached Houston from 1992 to 2003. “We always worry about that with injury, especially when you’re a young player. That sometimes sets you back a whole year. And then the pressure starts hitting that player, and they don’t get into the swing of things until a lot later. But he came in with all this attention, and here he is playing against (athletes like) Shaq (O’Neal), and we didn’t know how it was gonna go because we just practice against ourselves. I can’t even remember how many exhibition games (he played) — if he played any — or what was going on there, but it was not an ideal situation, and I thought he handled it fantastic.
“It’s the most important thing — especially for a young player — ’cause you’re gonna hear things that are different than what you heard in college or on an international team. There’s different ways of performing the different techniques and offenses and defenses that you would run. Then, to also get to know the individuals, where they like the ball and how they get used to you … so very important and something. He passed that with flying colors.”
There was nothing but pressure surrounding the then-21-year-old during the draft process. He garnered attention in the United States. The year he was drafted, new regulations in China required that any basketball player in the NBA would have to forfeit half of his earnings — salary, endorsements, etc. — to the government and the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA).
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After that, the CBA required Yao to return home to play for the national team, and he only received approval to play in the NBA the morning of the draft after his team of advisers and the Rockets assured the league that he would be the team’s pick.
His delayed arrival was anticipated, as he joined Houston after playing with China in the 2002 FIBA World Championships. The extra hurdles the Rockets and Yao had to overcome, in addition to being a rookie, also opened the door for a bevy of scathing criticism. Several basketball pundits predicted he’d be a bust and even made bets predicated on how poorly he’d play.
Charles Barkley was so convinced Yao would fail that his bet was to kiss Kenny Smith’s ass if the rookie scored 19 points or more his first season. Eight games in, at Staples Center facing the Los Angeles Lakers, Yao went 9-for-9 from the field and dropped 20 points.
On the opposite end of the skepticism were those who thought Yao could eventually help Houston regain the prominence it had in the 1990s when another big man, Hakeem Olajuwon, helped navigate the franchise to consecutive NBA championships.
Tomjanovich, who coached those title teams, had unparalleled faith in the newcomer. The Rockets were interested in Yao, even if it meant taking time for him to reach his potential, because his talent and tools weren’t like others they’d seen before.
“(He was) a guy that we felt is a once-in-a-lifetime type player,” Tomjanovich said. “With that size, with that amount of skill, and then the other thing to learn how intelligent he was with his approach to the game.”
The biggest obstacle Tomjanovich and his staff had was getting Yao ready for elite players night after night in the NBA. While the CBA prepared Yao some, its talent pool paled in comparison to the NBA, but Tomjanovich and Yao worked together to narrow the gap.
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“Getting ready for the different type (of) players that he would be facing (was the main challenge),” Tomjanovich said. “They would be probably stronger and more athletic than a lot of the players that he had faced before. And he was ready for double-teams and things like that. He’s a very advanced passer for a young big man, and he could see over the defense, of course.
“He was so unselfish. My philosophy was to let emotion come into play with players. When somebody makes a good play, I would call a play and say, ‘Let’s do it again. Give him the ball again.’ And if a guy keeps making good plays, I just keep going to him. I mean, that’s how I did things, and that was sort of my built-in motivator. (Yao) says, ‘Oh, coach, I couldn’t do that. I would be embarrassed.’ He says, ‘I wouldn’t want the ball that many times in a row, you know?’ I say, ‘Well, you’re a rare individual, you know?'”
This came into play the first time Yao and O’Neal battled in the post. The veteran O’Neal finished with a better stat line — 31 points and 13 rebounds — but the rookie got the last laugh with a dunk with 10 seconds remaining to secure a Rockets 108-104 overtime win. Two of Yao’s six blocks in the game came against O’Neal in the first few minutes of the contest, and six of his 10 points were scored during that stretch. He also added 10 rebounds to his final figures.
In an ironic twist of fate, after all the criticism and jokes at Yao’s expense to start his career — which O’Neal, for one, has said he since regrets — the two found themselves in the same 2016 Hall of Fame class.
“One time, he had me on the post, and he turned around to shoot a fadeaway, and I jumped as high as I could, and he still had about 3 feet left,” O’Neal said on NBA TV. “I was like, ‘Dang, this dude is tall.’ And the first time I played against him, I was like, OK, you know what, he’s a big guy. You gotta take it to his head, and I went with a little oopsie-doop finger roll, and he blocked my first three shots.”
At a 2011 news conference in Shanghai, Yao announced his retirement from the NBA. Multiple injuries to his ankles and feet cut his playing career short, and scores of people around basketball lamented his brief time in the game as he missed 250 games over his final six seasons in the league.
Tomjanovich still hears from his former player, who is now the sixth president of the CBA.
“Let me just say that I feel very grateful that I was a part of his life,” Tomjanovich said. “Once in a while, I do get calls from him. He’s so grateful. He’s so humble. It was one of the joys of my life. I wish that I could have continued to coach him, but I got sick. What a joy it was to have him on my team.”
Yao was a member of eight NBA All-Star teams, as well as five All-NBA teams, and in 2009 helped the Rockets win their first playoff series since 1997. He also had his No. 11 jersey retired in 2017. O’Neal, who grew to have a friendship with Yao in the years that followed his first season, went a step further, saying had Yao not been hampered by his injuries, he could’ve finished as one of the all-time greatest centers the league had ever seen.
“He was very agile,” O’Neal said on NBA TV. “He could play inside, he could play outside, and if he didn’t have those injuries he could’ve been up there in the top five centers to ever play the game.”
(Top photo of Shaquille O’Neal and Yao Ming: Bill Baptist / NBAE via Getty Images)
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