Another year, another playoff run for the Houston Rockets, and another episode of the hit TV show: Yao on Crutches.
Question: How do you know it's playoff time in the NBA?
Answer: Houston center Yao Ming is hurt.
It's an annual rite of summer: The grass grows, a baseball player sticks a needle in his rear and Yao's footsies demonstrate the toughness of a piece of celery.
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| Yao Ming's game doesn't match up to his stature, leaving the Rockets short. (AP) |
• Series: Lakers 2, Rockets 2 | Yao speaks
The latest injury to Yao again demonstrates that he remains more symbolic than an actual, palpable force. He's part of the NBA's hopes for a foothold in China but that doesn't mean he'll ever get a foothold in the Finals.
His gimpy legs won't let him.
Yao is stuck in an injury rabbit hole, the thick unrelenting paste of fractures and strains. In many cases players like Yao who consistently channel their inner disabled list don't fully recover. See: McGrady, Tracy.
The media has bought into the Ming the Merciless façade for some time but it has been proven false. Yao is a giant in stature but not a giant in game. He might prove me wrong and win a championship but thus far he has been too fragile, his shoulders not broad enough, his shins too vulnerable to play the role of championship heavy.
Do you know who Yao is? He's a less talented Grant Hill.
There isn't a finer human being than Hill but his career has been plagued by serious injuries. Yao is the same. He has played seven seasons in the NBA and his largest contributions to the league thus far are T-shirt sales in China and equity for translators in America.
Yao played a full season in his opening two years and hasn't since. His career is pock-marked with this stretch: 57, 48 and 55 games played. Toward the end of the 2005-2006 season Yao fractured the fifth metatarsal in his foot and missed the postseason. Last February he missed the playoffs with a stress fracture in his foot.
"It's just something we'll have to move on from," Houston coach Rick Adelman said of Yao's injury. "I feel bad for him again. He can't seem to get through [a season] and finish it off. ..."
Well, that is a huge problem if an alleged star can't finish a season.
I've written before that Yao is morbidly overrated. In 2007-08 the team went 19-8 without Yao. Just Sunday, with Yao gone, Houston destroyed the Lakers in a critical Game 4, tying the series, and this was no fluke nor was it a simple matter of Houston temporarily overcompensating for the loss of Yao.
The Rockets' offense moves more fluidly without Yao and now that he's gone this series might go seven games.
Yao simply isn't as critical to the Rockets as some people believe.
Were the Lakers too cocky in Game 4? Maybe. But there's something about this Rockets team that would make me nervous now if I were Los Angeles. Combine the newfound hunger and focus of Houston with the fact that Ko-Me Bryant tends to take a game or two off in the playoffs and the Rockets might be trouble for the Lakers.
Go ahead, Yao apologists, drink up the Kool-Aid.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
The Rockets were on the verge of elimination. Then, Yao got hurt. Again.
Now that Yao is gone this series is far from over.
