How 'bout Yao now?

[From Stephen B. Snyde for Friday tidbits...]

This one goes out to all you who dumped on Yao Ming in the past. From Charles Barkley to Shaquille O'Neal to TrueHoop reader "Femzilla", who once wrote...

...there haven't been many Chinese players in the league, and going by the track record Yao has really been the only one to accomplish success--and he hasn't even lived up to the hype...

The upcoming NBA playoffs in a few weeks is probably going to be the more visible, noticeable turning point for Yao. To be accompanied by silence. From all those critics from before who will be shut up with nothing to say.

I give you The Evolution of Yao, by Chris Ballard for SportsIllustrated.

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dreamleaguer breaks finger playing with NBA ball

The previous Sunday 12/3, due to another one of those rich youth basketball leagues that pushed us out of the usual nice main gym, and as the league of the Poor Man's Commish, naturally, we were forced to play in a high school's "auxiliary" (read: "abandoned") gym.

Here, we found out that "auxiliary" really meant the older, dusty building across the way that looked like it could have been used as a set of the movie Hoosiers. The one that got overlooked by the district for earthquake retrofitting. The one even the janitor doesn't have the keys for.

Not surprisingly, we found a ton of dead spots on the floor.

Meanwhile, I had brought one of dreamleague's two new Spalding NBA balls with me...

Read the rest of the story

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