Indazone
12-14-2009, 02:09 PM
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5c4bb2910100gch0.html?tj=1
Reporter Wang Meng of Titan Sports reports from Houston
(As far as Yao Ming was concerned) it was a wonder machine. It resembled a running machine, but it was far more expansive. The treadmill was fully wrapped around with air-tight plastic. And with it, Yao Ming finally got his first taste of being able to walk normally again. It had seemed a very long while that he had to rely on his walking crutches; so he just felt great that he could now make giant strides forward on his own.
Yao Ming said with a broad smile: “I’m really having a fresh start all over again, including learning how to walk.”
To every average person, walking is just a most common and normal behavior, but now it seems a completely new thing to Yao Ming. To be able to get rid of his crutches and be able to walk again made him a happy man.
Before he could start his walking exercise, Yao Ming had to climb over to the centre of the treadmill, and wrap a big plastic bag all over the lower part of his body. Then the machine would inflate the plastic bag with air to support Yao Ming’s upper body so as to relieve the pressure on his knees and ankles. The treadmill started to move, and looked from afar, it seemed like Yao Ming was strolling along on the back of a horse. Yao Ming, being a fanatic of the World of Warcrafts, said: “Remember that half-horse half-man Centaur figure in WoW? Give me a spear, and I’ll look exactly like it.”
With the help of this treadmill, Yao Ming can walk about 15 minutes; just walking and not running. Running for him is still too remotely distant; all he could do now is to learn how to walk first, just like a baby learns how to walk. Keith Jones, the physical trainer for Houston Rockets, said: “Now we make use of the air pressure to reduce 50% of his body weight; of course, only God knows how heavy and fat he had become. He probably weighs 500 pounds now. This is just the very beginning, and we have to take it cautiously one step at a time. According to his recovery progress, we will then gradually increase the pressure. As of now, everything looks pretty neat, and he has been making much progress than before.”
Of course Yao Ming had not grown to weigh 500 pounds, or else he would get insane; for the past 6 months, he had stayed away from a lot of his favorite dishes and delicious delicacies; every day, apart from pure water and green tea, he could not even consume any drinks with calories. Sometimes, he would become very hungry and itchy and yet he had to endure it desperately and he could only eat very little food not proportional to his size and weight.
But of course, at the same time, Yao Ming had indeed grown fat. Having no real sports and movements, the muscles on his body, particularly on his left leg, had disappeared and replaced by fat.
However, with just shortly over 2 weeks, Yao Ming had already managed to reduce his weight by 10 pounds. For an average normal person, such rate of weight reduction would not be deemed normal; but when one takes a look at the contents of Yao Ming’s training regimen, one will be able to understand.
Over the past 2 weeks, Yao Ming had stopped his shooting practice on a chair. It is now of a lesser priority to maintain his shooting feel and touch; it will still be a long while before he needs them. And now all his time were spent on his recovery treatment and rehabilitation training.
Every morning, he had to go to the hospital for his rehabilitation treatment. Therapists would help him to exercise his left foot that had gone under the micro-fracture surgery; and it was only under the supervision of the doctors that he was allowed to exert pressure onto his left foot. At other times, he had to continue wearing his protective boot, and using his crutches for walking.
After the rehabilitation treatment at the hospital, he would have to make it to Toyota Centre. Houston Rockets trainers would be there waiting for him in the gymnasium. He would then exercise 15 minutes of walking on that wonder machine and then continue with his strength and conditioning exercises for his upper limbs and his waist. And all of his strength and conditioning routines were either sitting, or lying down, and so far up till now, any strength and conditioning routines on a standing position were still strictly prohibited by the doctors.
Houston Rockets trainers had specifically designed many routines/exercises for Yao Ming’s shoulder muscles. He had this lagging injury on his right shoulder for all these years. Therefore he could make use of this appropriate timing to treat/rehabilitate his shoulder. As most of the training were focused on his upper limb, and he had to rely on his heavy crutches for walking, Yao Ming’s arms became very thick. And right after his strength training, there were oxygen/cardiac exercises too. Yao Ming now swims every week, and bikes daily at home for 45 minutes. So right after a day’s hard work, Yao Ming would become very exhausted. For example, just this past Saturday, Yao Ming woke up and went out of his home at 08:00 am in the morning, and did not call it a day until he panted and was completed soaked in perspiration that he completed his biking exercise at 15:00 pm in the afternoon. Given such tough training regimen, anyone will succeed in losing weights.
Houston Rockets team physical trainer/physician Keith Jones said: “He is doing great and is making stable progress. He had also changed to a new protective boot, a much shorter one than the previous boot, and much lighter.” At least his toes can now be exposed to the air with the new protective boot. Yao Ming said jokingly: “My toes can finally see the sunlight again now.”
Talking about rehabilitation, Zydrunas Ilgauskas said: “My feet hurt; sometimes it was so bad and painful that I could not even walk out from the locker room to the parking lot right after my rehabilitation training.” Yao Ming said: “That is still too far away from me. Wait until I can get rid of my walking crutches first, and then I can comment on it.”
As far as Yao Ming is concerned, this will be an extra-ordinarily long year. Even though he had gone through such rehabilitation for a couple times before, this time, it is going to be a completely different one. A full year of rehabilitation is just way too long; no one is clear about what will exactly happen and what kind of difficulties he will encounter. It will be only when something is over that upon retrospect then can one become relaxed and chat about it casually.
Lets’ take Yao Ming’s first rehabilitation a couple years back as an example. It was just a bone spurs removal surgery, and the recuperation/rehabilitation period was just 6 weeks. Compared to what he is now going through was just a piece of cake. And yet for Yao Ming then, it was already considered something significant. So after 6 weeks, the doctor told Yao Ming: You can now restart your physical scrimmage with your team. So Yao Ming, who was already back in China with the national team’s closed door training, started his physical scrimmage with the national team. And to his awe and agony, he discovered that he could not even push and back off Tang Zhengdong during the team scrimmage; the strength on his lower limbs seemed all gone; and in that team scrimmage, he was completely owned and battered like lotus leaves in a storm. Yao Ming got mad, and he started to worry whether he can play in NBA again. A few years later, whenever he recalled the situation, he would chuckle and crack a joke about it: “I was thinking at that time, if I return to CBA, whether I will need to come off from the bench.” The kind of anxiety and doubts he experienced then has now been washed out completely with the passage of time. He had survived and he could now relaxingly ridicule and joke about it.
Let’s take another example; the micro-fracture and foot/ankle realignment surgery he just went through.
It was only up till recently that he can relaxingly tell others: “The doctor once told me that there is a certain risk associated with the surgery; there is a less than 1% chance that I would die (on the operations table).” And in the summer that had gone, there were numerous nights that he could not sleep well, pondering over and over the various possibilities and uncertainties of his future.
(Well, it was true that) there were risks associated with that surgery. For a surgery that lasted over 5 hours, no one would exactly know what would happen. But nevertheless he thought he had to do it, because he wanted to be able to return to the court, and he would also like to be able to play basketball with his children in future. He once asked a doctor if he did not choose to go under the knife but just take a conservative route of treatment, would he be able to recover and play basketball again in future with his children. The doctor pondered a while and replied: “Probably not.” Doctors need to be very precise and accurate; they need to be absolutely precise and accurate to insert nails into Yao Ming’s bones; and they need to be able to reduce the risk of death as low as possibly they can; and they need to reveal to Yao Ming if there is the slightest possibility that he may not be able to recover from this surgery. But this very slight risk of 1% and this very slightest possibility would still be torturing and make someone mad.
So lying on the operations table, with the anesthesia mask buckled on his face, Yao Ming went into a lethargic slumber with this 1% fear and uncertainty.
We don’t need any more examples. We will not know what will happen next, neither will Yao Ming. His past rehabilitation experiences can provide him with some help, but there is still a lot of experiences and hardships he has never had before. After all, he is getting closer and closer to be 30 years old. The speed of recuperation/rehabilitation of a 30-year-old differs much from a 25-year-old. From re-learning to walk to returning to play on a NBA court will be a journey reminiscent to the Long March (of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s).
So when a friend of mine asked him: “During this whole process, what had been the hardest for you?” Yao Ming pondered for a while and he replied: “The easiest part is what already happened yesterday; the most difficult part is always about tomorrow that has yet to come.”
In his ordinary days, Yao Ming will definitely not have this luxury to ponder things about yesterdays or tomorrows. Just matters about his rehabilitation training and his Shanghai Sharks team would make him a very busy man. Of course, he will also go to watch the games of the Houston Rockets once in a while.
Yao Ming was there on the court side watching the game between Houston Rockets and Cleveland Cavaliers. He was enjoying; the bustling noises of the stadium….so familiar yet so unfamiliar; when he saw Trevor Ariza penetrated into the lane, jumped, twisted his body and thumped in a reverse dunk, he roared out loud his approval, and almost jumped up and stomped his feet onto the floor. This is Yao Ming’s habit of watching basketball; whenever he sees great plays from his team mates, he always jumps up, stomps his feet and waves his arm vigorously. But once he wanted to stomp his feet, he could not even stand up this time round; the protective boot on his left foot reminded him. It is not the previous Yao Ming anymore (and that he is still with an injured foot.)
Yao Ming took a further look at that huge but very slow Shaquille O’Neal entrenched down at the low post, and that frustrated and depressed Lebron James (who often did not play well against the Houston Rockets), he suddenly realized he very much missed these all. “I don’t really know why. When I saw Chuck Hayes desperately trying to push Shaquille O’Neal away from the low post, I immediately wanted to be back on to the court and be playing again. I really miss the actions.”
Shaquille O’Neal belongs to an older generation; he was the target Yao Ming set for himself upon his arrival into the NBA scene. Whenever he played against Shaquille O’Neal he would be emotionally psyched up, and he would go for a hair cut; and even right after each of those games against Shaquille O’Neal, it would still be a while before his emotions and excitement subsided. Lebron James belongs to the newer generation of players; last season, the Houston Rockets were battered miserably at Cleveland Cavaliers’ home court. Yao Ming left the locker room in Cleveland bitterly, and left behind some bitter words: “See you in Houston.” Later in the season, the Houston Rockets had their revenge over the Cavaliers and relying on their defense, they had Lebron James contained and subdued like a caged animal. Yao Ming prays and hopes in his heart that upon his return to court, he could still play against such strong opponents.
Yao Ming in his crutches clapped and applauded for the Rockets; although he could hardly imagine himself running and gunning like his team mates currently doing, it was such a joy to him watching such a cohesive and hardworking team playing.
He also hopes that his Shanghai Sharks team can play basketball like the Houston Rockets. Ever since Yao Ming took over his Alma Mater team, a lot of Houstonians were aware of this news, and they were awed to learn that Shanghai Sharks was 4W 46L last season. In their collective memories, Shanghai Sharks used to be the CBA champion. Yao Ming told all those who asked after the situation of the Shanghai Sharks: “I certainly hope the team can win as many games as possible; but I’d rather hope to see Shanghai Sharks be transformed into a team that play with a completely new style; that they start to play with tough defense and fighting spirit.”
In fact, for most of the time these days, Yao Ming was pondering on what to do with his Shanghai Sharks team. He is now taking it as his life long career. In this past long and torturing summer, he had spent a lot of time pondering about his future. He later realized that he is still so attached and inseparable from basketball. “I think basketball will be my lifetime career.”
He had been thinking what exactly a team the Shanghai Sharks should become? Yao Ming’s own experience is actually the best textbook; from CBA to NBA; from a bench player to a starter; Yao Ming recalled his experience bit by bit and pondered on how to transform the Shanghai Sharks, so as to stay away from this 4W 46L disgrace and humiliation. Throughout his professional career, Jeff Van Gundy played an extremely important role. It was Jeff Van Gundy who had taught him what constituted a NBA level competition; and it was also Jeff Van Gundy who completely transformed Yao Ming to be a dominating low post centre. He likes Jeff Van Gundy’s discipline as well as his workaholicism to study each of his opponents so thoroughly. Therefore he decided to find a coach that resembled Jeff Van Gundy: Bob Donewald Jr. As a young player, he had learned and benefited from a coach like Jeff Van Gundy, and he hoped that Bob Donewald Jr. can bring about the same changes to the young Shanghai Sharks team.
Back in Shanghai, this was how Erick Zhang Mingji of Team Yao introduced Bob Donewald Jr. (to the press/media and the Shanghai Sharks players): even though he will be very harsh and strict during team practices and training, he is an easy to go with guy with players; he is not like Jeff Van Gundy, the former head coach of the Houston Rockets who can use up all the curse words he knows in a training session.
Before he decided to hire Bob Donewald Jr., Yao Ming invited him to Houston and had a long chat with him. Bob Donewald Jr. emphasized defense, valued team work basketball, had vast experience at training young players and had international coaching experience. These credentials were all meeting Yao Ming’s requirements and satisfaction. But Yao Ming still spent a lot of time briefing him about CBA; because Yao Ming knew a lot of good head coaches unfamiliar with China would encounter great difficulties in communications with the media/press and players (when they took up the job). Yao Ming had done a lot of homework and thinking, and went into details with Bob Donewald Jr., covering a lot of stuffs and issues that he thought he would encounter upon accepting the offer. He did not give Bob Donewald Jr. any winning formulae but he gave him a lot of rights and help. Bob Donewald Jr. is allowed to pick his own assistant coach, a strength and conditioning coach who used to work for Houston Rockets, and a team of player assessment/statistics analysts at his services. Yao Ming is trying to transplant his 7-year NBA experiences to his Shanghai Sharks team, and hopes he can achieve results through patience and execution.
It was not just about basketball; there are a lot of things that Yao Ming felt that need to be improved. He felt that basketball should be attached and associated with the community and the city. “Just like the Houston Rockets, we did not necessarily play well; we did not have good results and experienced some tough and difficult times in the past years; but still our fans came into the stadium to support and cheer for us.” In Yao Ming’s mind, there are still a lot of things remained undone for Chinese basketball. Every day Yao Ming would read news on the Internet about Chinese basketball; from summer to winter, he read about the failure of the Chinese national team in the Asian Championship; then failure in the FIBA Stankovic Continental Cup; and then again the latest failure in the East Asian Games. Just like those popular buzzwords over the Internet in China, this year, Chinese basketball was like a big tea table filled with sets of tea cups. (NOTE: sets of tea cups: is phonetically the same as i.e. tragedies.)
Yao Ming is anxious and could not wait to go back to watch the Shanghai Sharks play and feel the latest pulse of Chinese basketball. He had left the CBA scene once, and he is now returning. As a player, he had contributed much to Chinese basketball; and now he hopes to bring much greater changes to it in his new capacity as the owner of a basketball team.
It will be very soon; the day of Yao Ming’s return to China is getting closer and closer. Still relying on his crutches to walk, he will very soon appear in the new home court of the Shanghai Sharks in the debut game of Shanghai Sharks of the new CBA season. He has a lot of expectations about Shanghai Sharks and himself in his heart, but he knows it requires making progress one step at a time. He said: “Sports teach you how to be quick; Injuries teach you how to slow down.”
Reporter Wang Meng of Titan Sports reports from Houston
(As far as Yao Ming was concerned) it was a wonder machine. It resembled a running machine, but it was far more expansive. The treadmill was fully wrapped around with air-tight plastic. And with it, Yao Ming finally got his first taste of being able to walk normally again. It had seemed a very long while that he had to rely on his walking crutches; so he just felt great that he could now make giant strides forward on his own.
Yao Ming said with a broad smile: “I’m really having a fresh start all over again, including learning how to walk.”
To every average person, walking is just a most common and normal behavior, but now it seems a completely new thing to Yao Ming. To be able to get rid of his crutches and be able to walk again made him a happy man.
Before he could start his walking exercise, Yao Ming had to climb over to the centre of the treadmill, and wrap a big plastic bag all over the lower part of his body. Then the machine would inflate the plastic bag with air to support Yao Ming’s upper body so as to relieve the pressure on his knees and ankles. The treadmill started to move, and looked from afar, it seemed like Yao Ming was strolling along on the back of a horse. Yao Ming, being a fanatic of the World of Warcrafts, said: “Remember that half-horse half-man Centaur figure in WoW? Give me a spear, and I’ll look exactly like it.”
With the help of this treadmill, Yao Ming can walk about 15 minutes; just walking and not running. Running for him is still too remotely distant; all he could do now is to learn how to walk first, just like a baby learns how to walk. Keith Jones, the physical trainer for Houston Rockets, said: “Now we make use of the air pressure to reduce 50% of his body weight; of course, only God knows how heavy and fat he had become. He probably weighs 500 pounds now. This is just the very beginning, and we have to take it cautiously one step at a time. According to his recovery progress, we will then gradually increase the pressure. As of now, everything looks pretty neat, and he has been making much progress than before.”
Of course Yao Ming had not grown to weigh 500 pounds, or else he would get insane; for the past 6 months, he had stayed away from a lot of his favorite dishes and delicious delicacies; every day, apart from pure water and green tea, he could not even consume any drinks with calories. Sometimes, he would become very hungry and itchy and yet he had to endure it desperately and he could only eat very little food not proportional to his size and weight.
But of course, at the same time, Yao Ming had indeed grown fat. Having no real sports and movements, the muscles on his body, particularly on his left leg, had disappeared and replaced by fat.
However, with just shortly over 2 weeks, Yao Ming had already managed to reduce his weight by 10 pounds. For an average normal person, such rate of weight reduction would not be deemed normal; but when one takes a look at the contents of Yao Ming’s training regimen, one will be able to understand.
Over the past 2 weeks, Yao Ming had stopped his shooting practice on a chair. It is now of a lesser priority to maintain his shooting feel and touch; it will still be a long while before he needs them. And now all his time were spent on his recovery treatment and rehabilitation training.
Every morning, he had to go to the hospital for his rehabilitation treatment. Therapists would help him to exercise his left foot that had gone under the micro-fracture surgery; and it was only under the supervision of the doctors that he was allowed to exert pressure onto his left foot. At other times, he had to continue wearing his protective boot, and using his crutches for walking.
After the rehabilitation treatment at the hospital, he would have to make it to Toyota Centre. Houston Rockets trainers would be there waiting for him in the gymnasium. He would then exercise 15 minutes of walking on that wonder machine and then continue with his strength and conditioning exercises for his upper limbs and his waist. And all of his strength and conditioning routines were either sitting, or lying down, and so far up till now, any strength and conditioning routines on a standing position were still strictly prohibited by the doctors.
Houston Rockets trainers had specifically designed many routines/exercises for Yao Ming’s shoulder muscles. He had this lagging injury on his right shoulder for all these years. Therefore he could make use of this appropriate timing to treat/rehabilitate his shoulder. As most of the training were focused on his upper limb, and he had to rely on his heavy crutches for walking, Yao Ming’s arms became very thick. And right after his strength training, there were oxygen/cardiac exercises too. Yao Ming now swims every week, and bikes daily at home for 45 minutes. So right after a day’s hard work, Yao Ming would become very exhausted. For example, just this past Saturday, Yao Ming woke up and went out of his home at 08:00 am in the morning, and did not call it a day until he panted and was completed soaked in perspiration that he completed his biking exercise at 15:00 pm in the afternoon. Given such tough training regimen, anyone will succeed in losing weights.
Houston Rockets team physical trainer/physician Keith Jones said: “He is doing great and is making stable progress. He had also changed to a new protective boot, a much shorter one than the previous boot, and much lighter.” At least his toes can now be exposed to the air with the new protective boot. Yao Ming said jokingly: “My toes can finally see the sunlight again now.”
Talking about rehabilitation, Zydrunas Ilgauskas said: “My feet hurt; sometimes it was so bad and painful that I could not even walk out from the locker room to the parking lot right after my rehabilitation training.” Yao Ming said: “That is still too far away from me. Wait until I can get rid of my walking crutches first, and then I can comment on it.”
As far as Yao Ming is concerned, this will be an extra-ordinarily long year. Even though he had gone through such rehabilitation for a couple times before, this time, it is going to be a completely different one. A full year of rehabilitation is just way too long; no one is clear about what will exactly happen and what kind of difficulties he will encounter. It will be only when something is over that upon retrospect then can one become relaxed and chat about it casually.
Lets’ take Yao Ming’s first rehabilitation a couple years back as an example. It was just a bone spurs removal surgery, and the recuperation/rehabilitation period was just 6 weeks. Compared to what he is now going through was just a piece of cake. And yet for Yao Ming then, it was already considered something significant. So after 6 weeks, the doctor told Yao Ming: You can now restart your physical scrimmage with your team. So Yao Ming, who was already back in China with the national team’s closed door training, started his physical scrimmage with the national team. And to his awe and agony, he discovered that he could not even push and back off Tang Zhengdong during the team scrimmage; the strength on his lower limbs seemed all gone; and in that team scrimmage, he was completely owned and battered like lotus leaves in a storm. Yao Ming got mad, and he started to worry whether he can play in NBA again. A few years later, whenever he recalled the situation, he would chuckle and crack a joke about it: “I was thinking at that time, if I return to CBA, whether I will need to come off from the bench.” The kind of anxiety and doubts he experienced then has now been washed out completely with the passage of time. He had survived and he could now relaxingly ridicule and joke about it.
Let’s take another example; the micro-fracture and foot/ankle realignment surgery he just went through.
It was only up till recently that he can relaxingly tell others: “The doctor once told me that there is a certain risk associated with the surgery; there is a less than 1% chance that I would die (on the operations table).” And in the summer that had gone, there were numerous nights that he could not sleep well, pondering over and over the various possibilities and uncertainties of his future.
(Well, it was true that) there were risks associated with that surgery. For a surgery that lasted over 5 hours, no one would exactly know what would happen. But nevertheless he thought he had to do it, because he wanted to be able to return to the court, and he would also like to be able to play basketball with his children in future. He once asked a doctor if he did not choose to go under the knife but just take a conservative route of treatment, would he be able to recover and play basketball again in future with his children. The doctor pondered a while and replied: “Probably not.” Doctors need to be very precise and accurate; they need to be absolutely precise and accurate to insert nails into Yao Ming’s bones; and they need to be able to reduce the risk of death as low as possibly they can; and they need to reveal to Yao Ming if there is the slightest possibility that he may not be able to recover from this surgery. But this very slight risk of 1% and this very slightest possibility would still be torturing and make someone mad.
So lying on the operations table, with the anesthesia mask buckled on his face, Yao Ming went into a lethargic slumber with this 1% fear and uncertainty.
We don’t need any more examples. We will not know what will happen next, neither will Yao Ming. His past rehabilitation experiences can provide him with some help, but there is still a lot of experiences and hardships he has never had before. After all, he is getting closer and closer to be 30 years old. The speed of recuperation/rehabilitation of a 30-year-old differs much from a 25-year-old. From re-learning to walk to returning to play on a NBA court will be a journey reminiscent to the Long March (of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1930s).
So when a friend of mine asked him: “During this whole process, what had been the hardest for you?” Yao Ming pondered for a while and he replied: “The easiest part is what already happened yesterday; the most difficult part is always about tomorrow that has yet to come.”
In his ordinary days, Yao Ming will definitely not have this luxury to ponder things about yesterdays or tomorrows. Just matters about his rehabilitation training and his Shanghai Sharks team would make him a very busy man. Of course, he will also go to watch the games of the Houston Rockets once in a while.
Yao Ming was there on the court side watching the game between Houston Rockets and Cleveland Cavaliers. He was enjoying; the bustling noises of the stadium….so familiar yet so unfamiliar; when he saw Trevor Ariza penetrated into the lane, jumped, twisted his body and thumped in a reverse dunk, he roared out loud his approval, and almost jumped up and stomped his feet onto the floor. This is Yao Ming’s habit of watching basketball; whenever he sees great plays from his team mates, he always jumps up, stomps his feet and waves his arm vigorously. But once he wanted to stomp his feet, he could not even stand up this time round; the protective boot on his left foot reminded him. It is not the previous Yao Ming anymore (and that he is still with an injured foot.)
Yao Ming took a further look at that huge but very slow Shaquille O’Neal entrenched down at the low post, and that frustrated and depressed Lebron James (who often did not play well against the Houston Rockets), he suddenly realized he very much missed these all. “I don’t really know why. When I saw Chuck Hayes desperately trying to push Shaquille O’Neal away from the low post, I immediately wanted to be back on to the court and be playing again. I really miss the actions.”
Shaquille O’Neal belongs to an older generation; he was the target Yao Ming set for himself upon his arrival into the NBA scene. Whenever he played against Shaquille O’Neal he would be emotionally psyched up, and he would go for a hair cut; and even right after each of those games against Shaquille O’Neal, it would still be a while before his emotions and excitement subsided. Lebron James belongs to the newer generation of players; last season, the Houston Rockets were battered miserably at Cleveland Cavaliers’ home court. Yao Ming left the locker room in Cleveland bitterly, and left behind some bitter words: “See you in Houston.” Later in the season, the Houston Rockets had their revenge over the Cavaliers and relying on their defense, they had Lebron James contained and subdued like a caged animal. Yao Ming prays and hopes in his heart that upon his return to court, he could still play against such strong opponents.
Yao Ming in his crutches clapped and applauded for the Rockets; although he could hardly imagine himself running and gunning like his team mates currently doing, it was such a joy to him watching such a cohesive and hardworking team playing.
He also hopes that his Shanghai Sharks team can play basketball like the Houston Rockets. Ever since Yao Ming took over his Alma Mater team, a lot of Houstonians were aware of this news, and they were awed to learn that Shanghai Sharks was 4W 46L last season. In their collective memories, Shanghai Sharks used to be the CBA champion. Yao Ming told all those who asked after the situation of the Shanghai Sharks: “I certainly hope the team can win as many games as possible; but I’d rather hope to see Shanghai Sharks be transformed into a team that play with a completely new style; that they start to play with tough defense and fighting spirit.”
In fact, for most of the time these days, Yao Ming was pondering on what to do with his Shanghai Sharks team. He is now taking it as his life long career. In this past long and torturing summer, he had spent a lot of time pondering about his future. He later realized that he is still so attached and inseparable from basketball. “I think basketball will be my lifetime career.”
He had been thinking what exactly a team the Shanghai Sharks should become? Yao Ming’s own experience is actually the best textbook; from CBA to NBA; from a bench player to a starter; Yao Ming recalled his experience bit by bit and pondered on how to transform the Shanghai Sharks, so as to stay away from this 4W 46L disgrace and humiliation. Throughout his professional career, Jeff Van Gundy played an extremely important role. It was Jeff Van Gundy who had taught him what constituted a NBA level competition; and it was also Jeff Van Gundy who completely transformed Yao Ming to be a dominating low post centre. He likes Jeff Van Gundy’s discipline as well as his workaholicism to study each of his opponents so thoroughly. Therefore he decided to find a coach that resembled Jeff Van Gundy: Bob Donewald Jr. As a young player, he had learned and benefited from a coach like Jeff Van Gundy, and he hoped that Bob Donewald Jr. can bring about the same changes to the young Shanghai Sharks team.
Back in Shanghai, this was how Erick Zhang Mingji of Team Yao introduced Bob Donewald Jr. (to the press/media and the Shanghai Sharks players): even though he will be very harsh and strict during team practices and training, he is an easy to go with guy with players; he is not like Jeff Van Gundy, the former head coach of the Houston Rockets who can use up all the curse words he knows in a training session.
Before he decided to hire Bob Donewald Jr., Yao Ming invited him to Houston and had a long chat with him. Bob Donewald Jr. emphasized defense, valued team work basketball, had vast experience at training young players and had international coaching experience. These credentials were all meeting Yao Ming’s requirements and satisfaction. But Yao Ming still spent a lot of time briefing him about CBA; because Yao Ming knew a lot of good head coaches unfamiliar with China would encounter great difficulties in communications with the media/press and players (when they took up the job). Yao Ming had done a lot of homework and thinking, and went into details with Bob Donewald Jr., covering a lot of stuffs and issues that he thought he would encounter upon accepting the offer. He did not give Bob Donewald Jr. any winning formulae but he gave him a lot of rights and help. Bob Donewald Jr. is allowed to pick his own assistant coach, a strength and conditioning coach who used to work for Houston Rockets, and a team of player assessment/statistics analysts at his services. Yao Ming is trying to transplant his 7-year NBA experiences to his Shanghai Sharks team, and hopes he can achieve results through patience and execution.
It was not just about basketball; there are a lot of things that Yao Ming felt that need to be improved. He felt that basketball should be attached and associated with the community and the city. “Just like the Houston Rockets, we did not necessarily play well; we did not have good results and experienced some tough and difficult times in the past years; but still our fans came into the stadium to support and cheer for us.” In Yao Ming’s mind, there are still a lot of things remained undone for Chinese basketball. Every day Yao Ming would read news on the Internet about Chinese basketball; from summer to winter, he read about the failure of the Chinese national team in the Asian Championship; then failure in the FIBA Stankovic Continental Cup; and then again the latest failure in the East Asian Games. Just like those popular buzzwords over the Internet in China, this year, Chinese basketball was like a big tea table filled with sets of tea cups. (NOTE: sets of tea cups: is phonetically the same as i.e. tragedies.)
Yao Ming is anxious and could not wait to go back to watch the Shanghai Sharks play and feel the latest pulse of Chinese basketball. He had left the CBA scene once, and he is now returning. As a player, he had contributed much to Chinese basketball; and now he hopes to bring much greater changes to it in his new capacity as the owner of a basketball team.
It will be very soon; the day of Yao Ming’s return to China is getting closer and closer. Still relying on his crutches to walk, he will very soon appear in the new home court of the Shanghai Sharks in the debut game of Shanghai Sharks of the new CBA season. He has a lot of expectations about Shanghai Sharks and himself in his heart, but he knows it requires making progress one step at a time. He said: “Sports teach you how to be quick; Injuries teach you how to slow down.”