During Friday’s Rockets-Magic game, ESPN commentator Jeff Van Gundy expressed his feeling that Yao Ming, when he retires, should be a Hall of Famer. When he’s been able to get on the court, Yao has been one of the top bigmen in the NBA. Unfortunately, his injury issues are so frequent that those moments are getting rarer and rarer; he’s played in only five games since the end of the 2009 season, and has had his season end prematurely due to an injury a whopping four years in a row. At age 30, Yao Ming’s career as a superstar is likely at an end. So if he really retired today or tomorrow, would he really be a Hall of Famer?
Is Yao Ming a Hall of Famer?
On the surface of it, no. Discounting the year he missed entirely, and counting the five games he played this season, Yao has been in the league for eight years. He’s averaged 19 points, 9.2 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game over the course of his career. His numbers aren’t dismissible at all, but neither is his lack of longevity. With only four seasons under his belt in where he averaged 19 or more a game, Yao was a superstar for a brief period of time -- shorter than Penny Hardaway or Shawn Kemp or any number of NBA players who were great before injuries ruined them. And unlike Kemp and Penny, Yao has never been to the finals. In fact, if there’s anything that will put the kibosh on Yao’s Hall of Fame prospects, it’s that he only won one playoff series and reached the second round only once.
Granted, many of those playoff series coincided with injuries to either himself or to Tracy McGrady, Houston’s other superstar for most of Yao’s career. The fact remains, though, that the Rockets never lived up to their potential, and were never a serious enough contender to even make it to the conference finals. Strictly from a basketball perspective, Yao is little more of a Hall of Famer than Ralph Sampson or Tom Chambers.
However, he is not without his merits. There’s more to Yao Ming than the 7’6 center of the Houston Rockets. He’s also a celebrity and a symbol, the face of Chinese athletics and the flag-bearer of the Beijing Olympics ceremony in 2008. Yao has done more to globalize the NBA in Asia than anyone, or anything, else before him. His popularity is such that any Houston Rockets game could be viewed by over 100 million people in China, and he’s been voted into the starting lineup of every All-Star team since he entered the league -- even when he’s been injured.
His effect on the NBA has been so profound that the Golden State Warriors are reportedly interested in having him on their roster in 2012. If it was anybody else, the idea of putting a fragile, 7’6 center on the fastest team in the NBA would be unthinkable. But Yao’s following is so gigantic that the Warriors would be inclined just to have him on their roster. He’s a money-making machine even when he’s not on the floor, and there’re very few players you can say that about.
This is why he might actually be a Hall of Famer. Although his accolades on the court are sparse, he’s brought millions of new fans to the league, much in the way that Drazen Petrovic, the great Crotian shooting guard of the early 90’s, made the NBA relevant to millions of Europeans. Petrovic was named to the Hall of Fame in 2002, and because he only played in the league for a few seasons, it can be argued that his impact on the game was more instrumental at getting him inducted than his actual career in the NBA. If the same principle is applied to Yao Ming, the Rockets center might indeed be worthy of heading to Springfield some time in the future.
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