Yao Ming Trade Rumors Show Rockets Are Looking Forward

Yao Ming is on the Houston Rockets’ trading block, according to a report by Yahoo!‘s Adrian Wojnarowski. The circumstances make perfect logical sense, with Yao ruled out for the season and the Rockets trying to capture a low playoff seed in the West, and likely needing help from an acquisition to get there.

Yao has an expiring contract worth $17.7 million, and the Rockets are about $1.2 million over the luxury tax threshold. The Chinese center will likely be the easiest Rocket to move at the deadline, provided Houston is willing to sweeten a deal to get under the tax line.

But there’s another side of the trade: the personal one. Yao was a savior of sorts for the Rockets when he was drafted No. 1 overall in 2002. He has been the team’s best player (when he’s been on the court) ever since, and signaled a new era of prosperity and success for the post-Hakeem Rockets.

At this point, however, Tom Martin of SB Nation’s Rockets blog The Dream Shake looks past sentimentality at what a Yao Ming trade could do for Houston’s future.

It’s the right move to try to make a trade. Yao is a thing of the past, and whomever the Rockets could potentially acquire would present a step towards a brighter future. Should the Rockets find a way to trade for a young talent, it would be a necessary indication to the fans and to the players that the Rockets are no longer living in the past, and that a step forward has been made, allowing everyone to finally remove the burden of playing or rooting for the Rockets despite Yao Ming. That’s a tough way to put it, but it has sadly been the case for the past two years.

We can talk about the financial implications of moving Yao, but there’s no denying a few things: A) The Rockets have maintained popularity in China on their own, despite Yao sitting on the bench. Players are still getting shoe deals in China that they would never get in the United States, and B) The NBA has made its mark in China as a league, and why many others have ascended above Yao. Regardless of the financial technicalities, it would be foolish for the Rockets to hold off on rebuilding to win in order to pocket more money to lose.

Few Rockets fans wept when the team pawned off Tracy McGrady a year ago. You’d understand if things were a bit more emotional should Yao depart, but at the same time, the business side of the equation is identical for both moves.