Never forget the time Yao Ming ruthlessly crossed over a defender behind his back

The Houston Rockets are retiring Yao Ming’s jersey on Friday night. This is my favorite thing Yao Ming ever did.

It’s been a decade or so and I still can’t get over this play. I don’t remember when I first saw it — not live and not on SportsCenter the next day, because I’m a shameful millennial who was barely watching the NBA at the time. It probably was five-ish years ago while wandering through YouTube on a random binge. That video above only has 415,000 views, which seems like a disgrace when you consider the official video for Coldplay’s “Paradise” has 657 million views. Is that video really 158,313 times better than Yao Ming’s around-the-back dribble? It’s not, and if you disagree this blog post website may not be for you. (Shoutout to proportions and all my math teachers for that quick calculation.)

Yao Ming ran a fast break, slung the ball around his back to avoid a steal, picked it up cleanly, and dribbled twice more before dunking. He was 7’6. Think about how many times you’ve seen big men who weren’t that tall butcher a fast break. Here’s Chris Kaman trying to run a fast break. God bless him.

Here’s Dwight Howard doing the same thing. Poor dude.

Centers don’t need to run fast breaks. We here at SB Nation dot com highly encourage it at all times, because those two gifs above are two of my favorite in the world’s existence. But centers — who usually stand around 6’11, like Howard, or 7’, like Kaman — can play entire seasons avoiding touching the ball between the three-point lines. When they do, they awkwardly take a dribble, quickly pick the ball up like they’re scared they did something wrong, and frantically look around for a guard who can take it away from them before the heinous basketball forces them to commit a charge or fire it off the backboard like a RPG.

Yao Ming was 6’7. Sorry, 7’6. That was muscle memory misfiring, because I’m so used to typing heights that start with 6 (and definitely not heights that start with 7 and end with 6) that I honest to god wrote it like that at first.

At 7’6, you especially don’t need to ever touch the ball between the three-point lines. You’d never reasonably be expected to do anything except rebound, dunk, and just exist as a freakishly large human. Yao Ming could have gone his whole career doing just that, and he would have been nearly as good, because he was a 7’6 human. Instead, he was also able to dribble around his back at a moment’s notice, take two more dribbles, and dunk.

That’s Yao Ming, impossibly skilled for his size, incredibly talented when just his height alone would have sufficed. This is a player who split double teams in the post and hit turnaround jumpers, who averaged a couple assists per game one season, and hit three-pointers.

I asked SB Nation’s internet detective, Mark Sandritter, to figure out who Yao absolutely clowned with that around-the-back dribble, and he figured it out: It’s Shareef Abdur-Rahim. While Abdur-Rahim did not retire on the spot, which would have been the most appropriate tribute to getting crossed over by a 7’6 man, his career was never the same. He averaged 37 minutes and 20 points in his career until arriving in Portland, when Abdur-Rahim only managed 27 minutes and 12 points. Some might say Abdur-Rahim was aging and had a natural decline, but we know the truth: he couldn’t shake the ghost of the Yao Ming crossover and it ruined his career.

Yao Ming was an anomaly beyond his 7’6 frame. He would have been an NBA player at 7’3, or 7’, or 6’9, too. He made defenders look like Lilliputians by towering over anyone who tried to guard him, but he had the skills to dominate them even if the heights were leveled. He could have stepped out and hit contested jumpers or developed a crafty under-the-rim game utilizing reverse layups. He did that occasionally just because, despite not needing to. At 6’6, or 6’3, we’re really changing history and who knows what type of athlete he would have been. But you’d like to think he could have made it in the NBA if that were true, too.

Instead, Yao was 7’6. His height was the most significant reason that he didn’t have a long career, causing his feet to break down and his playing days to end sooner than anyone would have wanted. Of course, nothing about that takes away from his turn to a cultural symbol, and the many great things he has done as a spokesperson in China since.

Him being 7’6 doesn’t take away from him being a great basketball player, either. Sure, it helped. But he was a baller all the same.