With Shaquille O’Neal’s game on the decline and Ben Wallace still not able to score consistently, is Yao Ming the best center in the NBA? He certainly has been on fire since the All-Star break.
In the 14 games since the break entering Tuesday night, Yao has averaged 28 points, 12.9 rebounds and two blocks while shooting 53.4 percent. But the telltale number that’s really impressive is 37.4 – his minutes per game during that span.
Yao even has some saying he has surpassed Shaquille O’Neal and Ben Wallace to become the game’s best center. At 7 feet 6 and 310 pounds, he certainly strikes an imposing figure.
“But he’s still trying to do something no one has ever done, which is play huge minutes at that size,” said Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy, who says Yao is one of the hardest-working players he has coached. “I said it many times: He’s so, so diligent about his craft.
“He comes early, stays late. So he’s in as good a shape as you can be, and yet at times he’s going to still have those nights where he’s playing big minutes back to back, where he’s a little bit slow-footed.”
After missing 21 games because of a Dec. 19 surgery on his left great toe, Yao’s game has soared. Yao has 12 double-doubles since the All-Star break, including 10 games in which he scored 25 or more points.
O’Neal is averaging 19.8 ppg, 9.1 rpg and 1.8 bpg which are way off his career averages of 26.4 ppg, 11.8 rpg and 2.5 bpg. In all fairness, O’Neal is now playing second fiddle to Dwayne Wade, while Yao has exploded with the absence of Tracy McGrady due to his chronically bad back. Still, it’s good to see the big guy developing into a great center. I was always a fan of his fundamentally-sound game and his on-court demeanor. The more stars the league has like Yao the better it will be in the long run.
