Yao Ming interview

Don't know if it is allowed to post but here's an interview from the ************.com forums:

http://www.************.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13555

Glad to have a guy like this on the team, I hope this year he becomes our leader and everybody will follow suit. He's right on the money with his concerns about the 3-0 start. The team definetly needs to get back to the JVG defensive mindset and start to play better offensively.

 

Yes, is it forbidden to post links of that website in here? I didn't know but i saw links being post before and it also showed up as *****.com etc.

Can i post the text then ?

 

Ok and yes it is by Wang Meng. Part 1:

Reporter Wang Meng of Titan Sports reports from Houston

The competition with Oklahoma City Thunders had just completed, and all the joyous atmosphere prior to the game had but vanished with nothing left. Right after the game ended, Rafer Alston (trying to cheer up Yao Ming) grabbed Yao Ming and said: “Yao, it was Halloween. You need to learn how to celebrate and enjoy (the Halloween). Well, let’s see what we can do to celebrate Halloween next year. If you play the role of Batman, I’ll be Robin. If you play the role of Tom (the cat), I’ll be Jerry (the mouse)……..” And Yao Ming did not wait for Rafer Alston to finish and immediately threw back: “What if I play the role of Snow White?” Rafer Alston chuckled and yelled: “That’s all right. No problem. We have enough dwarfs here: me, Luther Head, Joey Dorsey, Von Wafer…..we have more than enough (for the 7 dwarfs).” Tickled by Rafer Alston’s reply, Yao Ming rolled over laughing heartily on the bench.

But soon afterwards, when he picked up and reviewed the statistics sheet of the teams and the players, Yao Ming completely lost the interest in cracking further jokes: 36% team FG% and 17 team turnovers resulting in 20 fast break points for the opponents; and down at his own column, 6 out of 15 FG%. There were no legitimate reasons for Yao Ming to be happy about.

Yao Ming was very unsatisfied about his team’s current conditions. “We are just too relaxed. We seemed to have thought as long as we were on the court, then winning would become automatic, and we took it for granted that we would beat our opponents. But this is not factual and it is not going to happen like this. We cannot continue like this. We played 2 very sloppy games (i.e. against Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunders) and these should sufficiently and profoundly serve as our lessons. We do not necessarily need to lose any games before we realize and understand this.”

Yao Ming knew that this winning streak of 3 in the new season will cover and hide away a lot of problems and questions, because as a lot of basketball critics or TV commentators would have the tendency to say: A win is always a win and the most important. But Yao Ming is very subtle and clear deep down inside: His team should not be just content in pursuing victory in individual games; what his team should pursue is to complete its gelling as soon as possibly they can such that his team can evolve to become a team tenacious enough to win in the playoffs. Now he could clearly feel the disparity between his team and a winning playoff team.

Titan Sports: So in these first several games of the new season, everybody’s attention and emphasis was placed on the team offense to see whether your team can play in accordance to Rick Adelman’s systems (motion offense). But then what about defense? After all, defense could be the deciding factor of how far your team can advance further into the playoff.

Yao Ming: We have also a lot of problems in our defense. Now because of the height reason, the pressure on our interior defense is very huge. It is impossible for me to stay on court without taking breaks. Once I leave the court for my breathers, the height of our opponents’ interior players will possibly become their superiority in interior offense and defense. Moreover, I felt that our intensity in defense had somewhat dropped; it seemed that the heritage left by Jeff Van Gundy in defense is gradually vanishing from us and that desire to defend (amongst my team mates) is also gradually disappearing; there were much less movement and help defense, and we had a lot of cracks and loopholes now in our defense.

Titan Sports: As the longest serving player in your team, what kind of responsibility you have to remind your team mates such that the heritage of Jeff Van Gundy could be retained?

Yao Ming: I know my own responsibility; and all these require communications and exchanges to complete. I will continue to communicate with my team mates and coaching staff in order to find the best and most appropriate remedies. You probably should have noticed, right after the shoot-around practice the other day, Chuck Hayes and I talked with the assistant coach about our defense; we brought up what we thought to him, and hopefully through such communication we could further adjust and strengthen our defense. We all know how important defense is; after all we had played so many years under Jeff Van Gundy.

Titan Sports: You just mentioned about the height issue of the interior players. If Deke Mutombo returns, how big an enhancement it will actually bring to your team’s defense?

Yao Ming: If Uncle Mutombo does come back, it certainly helps; after all, defense and rebounding are his strong suits, and we had all witnessed and experienced that ourselves in the past several years. But we just can’t just anticipate and say once he returns, our defense will be upped another level all of a sudden; after all, his age is there and he is getting another year older. However, I definitely felt that we need a big tall guy in our interior, above 7 feet; just to scare off our opponents will already serve the purpose. Was there such a saying that you cannot teach height? If you’re short by a few inches, then you’re short by that few inches.

Titan Sports: So before they find you a big tall guy as your back-up, how are they going to adjust your play minutes on the court, and how to distribute your play minutes in both halves of the game? Don’t you think you had played too long in the previous games? Also don’t you think they had played you continuously for too long?

Yao Ming: Well, play minutes of a player a lot of time depend on match-up situation, and should be adjusted on-the-fly according to actual game situation. Moreover, since we still had some injured players on our team, surely I’m expected to play much longer. But sometimes I do feel that I should reduce the time playing continuously on the court. If I stay on court and play continuously for too long, I will become too tired and could not run in the later stage of the game, and my efficiency will significantly drop. I thought maybe we can go back to the previous mode, and that is, I play for 6 minutes or so in first quarter, and then I will take rest; then I will start in the second quarter with our second squad. Well, a lot of times, our opponents will also be sending their relatively weaker line-up in the second quarter. So we may turn that into our superiority and take the lead from there.

Titan Sports: If this trend of playing you 38 or even 39 minutes per game persists, how long you think you can last?

Yao Ming: I can’t really tell, but I know it is going to be a little bit risky; probably I won’t last for 40 to 50 games. Now the new season has just begun, and the restoration is relatively fast; if I feel exhausted and tired, I just sleep, and the next day, I just feel fine. But once you have played 30 to 35 games, the accumulated wear and tear and exhaustion will not be that easily resolved by just one sleep. If by that stage of the season, I’m still required to play this long (i.e. 38 ~ 40 minutes per game), then possibly there will be problems. I now know that I need to take rest and good care of myself, as I am now a veteran (and am no longer young). Like just what happened now; right after the game with the Oklahoma City Thunders, I just told Keith Jones that I will need rest and I’ll be skipping the team practice/scrimmage tomorrow.

Titan Sports: What about Joey Dorsey? How much help he can give you?

Yao Ming: Well, he practices very hard and assiduously; he is also very earnest and eager to learn. Just like every rookie, I can feel he very much yearns for obtaining his chances to play. However, he still requires time to adjust the transition from college level basketball to NBA level basketball. It is the same for every other rookies; prior to obtaining his play minutes on court, he needs to make his coaches satisfied on the training court. Whether to let him play or not is really a head coach decision. Moreover, I think Coach Adelman prefers players that are with sound basketball techniques and fundamentals. Joey Dorsey needs to improve and enhance the technical/fundamental contents in his defense. Just take a look at Chuck Hayes. Don’t laugh. Chuck is such very skilled and good in his defense; his footwork and judgment in defense are so great. Joey Dorsey needs to learn a lot more about these.

Part 2:

Reporter Wang Meng of Titan Sports reports from Houston

Right after the competition with the Oklahoma City Thunders, Yao Ming inserted both his feet into the ice bucket, and rested for a very long time (on his armchair). In his hand was the team/personal statistics sheet. With his eyebrows wrinkled, he held it close and reviewed it carefully. An opening winning streak of 3 (of the new season) had not enabled him to smile; on the contrary, he had his eyebrows all twisted, and looked as if he had just swallowed a painful pill of defeat.

So right after this winning streak of 3, Yao Ming received the following exclusive interview and told us about his concerns.

Titan Sports: So another win into the pocket, and to start the new season with a winning streak of 3; do you feel happy about this?

Yao Ming: Well, not that much happy; just feel tired and I thought the team should have played much better. To win such sloppily makes one feel this sense of melancholy; we simply had not played the offense we were supposed to play. And just to think about this will make me feel depressed. In these 3 games, except for Dallas Mavericks in the second game, the other 2 teams are in fact very weak teams. So even we had won in all 3 of them, there were not high gold contents in them.

Titan Sports: You said you felt this sense of melancholy; can you be more specific and tell us why?

Yao Ming: Just did not feel that our offense was fluid. We had stressed repeatedly that we need to be fluid and smooth in our offense; but we did not manage to play that kind of offense in 2 of the 3 games thus far in this new season. The ball just stayed too long in the hands of certain of our players. We should pass the ball unceasingly from one to another, and keep moving and look for our opportunities.

Titan Sports: So during the preseason training camp and the preseason games, had your team managed to play the kind of fluid motion offense that the head coach aspires to see?

Yao Ming: Certainly we had!! I believed you guys had seen that during certain time intervals in those preseason games, we did played some very fluid and smooth offense. But it was still so far from what we hope we could achieve in our offense at the end. We really need to grasp the essence of this motion offense, and then display it stably and consistently, and not just play such offense for just several minutes. We all knew how graceful and awesome in offense the Sacramento Kings was under Coach Adelman. Of course, there are disparities between the constituting players and probably we could not replicate completely and entirely the same kind of offense. But now, just from the look of it, the degree of fluidity and smoothness of our offense, we are still far off from being successful in adapting to the motion offense.

Titan Sports: So did the opening of the new season match your expectation? The team’s condition, and your condition………

Yao Ming: Well, not exactly as what I have expected; possibly this was because the season had just begun, and we are not fully back into our competitive form and condition, and we still need to adjust step by step. Remembered our first game? It was supposedly our season opener. I felt somewhat bewildered even after winning the game afterwards. It seemed no one was clear about his own role on the court, and did not know what to do. Regardless of whether it was in offense or in defense, we did not complete our assignment well; it was pretty chaotic, and there was (as I said) this sense of melancholy; winning or losing that game seemed make not much difference (and I just did not feel excited about winning it). But in the back-to-back game in Dallas, we were playing much better; our division of labor was clear; we created a lot of opportunities by our no-ball moving and running in offense; and we made stops in critical moments in our defense too. But then in Game 3, we were back to our own selves like Game 1. We still fluctuate too much, and I think, maybe we still need times (to gel and adapt to become stable and consistent).

Titan Sports: So which area in offense cause most worry and concern to you?

Yao Ming: We should play more like what our head coach demands us to do, and that is we need to do more no-ball movement and running to create more opportunities. Just take a look at what we did in Game 1 (with Memphis Grizzlies) and today’s game (with Oklahoma City Thunders), even though we won the games, there were too much one-on-one, and we stood fighting most of the time. We must increase our spacing by more no-ball movement/running. It was not that we could not score by standing to fight, but relatively it became too difficult and tiring to score that way. We need to read to comprehend our game better to find the easiest scoring points and opportunities. We need to do more no-ball movement and running, do more picks and rolls and shielding and make it difficult for our opponents to grasp our points of attack. Once we stop moving or running, all the above will disappear; and when we handle the ball too long, then lesser opportunities will be created through our ball movement and passing.

Titan Sports: Tracy McGrady had not recovered totally from his injury, and therefore had affected his lateral movement and reduced his speed; had this adversely affected the offense?

Yao Ming: Well to a certain extent, this had affected our offense. Whether McGrady could restore rapidly is critical and essential to further enhancing the overall strength of our team.

Titan Sports: How long you feel that your team probably requires for the team gelling during this start of the new season?

Yao Ming: Well, approximately 10 games or so.

Titan Sports: So do you have sort of a measuring yardstick that to what an extent or degree you will consider this team has completed its gelling?

Yao Ming: I had not thought or dreamed that our defense will be the same as in the Van Gundy era. After all, we have put more of our energy and emphasis on the offense. It is impossible that we try to do everything, and be best in everything we do, But at least, I hope we can curb and control our opponents in defense. We need to play with the same kind of intensity in defense as we did in offense, and to play great defense, we also need constant movement/running. Once we become relaxed and stop moving, leaks and loopholes will surface. And in offense we need to do more movement and running, and based on our previous experience, once we start such no-ball movement and running, we can create and find more opportunities.