Over the weekend, China’s greatest basketball player Yao Ming was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as part of a star-studded class that included former MVPs Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson.
Opening the ceremony, Yao flashed the sly wit that made him so popular among North American media members by cracking that Iverson should’ve been the first speaker “because I needed more practice,” an allusion to AI’s famed ‘practice’ rant.
Inducted by three of the NBA’s most memorable big men, Bill Russell, Bill Walton and Dikembe Mutambo, Yao paid tribute to his unlikely basketball journey from China while praising his parents who played basketball for the nation in the 1970s, as well as Wang Zhizhi, the first Chinese player to make the NBA.
If Shaq and AI were polar opposites representing the dominant big man and the fiery small guy playing on heart, Yao’s credentials were bolstered by his role accelerating the NBA’s popularity in his home country.
A teenage sensation for his hometown Shanghai Sharks, he led the franchise to their lone China Basketball Association (CBA) title in 1999 as a 20 year old, averaging 38.9 points and 20.2 rebounds per game.
His success led to his being the first Chinese player to be drafted first overall in the NBA. Despite initial skepticism (see Hall of Famer and Inside the NBA's Charles Barkley’s famed early bet that Yao would never score 19 points in a game in his rookie season below), Yao would make eight NBA All-Star teams.
Injuries cut his career short including a couple cruel ones that cut his season short as he was leading the Houston Rockets as a darkhorse contender. However, he remains an ambassador of the game through initiatives like his Yao Academy Basketball Camps and a special guest for big games like the NBA Global Games battle between his Houston Rockets and the New Orleans Pelicans on October 9, as well as the second Pac-12 China Game on November 12. For more, check out our 2014 interview with Yao Ming.
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