On July 20, 2011, Yao Ming announced his retirement from the NBA, ending his career at the age of 30. The former No. 1 overall pick missed the entirety of the 2009-10 season and played only five games the next year due to foot and ankle injuries, quickly becoming one of the league's greatest "what if" questions.
Despite the abrupt ending, Yao is remembered fondly for a lot of reasons: his massive role in increasing the NBA's popularity in China and breaking down racial stereotypes, his Yo vs. Yao commercial, his generally jovial nature and his ability to make other people look tiny. (That happens a lot when you're 7-6 and 300-plus pounds.)
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Yao is a larger-than-life figure in more ways than one, so it's easy to forget a simple truth about him. The dude was really, really good at basketball.
In 486 regular season games with the Rockets, Yao averaged 19.0 points, 9.2 rebounds and 1.9 blocks while shooting 52.4 percent from the field and 83.3 percent from the free throw line. He had two individual seasons in which he hit the thresholds of 20 points, 10 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game with 50 percent shooting. The only other 7-footers with those numbers in multiple seasons? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Patrick Ewing, Artis Gilmore, Shaquille O'Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Ralph Sampson. That's pretty great company.
Strong yet nimble, Yao was capable of rejecting attacks at the rim on one end and finishing with a feathery touch on the other. He presented opposing centers with a challenge they had never faced before.
"I think that was the smallest that I've ever felt," Brook Lopez told ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk when describing a 2008 game against Yao. "Going up for the jump ball and then I do my first hook and he blocked it so easily. It was like nothing to him. It was really really a unique experience. I can't compare it to anything else."
From 2002-09, the Rockets won 50-plus games in four separate regular seasons, but they routinely lost in the first round of the playoffs. They advanced to the Western Conference semifinals just once with the dynamic duo of Yao and Tracy McGrady, falling to the eventual champion Lakers in 2009.
McGrady, who also got bit by the injury bug repeatedly in Houston, missed that postseason after undergoing surgery on his knee, and Yao was forced to watch the final four games of a seven-game battle with a broken bone in his foot. It's a shame Yao couldn't finish the series because he was dominant in Game 1 against the Lakers.
His line: 28 points, 10 rebounds, two blocks, 9-of-17 from the field, 10-of-10 on free throws. He just worked Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol in the post.
Those were essentially his final playing days. He officially retired just two years later.
It would have been fascinating to watch how he evolved with the modern NBA. His size made him an ideal rim protector, but how would he have dealt with small-ball lineups? He always had good shooting form and could step out for a midrange jumper. Could he have turned himself into a pick-and-pop threat?
Unfortunately for Yao (and NBA fans everywhere), he never had the chance to answer those questions. His career is best summed up by one of his biggest rivals.
"He was very agile. He could play inside. He could play outside," O'Neal said back in 2011. "If he didn't have those injuries, he probably would have been up there in the top five centers ever to play the game."
When discussing Yao Ming, never forget that part.
