At least according to Yahoo Sports. I just hope we're not headed into that direction with Oden. Seven footers can be so fragile.
Here's a link about it: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2011/07/yahoo-report-yao-ming-to-retire/1 What a shame. He was really talented.
Yeah seven footers are fragile. I'm sad about Yao, he was highly skilled and like Sabonis and Dirk a very unique big man. I wish I had watched more of him while he was playing, I didn't think his career would end so early. Hopefully Oden can follow Illgauskas path, missing extensive games early in his career with a long stretch of healthy seasons. Injuries are just a huge part of the game of basketball, sure seven footers are susecptible but Roy looks broken, TMac never regained his form, Kobe is a greatly diminished player, Grant Hill, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Antino McDyess, Ralph Sampson. Tiger Woods can't even play a relaxed non-contact game of golf.
I thought the players union was asking for increased retirement benefits. I know the NFL players are.
When you are Yao Ming you don't really need money. The guy is treated like a king in China, and always will be.
That really sucks. Man, it must blow for Houston. To have a highly coveted consensus #1 pick franchise center just break down like that. Glad I'm a Blazer fan! Seriously, though, what a disappointment. I remember the year he was drafted and Steve Francis had already been ROY. The Rockets looked like such a promising team. Shit. The parallels keep coming. I'm going to stop now.
I often forget what a future star Francis was regarded as, he had such a crappy fallout at the end of his career. But in his day he was basically the equivalent of the current day Russell Westbrook or Monta Ellis. They had such a promising future with those two; we had just as much or more. We really had more promise since we had Aldridge, they never had a third fiddle close to that level. Now Roy is basically the NY Knicks Francis and Oden is a joke around the leage. After we got the #1 pick I thought we were probably going to win at least 2 titles with our big 3 and possibly more. If Oden gets healthy and we get a ton of other breaks maybe we get one some day but its now a big longshot instead of a realistic expectation. ;(
What's surprising is that China doesn't turn out more tall players good enough for the NBA. They have 4-5 times our population. Yaos should be a yuan a dozen.