What can he legally do when being fronted? This is a BIG PROBLEM for Yao..in order to go from MEdiocre to Dominant..he needs to fix this problem. Midgets such as malik rose and kurt thomas can dance around him and front him in the critical moment and then Yao turns stiff and will take a fadeaway. Most teams in the NBA right now have mobile smaller Centers rather than the big tall ones. What do you do..WHAT WOULD YOU DO (LEGALLY)? 1 thing he should do is to get in deeper positions closer to the hoop without the ball. But the trouble is the lob pass seems so difficult for him to receive and it seems hard to pass for the guards. The fact that Yao knows but still keeps making mistakes is that he keeps trying to play man on man when he's not close to the hoop. That just isn't possible because they could just front him with 1 or 2 defenders and he will take the difficult shot. What he needs to do is get closer to the hoop somehow. It seems that the mistake is both yao's positioning and also the bad timing of the guards who don't pass to him at the right moment. Shaq, is a big center who doesn't use quickness either. But his success is due to better positioning in getting closer to the hoop for the most part. Although you could argue, He might be more harder and powerful than yao's soft behavior when grabbing for rebounds. But as an offensive player, Yao should try to follow Shaq's style.
All he has to do is camp the elbow, just distribute the ball to cutters and open shooters. If he's left open, he's proven he can knock it down. To win, always send the ball into Yao. Remember how good the lakers did when they gave it to Shaq all the time? When you have a good big man, it's important to get him into the distributing role. At 7'6, he has a lot more passing oppurtunities then most big men.
If he's only being fronted, the Rockets player should spread the court and clear the weakside and throw a good lob pass to him. If there's another defender inching over to prevent the lob pass than if the floor is properly spaced and the Rockets make good quick passes and move away from the ball well, there should be a guy with an open shot. Anytime you double a guy with the ball, a good offensive team should be able get someone else an open shot. Yao doesn't have the best coordination in the world, however, and anytime he has to catch a pass that isn't directly to him there's a risk it will be fumbled away. But if the ball is quickly rotated to the other side, than Yao has a chance of reposting on the other side with the defender on his back. All of this is predicated on the Rockets being a solid passing team, which they are not. They are one of the worst, in fact. But passing is something that comes with more and more experience playing with eachother and winning games. It will improve as the season progresses. I remember Hakeem and Clyde had a play where he Hakeem would go set a pick on a perimeter and than slip the screen and get a pass from Clyde as he's going to the basket. But Olajuwon was pretty good at shooting jumpers off the dribble, but I don't think I've ever seen Yao do that.
I was just wondering can Yao catch an aley oop? i haven't seen him do that in a long time if ever, you'd thin it'd be easy for him since of his height, i've even seen clips of manute bol catching lobs. Throwing up lobs works great for teams like denver, that way yao wouldn't have to fight to hard for postioning.
Yao should also learn to draw more easy fouls...fake a foul like Bob sura. He is disadvantaged by the nba's ruling that every touch is a foul so he should use it as a advantage for himself and flop a little
