sacbee articles 10/14

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http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/story/11084319p-12000704c.html

It's a long journey, but it's no vacation



By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Thursday, October 14, 2004

SHANGHAI, China - Meanwhile, back in the world of everyday hoops affairs, Kings coach Rick Adelman was facing down the truth: He doesn't know what he has with this roster, and he may not know for a while.



When the team departed for China on Sunday, it left behind two of the players upon whom Adelman plans to rely heavily this season, guard Doug Christie and center Greg Ostertag.

But that was the known, those players' injuries. More difficult for Adelman is the notion that he may spend much of camp, and perhaps the season, unsure of what he has with Chris Webber.


"There's definitely concern," Adelman said here Wednesday, as the Kings prepared for today's (4:30 a.m. PDT) exhibition game against the Houston Rockets at Shanghai Stadium.

"It's totally different from what went on last year, when the thing was to bring him back and see how well he could play, and at what level," Adelman said. "Now the concern I have is, after five months off, he practiced three times (last week), took two practices off, then (needed) another practice off. After all that time off, you'd hope it's something very minor, but you've got to have some concern."

Webber was upbeat during the early stages of the Kings' workout, joking with teammates. He clearly favored his left knee in a full-court drill, but it was early in practice.

The better test was to come today in the exhibition, although Adelman was planning to play his regulars sparingly to get a longer look at the rookies and free agents on the roster.

But however many minutes Webber played, his status matters. It matters to a coach who is trying to put his team together and already is without key players - and hasn't been thrilled with his available veterans' work.

"The puffiness (in Webber's left knee) I didn't consider that big a deal, but the soreness is," Adelman said. "I just hope it doesn't go back and forth during the whole preseason to where I can't get him on the court with the other guys."

One thing Adelman did discover is that there's no escaping the media. After flying halfway across the globe, he walked into a meeting with predominantly Asian reporters only to be asked about his contract status (he has said he'd like an extension beyond next year) and the Webber-Peja Stojakovic relationship. Asked whom the team belonged to, Webber or Stojakovic, Adelman replied, "Actually, the team belongs to the Maloofs."

 

[LMM]

Larger than life

Mark Kreidler: Larger than life

In a country of more than 1 billion people, Yao Ming stands alone as a star who has transcended borders

By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Thursday, October 14, 2004

SHANGHAI, China - They linked themselves hand in hand and arm in arm and took their positions, from a side-door entry at Shanghai Stadium all the way along a corridor, down a flight of stairs and into a room made humid by the crowding of bodies and the heat of camera lights.



When they got into place, the human wall was complete. It wasn't a great wall, just an efficient wall of white-shirted security people each bearing the name "Fenhua Sports Brokerage" on the back of his jersey. The wall kept the riff-raff out and created a clear pathway to the podium, and it was exactly as impenetrable as it needed to be, which is to say, impenetrable.

And ladies and gentlemen: Yao Ming could now enter the building.

They're calling this the China Games, this two-match set between the Kings and the Houston Rockets, but of course it is about Yao Ming almost entirely. Everything else is tied for dead last on the sliding scale of significance.

And to embrace that truth is to grasp only a tiny fraction of Yao's complicated, frenetic, rewarding and ultimately important place in the world. It is a place in which he almost literally can't go home again, because the concept of home changes so dramatically every time he stops by.

His visit to Shanghai, the city of his birth and his development into the global phenomenon he has become as a basketball player, has had all the markings of a significant political event in China. It's impossible to overstate Yao's presence here, if for no other reason than his presence is announced on every street corner and the side of almost every building one sees.

Tickets for today's game sold out so quickly and so thoroughly that, by the time of the (4:30 a.m. PDT) tipoff, they were going for upward of 5,000 yuan. That's roughly $625 per ticket, fairly astonishing considering China's per capita annual income is about $1,000. But that's Yao.

The entry into Wednesday's news conference at Shanghai Stadium was very essentially typical of Yao's life in China: celebrated to the point of personal embarrassment. As he walked into the stadium, the people who had crowded around the doors hooted and shouted, trying to get the 7-foot-6 giant to acknowledge them by so much as raising his head (a private person by nature, he kept his lowered).

Inside, Yao's news conference was remarkable for how much there was unremarkable in his performance. The player fielded questions with answers about the Rockets' team dynamic, saying things like, "Me and my teammates have a common goal: for our team to achieve the greatest result for our season that is possible."

Scintillating? Not in the particulars, no. But the significance of Yao's being here lies not in his words but in the facts of his life. He is the player from Communist China who has the power to make people around the world see his country differently, and for that there is no precise comparison.

Yao's life is like a bridge linking the old and new Chinas. He was born in 1980, just four years after the end of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, yet has become a man under circumstances that provided for his negotiated release to play in the NBA, an idea unheard of at the time of his birth.

He can be, depending upon the subject at hand, either the essence of Chinese culture or the antithesis of it. He declines to accept a definition of himself as "hero," because in the China in which Yao grew up, the true heroes were those who had died for their country - yet he is routinely described with that very word, and often by the people who know him well enough to know how uncomfortable he is with it.

At a dinner reception Tuesday night in downtown Shanghai, NBA Commissioner David Stern noted that Yao was a "hero" to young people in China - but also to young people in the United States. Before practice Wednesday, Kings coach Rick Adelman said, "He has handled himself unbelievably, with the pressure on him - and then you come here and see what a hero he is."

Yet Yao is the same person who in a recent book basically cast off Confucianism as a way of thinking among his contemporaries in China ("Sometimes respect can be carried too far"), quoted the movie "Spider-Man" as an example of his personal approach ("With great power comes great responsibility") and freely acknowledged that he has finally figured out how to say no to people asking for his time and autograph, though his upbringing compels him to want to say yes.

He does all this with such a humility and good humor that it is immediately forgiven for any perceived slights - and that, too, is unusual, both for Yao and for his followers. And make no mistake, he has followers - avid, adoring, obssessive followers. Such is the result of his becoming perhaps the first truly transcendent Chinese athlete on the world stage.

It's interesting that it turned out to be Yao for that role. He was not the first Chinese player in the NBA; Wang Zhi Zhi was signed by Dallas before the Rockets began the laborious process of securing Yao's rights.

But where Wang fizzled as a pro in America, Yao Ming took his talent, which had been plenty good enough to make him a leading member of the Chinese national team, and began shaping it to the demands of the NBA. He became a consummate teammate. He learned how to be selfish in a good way, a very American trait in sports. It didn't hurt to be huge. And, above all, he turned out to be strong enough as a person to deal with the results of his success as a player.

"I think he's amazing," said teammate Tracy McGrady, who got a healthy dose of Yao-mania on Wednesday when he sat on the podium for 15 or 20 minutes before a packed house and heard nothing but questions about his Chinese teammate.

"He has incredible talent," McGrady said. "He's an incredible individual as a person and a player. I mean, I'm thrilled to have him as a teammate."

On the Kings' roster in training camp is perhaps Yao's best friend, point guard Liu Wei, who has much of Yao's spirit and love of the American-style game but, alas, none of his size. Liu may someday be an NBA-ready player; for Yao, the future is now.

In some significant way, it may be a bit of China's future, as well. As confidant and Team Yao strategist Erik Zhang noted in the book "A Life In Two Worlds," this one man's success in the NBA may indeed produce a cumulative effect in his country.

"From the early 1800s until today, China has been pretty backward, a relatively weak nation," Zhang said. "The hope now is that it is on the right path to glory, and that's part of the interest in Yao. He is the perfect example of individual achievement in an increasingly individualistic Chinese society." He may not be the first, but he is absolutely, positively the One. These are the China Games. In terms of basketball, Yao Ming now is China.

 

[LMM]

It's the Yao Show in Shanghai as Kings fall

Miller, Webber play well in 88-86 loss


Published 8:37 am PDT Thursday, October 14, 2004

SHANGHAI, China - Yao Ming was the star in the NBA's first China game, scoring 14 points and grabbing seven rebounds to lead the Houston Rockets past the Sacramento Kings 88-86 Thursday.


There was a capacity crowd on hand at Shanghai's city gymnasium to cheer the 7-foot-6 center, whose return has dominated headlines in his hometown. The crowd chanted Yao's name repeatedly - even when he wasn't on the court.

However, he missed his first two shots and was shaky defensively at the start.

"I didn't play a great game. I was really nervous in the first half. It was almost like the feeling I had playing in my first NBA game," Yao said. "I felt suffocated and I just wanted to find an exit, but I just tried to focus on technical details and then things settled down."

His first points came on a dunk 7 minutes into the game, and he brought the fans to their feet when he scored on an alley-oop pass from Tracy McGrady in the second quarter.

Brad Miller led the Kings with 19 points, but the game was clearly a showcase for Yao.

He was even tough on Liu Wei, his teammate on the Chinese Olympic team who was invited to Kings camp in July.

Liu made his Sacramento debut early in the second quarter, making a jumper moments after. But Yao fouled Liu with about two minutes left in the half, sending his former teammate to the floor. When Liu looked for some help in getting up, Yao stood still, his hands on his hips.

Still, he was gracious to Liu after the game.

"He played very well and his performance was really up to his usual high standards," Yao said.

Chris Webber scored 14 points for Sacramento, including a half-court buzzer beater that gave the Kings a 72-67 lead heading into the fourth quarter.

McGrady had 12 points, seven rebounds and three assists for Houston. Still, Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy is looking for more out of both McGrady and Yao.

"I don't think either one played as well as they could have tonight," Van Gundy said. "But I think they'll have very good seasons, both individually and together."

Sacramento led by as many as nine points in the final quarter before the Rockets came back. With the crowd chanting "Yao Ming! Yao Ming!" Houston clinched the win with two free throws by Tyronn Lue.

The teams will play another exhibition game in Beijing on Sunday.

"Coming over here we had two objectives," Van Gundy said. "One was to get a lot done and two, was to get a lot done." -- Associated Press