Will Yao pay off?

Will Golden State ever make a good choice? And other burning questions raised by the NBA draft.

By King Kaufman

June 28, 2002 | By the time the Houston Rockets took Yao Ming with the first pick in the draft Wednesday, so many words had been written speculating about whether the 7-foot-5, 260-pound center can succeed in the NBA that if they were strung together they'd reach around the world twice, or around Yao once.

I don't want to say that Yao is big, folks, but when he walks into the Compaq Center, the Rockets' home arena, next season, people are going to say, "Hey, that guy's really big."

But seriously, ladies and germs, why does most, if not all, of the speculation about Yao fall along the lines of "Yao will be the next Hakeem Olajuwon," the former Rockets great, or "Yao will be the next Shawn Bradley," the 7-6 lurch who in nine seasons in Philadelphia, New Jersey and Dallas has never done anything to advance the idea that guys 7 and 1/2 feet tall are an asset to a basketball team?

Couldn't it be possible that he'll be somewhere in between? By all accounts, he's got pretty good skills, but we just don't know yet how he'll stack up against the banging of other NBA centers. My guess, based on pretty much nothing other than reading between the lines of the reports of those who have seen him, is that he will fall somewhere in the middle of that Olajuwon-Bradley spectrum. I don't think he'll be the franchise player the Rockets are hoping for, but I do think he'll be a good player.

I also think his ties to the Chinese national team will become a problem at some point, despite this week's everything's A-OK reports by the Rockets that they've reached an agreement with the Chinese Federation. The person to listen to here is Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who is portrayed as a lunatic by the media but who has a tendency to make a lot of sense when he's serious. Speaking before the Rockets reached an agreement with the Chinese Federation, Cuban, who employs backup center Wang Zhizhi, also a member of the Chinese national team, said, "The best advice I can give is that just when you thought you had all your bases covered, you never do."

So I think the Rockets will eventually be sorry they used the first pick on Yao, that he'll be more Michael Olowokandi than Tim Duncan -- serviceable, not great. But once they expressed an interest in him, the Rockets were stuck -- their fans got excited, they got heavily into negotiations with the Chinese -- and it's certainly worth the gamble that Yao will turn into something special, which would mean an Ichiro-like figure and a lot of fan interest for what has been, except for the two years in the mid-'90s when Olajuwon led them to titles in a Jordan-less NBA, a pretty run-of-the-mill franchise in recent years.

A few other thoughts about draft night: