the ming treasures
Website design By BotEap.comMick Kupchak was in tears today as Yao Ming signed a 5-year, $75 million contract with the Houston Rockets. But this isn’t about Mitch Kupchak at all. Yao Ming is one of the best centers in basketball (mainly a reflection of the declining quality of centers in the NBA), and he’s now paid as such. Just looking at a list of NBA salaries, Yao Ming’s average annual salary of 15 million would rank fourth next season, just behind Kevin Garnett. Is Yao Ming as good as Kevin Garnett? The answer at the moment is no, but to be fair, they play different positions.
Website design By BotEap.comDespite his lack of game-changing ability, the Rockets had to lock Yao Ming into a big deal. If he had gone out on the open market, someone else would have paid him more. Why pay so much money to someone who didn’t even average a double-double last season? There are a variety of factors:
Website design By BotEap.com1. Zydrunas Ilgauskas got paid. When a good borderline center like Ilgauskas gets paid 11 million a year, it raises the salaries of other centers. So you end up with the real good centers like Yao Ming wanting a lot more than that.
Website design By BotEap.com2. Salaries have generally increased this offseason. Teams like the Bucks had a lot of cash and no good players to spend it on, so they did the following. They gave away money to players like Michael Redd (I never thought a pure shooter who wasn’t too good at shooting last year could make 15 million each, but I was wrong). With Redd’s ridiculously inflated deal, players (and their agents) decided that they too should earn much more than their skills dictated. Before you knew it, Antoine Walker was making 9 million over 6 (!) years, and it was said to be a reasonable deal.
Website design By BotEap.com3. Who else is there? If the Rockets let Yao Ming go, who would they put in the middle? The only living fossil in the world, Dikembe Mutumbo? The NBA lacks good centers. Yao Ming is in the top 4 or 5 centers in the league, depending on whether you want to call Amare Stoudemire a center. Sure his 18-8-1 pales in comparison to Garnett’s 22-13.5-6, but at least he’s a center. Seriously, all tall people (basketball skill isn’t a requirement) should call themselves a center and find an NBA version of Drew Rosenhaus to get them jobs. I can already see it.
Website design By BotEap.com4. He makes a ridiculous amount of money for the Rockets franchise. The Chinese market has opened up for the Rockets since they drafted Yao Ming. His games have been televised and they have been selling merchandise, among other things. Since there are 1.2 billion people in China, there is a lot of potential money to be made. If the Rockets released Yao Ming, this would all go away. This is not a reason on the court, but it is just as important. Sports franchises are, after all, businesses.
Website design By BotEap.comSo essentially, even though he isn’t and may never be an inside force like Shaq or the Alonzo Mourning of old, Yao Ming is still a very good center and, above all, important to the Rockets franchise. He will be a cornerstone of this team for years to come, and he will be a perennial star in the West.