Yao Ming's rookie season ended with Charles Barkley kissing a donkey
Before Yao Ming's first NBA season, Charles Barkley promised on air to kiss his colleague Kenny Smith's backside if the Chinese rookie ever scored more than 19 points in a game. Yao started slowly, then on November 17 scored 20 against the Lakers without missing a shot. Smith bought a donkey, and Barkley kissed it.
Height ran in the family. Born in Shanghai on September 12, 1980, Yao was the only child of two former professional players, a father of 2.01 metres and a mother of 1.91. He weighed 5 kilograms at birth, more than double the typical Chinese newborn, and at ten, already 1.65 metres tall, doctors predicted he would reach 2.21. He overshot, eventually standing 2.29 metres, the tallest active player in the league in his final season.
He tried out for the Shanghai Sharks' junior team at 13, practising ten hours a day to earn a place. In his last season with the senior team, his playoff averages hit 38.9 points and 20.2 rebounds, and in one finals game he made all 21 of his shots as Shanghai won its first championship. Getting to America was politically delicate. Chinese authorities required players to hand half their NBA earnings to the government and the national basketball body, and the league back home only released him after assurances that Houston would pick him first. In 2002 he became the first international player drafted first overall without playing American college basketball.
Over nine seasons with the Houston Rockets he made eight All-Star teams and in 2009 helped the club win its first playoff series since 1997, before repeated foot and ankle injuries forced his retirement in 2011. In China his success was called the Yao Ming Phenomenon; Americans dubbed it the Ming Dynasty, and he came to symbolise a more modern, confident China.
Later honours piled up. In April 2016 he became the first Chinese national inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame, and in February 2017 he was unanimously elected chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association. He also owns a winery in Napa Valley.
Source: Yao Ming
