Houston Sports: The ten best athletes to ever represent the city of Houston

Yao Ming

The recent inductee to the NBA Hall of Fame is credited with globalizing the game and spreading the brand as well as anyone who’s ever played.  No, he didn’t have the “Be Like Mike” campaign. But his influence in bringing the NBA’s popularity to a billion more fans is undeniable.

Throughout his career he displayed grace, intelligence and humor. All three characteristics were on display in his jersey retirement speech that he gave at the Toyota Center this year, with anecdotes from his time as a Houston Rocket that were equally touching and funny.

My favorite thing about Yao is that despite his soft spoken nature, there are great clips of him trash talking that you can find online. Example here (Warning: Profanity involved). And here is a clip of his first technical foul in the league when he started to get the attitude you need to succeed in the NBA.

Throughout his career, he (Yao) displayed grace, intelligence and humor.

While we never got past the Western Conference Semi-finals with the Yao-Tracy McGrady tag team, there were plenty of memorable moments in his time with us. Such as his first match-up with Shaquille O’Neal where he blocked Shaq twice to open the game (A game the Rockets ended up winning in overtime with Yao recording a double-double.)

He was also the catalyst to the Tracy McGrady explosion, scoring the first two points of the rally from down ten with 53 seconds to go against the San Antonio Spurs. The rally starts with a Yao Ming offensive rebound and put back dunk.

Probably the most notable accomplishment of his time with the team is a bittersweet one as he was part of the Rockets team that won 22 games in a row. However, he only made it to the 12th win of that streak before going down with a stress fracture in his left foot. The same foot that would get injured twice more effectively ending his career.

What makes that season all the more tragic is that Yao was garnering MVP talk averaging 22 points per game, 10.8 rebounds and 2 blocks. That team looked like the one that could go deep in the playoffs with Yao and McGrady at the helm. Instead they lost in the first round that year to the Utah Jazz and the tag team would only have a couple more injury plagued seasons together before being done for good.

Yao represented the team and the game well though and he’s a Hall of Famer iconically known as a Rocket spending his entire career with only us earning him the number seven spot