Hall of Fame Journey Testament to Unique Bridge Yao Ming Built Between Cultures

Yao Ming is about to become the first and only player from the People's Republic of China to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He might just be the unlikeliest inductee the Hall has ever welcomed as well.

First, being among the greatest ever in basketball wasn't something a young Chinese boy of Yao's generation even considered possible.

Second, if any Chinese player did achieve international acclaim, it wasn't supposed to be Yao.

"I am asked all the time, 'Who did you follow? Who did you want to play like growing up?'" Yao recalled just a few days ago in a phone call from his hometown, Shanghai. "No one outside of China ever heard of those players for me. I didn't dream of playing in the NBA. I had different dreams."

And now he enters the Hall of Fame with Allen Iverson and Shaquille O'Neal, two players who by appearance and playing style could not be more different than Yao—yet the respect is unmistakably mutual. Iverson referred to Yao as "a gift from God," and O'Neal, with whom he developed a fierce but ultimately respectful rivalry in the mid-2000s, contends Yao would have been an all-time top-five center if foot injuries had not shortened his career.

Yao, who likens his Springfield, Massachusetts, induction to receiving a Ph.D., is more grateful for what he proved to himself playing in the NBA than anyone else.

"Every game I had to push my lungs to the limit to win games," Yao said. "One day, I talked to an entrepreneur in China who is also a mountain climber. When he was standing on the peak, he'd think about every step that it took to get there. It was the same feeling. After we talked, I realized the mountain is yourself. The mountain is in you."

For Yao, the mountain always seemed to be towering over him. Every time he went up a level in competition, he initially struggled. But that proved to be invaluable when, in spite of his exalted draft status, he went scoreless with two rebounds and two turnovers in his NBA debut against the Indiana Pacers. Some players might lose confidence or find an excuse or someone to blame. "I've been here before," he said to me in the locker room afterward. "Nowhere to go but up."  

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Yao's debut confirmed what his parents expected. Both former players, they were wary about him devoting his life to professional basketball, even as it became clear that he had inherited their height—Yao Zhi Yuan, his father, is 6'7", and his mother, Fang Feng Di, is 6'3"—and then some. Professional Chinese athletes at that time didn't make significant money and found themselves in their late 20s or early 30s having to start at the bottom of the employment ladder. Yao's parents didn't want that for him.

They also weren't convinced he could cut it in the NBA. "Having played basketball myself, I knew Yao's strengths and weaknesses," Fang Feng Di told me early in Yao's NBA career.

"He's not physically gifted. He has a good shot, good touch, but he uses his brain to play. I didn't think that's what it took to succeed in the NBA, so I wasn't sure he'd make it."

In school, Yao had a natural inclination for studying history and geography. On the court, he demonstrated a stubborn determination to perfect his skills, a surprisingly soft touch on his jumper and exceptional floor vision for someone who learned the game against largely limited competition. The Shanghai Sharks weren't even a first-division pro team when they signed him to their development squad. But at 16, he already was 7'3". When Nike executives, who had just established an office in Shanghai, saw him nail one feathery jumper after another, they convinced Chinese officials to let him play on Nike tours and camps in both the U.S. and Europe.

"He knew for the first time where he stood among the best young players in the world," his father said. "He thought, 'I'm not that good, but I'm not that bad.'"  

It soon became apparent Yao would be in contention to become the No. 1 pick of an otherwise underwhelming 2002 draft. (Only one other player from his draft class, Amar'e Stoudemire, would make multiple All-Star and All-NBA teams.)

The possibility was not without risk. The 2001-02 season was coming to a close, and the NBA's previous Chinese imports, Wang Zhizhi and Mengke Bateer, had made inauspicious starts to what would be largely forgettable careers.

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The general consensus among Chinese Basketball Association officials had been that Wang was the most gifted player the PRC had ever produced. At 7'1" and 240 pounds with hops, agility and a smooth long-range left-handed shooting stroke, Wang had far more innate athleticism than Yao.

At 17, Wang signed with the CBA's army-sponsored team, the Bayi Rockets, and won six consecutive championships. The last two came after the Dallas Mavericks shocked CBA officials by drafting Wang with the 36th pick of the 1999 draft. He would arrive late in the 2001 season and play a grand total of 137 regular-season games with three different teams before returning to the Bayi Rockets at the age of 27.

With the attention building around Yao before the '02 draft, I was approached about co-writing a book with him. Being the first foreign-born and -developed player taken No. 1 overall wouldn't mean much if he was a bust, so I flew to China to see him play in what would be his last regular-season game with the Sharks.

In an unheated gym where players on the bench wore puffy parkas to stay warm and the competition was roughly Division III college level, I watched as Yao, towering over opponents and teammates alike, served as a one-man control tower. Everything ran through him, and he spent half his time nodding and waving his arms to get his teammates to go where he wanted them. Any decent college big man could've done the same. He seemed to be breathing awfully hard, too, for such a relatively slow-paced game.

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His size and shooting touch meant that he'd at least be serviceable, but then there was a loose ball. Yao dove for it and, still lying on the ground, flipped a pass behind his head to a teammate for an open jumper. Another time, the opposing center got the ball, and Yao assumed a defensive crouch and motioned, "C'mon, bring it." It doesn't sound like much, but that was far more bravado than Chinese players typically displayed. These subtle traits suggested that maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to stand up to the test he would assuredly face from homegrown NBA players taking exception to a foreigner being selected first overall.

Neither Yao nor I nor his five-man contingent of advisers known as Team Yao—led by a University of Wisconsin-educated cousin, Erik Zhang, and NBA agent Bill Duffy—foresaw him being an eight-time All-Star or five-time All-NBA selection in his eight seasons.

None of us anticipated him being a commercial star, either, with his Apple ads co-starring Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer or his "Yo, Yao" Super Bowl Visa spot.

All of it, though, derived from the same place. For all of the characteristics that should've made Yao wholly different from everyone on the planet, he proved to be the perfect conduit between the two cultures. His square jaw, immense size and flair with a basketball destroyed a host of Chinese stereotypes, while his unfamiliarity with both the English language and Western culture did not prevent him from being the first non-U.S. player to lead All-Star voting.

Considering the unblinking scrutiny he endured not only as the most unique No. 1 pick ever, but as the standard-bearer for a country of 1.3 billion hungry to prove itself an equal in a Western world's strong suit, it is miraculous that he did not once make an ill-advised remark or act impulsively or offend someone's sensibilities. Quite the contrary—it was up to Yao to take in stride the fortune cookies handed out by one NBA team and O'Neal pretending to pass off jibberish as the Chinese language.

"Who you are surrounded by is very important," Yao said in late August, right after taking his daughter, Qinlei, to her first day of school. "I had good people around me. The right people. I feel good about that."

He won over everyone who crossed his path by being a 7'6" mensch, turning that mysterious place on the other side of the world with its foreboding Great Wall into the home of Yao, a gentle, witty giant with a sweet jumper. Considering he remains arguably the most visible Chinese athlete most Americans have ever come across, the value of that is immeasurable. As his former Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy said, "If you were going to have an ambassador for your country in a sport, you couldn't find one better than Yao Ming."

That his body broke down prematurely is a fact, but also a testament to how hard he worked. He broke his left foot twice as a teenager. For years, he endured grueling days of five daily two-hour workouts in the Chinese youth sports system. Cursed with slightly smaller lungs than someone of his size would normally have and average lift and lateral mobility, he had to squeeze every ounce of athleticism out of his 300-pound frame with conditioning drills that eventually may have been simply too much.  

Questions about whether his career was long enough or his accomplishments distinguished enough to merit Hall of Fame recognition seem simplistic, though, in that they measure him as you would most any other player. He clearly was not that.

Despite being deaf in his left ear from a childhood illness, despite the language barrier, despite living in a country where the food, pace and media attention were wholly different from anything he'd ever known and despite having the self-esteem of 1.3 billion people back home riding on his every word and deed, Yao persevered.

He went from that scoreless debut to putting up 30 points and 16 rebounds nine games later against what would be a 60-win Mavericks squad. In his first matchup with Shaq, he blocked the former league MVP's shot five times. Shaq got the better of him overall, and Steve Francis was the star in a Rockets overtime victory, but Yao made it clear he would not allow anyone or anything to intimidate him.

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To vouch for Yao by reciting numbers—career averages of 19.0 points and 9.2 rebounds on 52.4 percent shooting while carrying the Rockets to four playoff appearances—is contributing to a hollow narrative. Yao came along just when two of the world's most powerful countries were willing to forge a relationship on a multitude of levels for the first time.

For those spending time in both places around that time and watching Yao's career unfold, it's hardly a stretch to say his popularity and success were a reference point. He made both sides believe that their respective cultures, contrary to previous beliefs, were compatible. How many athletes in the history of sports can claim that kind of impact?

Not that Yao begrudges anyone for suggesting he doesn't belong among Naismith's anointed. When I saw him again at the opening of a tasting room for Yao Family Wines in Napa Valley, California, last spring, he was the same person I'd met 15 years earlier in the Ritz-Carlton lobby in Shanghai. Everyone wanted to touch him, talk to him, take a photo with him; he wanted to sit in a quiet back room and talk about the state of basketball and Zhou Qi, the Chinese center whom the Rockets would take with the 43rd pick in June. His big-picture vision hasn't changed, either.

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"There's not one second since I was selected for the Hall of Fame that I haven't been thinking we need a Chinese Sports Hall of Fame," he said. "We don't have anything like that. We need to build respect for those who have been great and set a goal for the younger athletes to shoot for."

In the meantime, he will tend to his wine label, his ownership of the Sharks, his board membership with the Special Olympics and his African Wildlife Foundation and WildAid service to protect elephants, white rhinoceroses and other endangered species. It seems a fair bet that the Basketball Hall of Fame won't be the last institution to recognize him for his work. Will it even be the most notable?

"The NBA was light-years from us and me when I was young," he said. "Now the NBA has become a dream for a lot of teenage Chinese players. The world has shrunk."

For someone 7'6", the world always has been smaller. He's intent on bringing it down to size for the rest of us. He's always been big like that.

Ric Bucher covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @RicBucher. His book, Yao: A Life in Two Worlds, was published in 2004.