Yao Ming Retires

Finally, Yao has decided he’s done with the comebacks, done with the endless rehabilitations of his reconstructed left foot. Yao Ming decided to retire, sources told Yahoo! Sports on Friday. He leaves the game a conquering hero, a forever figure in the sport.

He’s 30 years old, played parts of nine seasons in the NBA, and yet he’ll be remembered as a historic icon. In a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame full of political appointees as ‘contributors’ to the game, Yao deserves enshrinement for a global impact perhaps impossible to measure. You can’t write the history of basketball without Yao Ming, and that’s why his legacy ought to someday be recognized in Springfield.

So many others reaped the riches of his journey, and Yao lived with the consequences of carrying a burden too big for even this gentlest of giants. Yao was one of the most talented, refined and dominant centers to ever play, but his lower body couldn’t withstand the game’s grind, especially that of a Chinese basketball federation that overworked and overused him.

At 7-foot-6, Yao entered the league as the No. 1 pick in the 2002 draft and became literally and figuratively the largest symbol of the NBA's growing expansion around the world and particularly in Asia.

 Yao was an eight-time NBA All-Star and in five seasons he was voted onto the league's second or third All-NBA team. He averaged 19.1 points and 9.3 rebounds and 1.9 blocked shots in his career. He arrived in Houston in 2002 as towering and iconic as the durable Great Wall of China, yet over the course of his NBA career Yao's image became increasingly fragile. After missing just two games due to injury in his first three years in the league, he was sidelined for 250 over the past six seasons.

Sources Link:
http://www.nba.com/2011/news/07/08/yao-ming-retires/index.html
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AkdYkI9GJQb6Ut3H5LtmNsw5nYcB?slug=aw-wojnarowski_yao_ming_retires_nba_070811