It seems like every month there is some new accolade that Yao receives from a Chinese institution, like “most wealthy” or whatever. Now he has received another one: “most internationally influential athlete ever in the history of Chinese sports” from the Chinese Basketball Association (click here for more on the story).

I wonder if the humble Yao Ming ever gets tired of these larger-than-life statements that really don’t seem to serve any purpose. I just don’t ever envision the NBA saying the same thing about Michael Jordan, even in retirement.

At least the commissioner of the CBA isn’t trying to butter Yao up (wink wink) to play in the World Championships in late August with his statement, “We will by no means urge him to play the world championship in Japan. We do not want him to take any risk. He can take his time in recuperation.” Uhh, yeah…right.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 1:50 am and is filed under Rockets' off-season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.