Now every day, Carroll Dawson has two hours to work together with Yao Ming. According to Yao Ming’s daily schedule, he will have one hour dedicated to some conservative treatment (physical therapy) of his shoulder in the morning. Then he will work with Anthony Falsone for another 2 hours in the afternoon on his strength and conditioning. Then another two hours with Carroll Dawson, purely on technical training for centers.

While Dawson performed his tricks in front of him, Yao Ming just recalled his rookie season 5 years ago. He still remembered training at the Westside Tennis Club, and he fondly remembered Rudy Tomjanovich.

After playing his second NBA game, Rudy T. invited Carroll Dawson to the training ground to give some instruction and pointers to the rookie. Carroll Dawson then demonstrated to Yao Ming the Dream Shake he passed on to Hakeem Olajuwon. Yao Ming then imitated and worked on this move twice.

Twenty minutes later, when the Rockets started their team scrimmage, Carroll Dawson walked slowly towards the door and was about to leave the court, when he heard Rudy T yelling out at his back: “CD (Dawson’s nickname)! He has just used this move!” Then, the next day, in the game against the Toronto Raptors, the Dream Shake resurfaced at Compaq Center.

In the blink of an eye, 5 years have flown by. Yao Ming is no longer a rookie, and there are more white hairs on Dawson’s head. After Jeff Van Gundy took over the team in 2003, he specifically let his close aide and assistant coach Tom Thibodeau take over Yao Ming’s training, and had not allowed Carroll Dawson to meddle.

Tom Thibodeau worked assiduously and helped the transformation of Yao Ming into a 25 ppg center. Then just one month ago, Hakeem prosperously returned to Toyota Center and held a training clinic for Yao Ming. Yet finally, between all three of them, Yao Ming discovered that the most suitable coach for him during this summer is still Carroll Dawson who has over 30 years of experience coaching big centers.

Yao Ming said, “Maybe CD understands me most. Not only does he have the experience (on coaching big men), he understood my rhythm and knew my speed. He knew up front whether or not I can complete a particular move.”

“Tom Thibodeau is an extremely good coach, too. He let me understand the importance of persistence in training. He let me understand it is not about whether you can learn to do a particular move, but it is about repeating the move until it becomes instinctive. But Tom Thibodeau has the abilities and aspiration to become a head coach, and does not specialize in coaching centers.”

“As to Hakeem the Dream Olajuwon, I am not worthy even to tie his shoe laces for him. He is over 40 some years old now, but he is still so quick. That kind of speed, that kind of rhythm, that kind of directional change….to tell you the truth, I don’t think I can learn much from him, as I just do not have that kind of speed as the foundation. He has taught me alot of moves, but to me, they seemed just like eye-openers that broaden my horizon.”

Only Carroll Dawson knows and understands Yao Ming better. He understood more about Yao Ming’s speed, and how he could use his basketball intelligence to complete a certain move. Yao Ming further said, “In fact, I have planned to further refine and resolve during this summer the technique on how I can get closer to the basketball rim after my spin, and not further away from the rim. I think CD is exactly the person who can help me to achieve this. In the past, particularly when my knees were still weak after I returned from my knee injury, I often just turnaround and made a baseline spin. Now that the strength of my knees and my speed have returned, then why can’t I just spin and move out to create more space? This will get me closer to the rim, and let me have better angles for my shots. CD now just teaches me how to dribble, how to move and pivot my feet, and how to protect the ball better.”

“CD has made alot of recommendations to me, and he will correct me in those areas one by one in our forthcoming training sessions. I am not going to list out for you what those suggestions are, but I can tell you, those are all goodies that will help me to improve my games alot.”

Carroll Dawson is now too old to be able to play defense against the young Yao Ming; so he had invited the 2.15M (7ft) , 160 Kilogram (352 lbs) Stanley Roberts, a 8-year NBA veteran centre to stand under the post like a wall and play defense against Yao Ming. Carroll Dawson himself would stand behind the baseline, and observed how Yao Ming uses his new learned tricks and footwork to dribble past Stanley Roberts.

So on this particular training session, Carroll Dawson also invited the veteran reporter, Richard Justice, of the Houston Chronicles to watch Yao Ming in his training. It was this Richard Justice who criticized Yao Ming as the biggest softie and front court/back court problem of the Houston Rockets in his column 2 years ago. Carroll Dawson did not know whether Yao Ming would mind about him bringing Justice along to their training. Yao Ming looked indifferent but happy.