Our Raymond has some photos from Yao’s Wednesday workout in Beijing while his Chinese national teammates scrimmaged.

Yao is being cautious to not participate in practices or team drills to protect his shoulder from injury while he strengthens it with personal trainer Anthony Falsone.

Incredibly, Yao got some flack from China Sports Daily, a newspaper owned by the government’s All-China Sports Federation, for taking too much time off after the Rockets were eliminated from the playoffs, spending too much time with the Special Olympics and participating in pre-Olympic festivities. Get this…they wrote:

“No matter how lofty public welfare activities are, they can’t be allowed to take first place in a player’s life”

“China’s other players were ‘flinging sweat like snow’ while Yao recovered from the season.”

As someone in the YaoMania! forum wrote after reading this article, “WTF?”

I can’t believe this publication that is owned by the government would diss Yao like that. Yao is so loyal to his national team, his country, and is such a hard worker…these guys must be on crack. It’s almost like they are living in a different era reminiscent of China’s storied past in limiting individualistic freedoms.

And it’s not like Yao has been on the beach kicking back since the NBA season ended. You’ve seen here on YaoMingMania all the working out he has been doing. In addition, the Special Olympics and Olympics are a big deal that makes China look good to the rest of the world. And give the guy a break on the wedding thing. It’s not like he’s doing it Tony Parker-Eva Longoria style with a lavish ceremony and lots of pomp and circumstance. It will be a private ceremony with no hype.

All in all, they are messing with the wrong guy. If they end up losing some of Yao’s commitment by lambasting him publicly like this, it will really backfire against them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Rockets' off-season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.