Highlights from Yao’s roast and toast
April 21st, 2008by John
Update: I’ve posted additional videos at the bottom of this post that now includes Jeff Van Gundy and Yao Ming himself!
Before it becomes a distant memory, I wanted to publish some of the highlights from Yao Ming’s Roast and Toast last Thursday night.
Yao and his agents who accompanied him were surprised that a big stretch Hummer had been arranged to pick him up. It’s definitely not Yao’s style to have a ride that big and flashy, but everyone agreed is was probably best to go ahead and ride in it rather than delay the schedule by requesting another one.
Since Yao had arrived back in the U.S. from China only about one day prior, he was pretty tired and had a workout scheduled in the morning. But he was a good sport to hang in there since the event lasted about 1.5 hours longer (’til about 10:30pm) than the 9:00pm scheduled end time. So he probably didn’t get back home until close to midnight.
I’ve got several videos to share with you that I recorded of people close to Yao roasting him, with all having very humorous moments. The first one below is from “Team Yao” member Bill Duffy. The second and third is from Jeff Van Gundy. The fourth is former Chinese National Team coach Del Harris, and the final one is from Yao himself!
Forgive me for some camera shakes — I had to stoop down low so I didn’t block everyone’s view, which made it difficult to keep the camera steady crouching for more than 5 minutes panning between Yao and the roasters.
“Team Yao” member Bill Duffy (6 minutes, 32 seconds)…
Jeff Van Gundy (9 minutes, 47 seconds)…
JVG part 2 (1 minute, 33 seconds)…
Del Harris (8 minutes)…
…and from Yao himself (8 minutes, 22 seconds)…
April 21st, 2008 at 10:10 am
Thanks for posting these videos! I was so curious as to how the ceremony went. Yao totally deserved a toast and roast! Kudo to the Murph and his gang for pulling this off! spicebarb
April 21st, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Bless you a thousand times for filming and theb posting these videos. I was worried that you’d forgotten us poor souls waiting to see Yao’s special day.
Were there any moments not captured above that you found particularly noteworthy?
You’re welcome! I would have liked to have post Ric Bucher’s words about Yao, but I had technical difficulties with the video. But he told a funny story about how Yao would call him and say hip-hop stuff like “What up dog?” Ric is a great guy and you can tell he really respects Yao, and vice versa. — John
April 21st, 2008 at 2:58 pm
JVG is so friggin’ funny. I love that dude. We should bring him back!
April 21st, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Thanks John for these wonderful videos that we would of never seen without you. JVG was really classy and seems like a stand-up guy. Never had an opportunity to listen to JVG speak without his “grumpy” coach face or besides talking as an broadcaster. Glad to see JVG has no hard feelings towards the Rockets and vice versa. Would have loved to see Colin Pine in the roast talking about Yao’s rookie year. Thanks again for the videos!
Thanks, Vince. I have noticed people are embedding them on other sites and not giving YaoMingMania credit, so that’s very disappointing. It was alot of work to do all of this. — John
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:35 am
You should disable embedding in your youtube videos preferences. Then they will have to give your website link if they want to share with others.
I can’t disable the embedding because then I can’t embed them on my own site. Instead, what I did is insert a ‘YaoMingMania.com’ banner on new versions of every video and disabled the old videos. One site that was embedding them (http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=147091&page=2&pp=20) and now I want to tell people on that site the videos are on YaoMingMania.com. However, I registered for a username to try to tell people where the videos are (YMM), but their system won’t allow me to post on their site. Oh well. — John
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:56 am
Hey John you did a great job! I wish I could of been there. We really do miss YAO this year in the playoffs but did Calvin Murphy have anything to say about YAO?
Thanks, OJ. Yes, Calvin had the same nice things to say about Yao as everyone else did. Calvin always has something to say.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
Thank you, John, for these funny clips. I am realy impressed how relaxed and comfortable Yao was when he was speaking. It’s amazing how much he has progressed in learning the English language.
I want to call to your attention that the second video (JVG’s) does not seem to work - it says the video is no longer available.
Take care.
Thanks, Luckyme. You might want to try refreshing your browser while holding down the shift button. I updated those videos late yesterday so you might be looking at the old ones. — John
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:24 am
Thank you, John - they are all working now. Great funny videos! We need something comical like these to cheer up when nothing seems to be working on the court front.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I don’t know if it’s just my computer, but the videos keep stopping after the first 2 seconds.
First, try refreshing the page where the videos are located while holding down the shift key. That will clear any old Yao video you may have in cache out of your browser. If the videos still don’t play, then I think it may be your browser. If you go to YouTube and click on any other person’s video and those videos still don’t play, then it would definitely be your browser. If my Yao videos don’t work but other non-Yao videos do work, go ahead and tell me which video you’re looking at and I’ll check into it.
You might also want to try using a different browser, like FireFox, Safari, or Internet Explorer 7.
Thanks,
John