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)…

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 1:34 am and is filed under Charity work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.