Yao Mania
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China thrashed by Greece. Next up: Lithuania

August 18th, 2008
by John

Monday’s game between China and Greece wasn’t even close, with the Chinese falling behind early and losing 91-77. With nothing at stake in the game since China is already advancing to the semifinals and the game out-of-hand so early, Yao Ming hardly played, scoring 16 points in 18 minutes of play.

Vasillis Spanoulis, Yao’s former teammate for the Rockets pictured above, scored 19 points on 8-of-10 shooting.

The Chinese next play Lithuania in a single elimination, do-or-die game. If they lose, their Olympics are over.

Click here for more photos from the game.

Click here for the game story. Click here for the boxscore.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 8:22 am and is filed under 2008 Beijing Olympics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    watching vassilis spanoulis play makes me wonder why JVG never gave this guy a chance. he's a better player than rafer in my opinion, and he certainly coulda played some backup point or shooting guard ahead of luther head 2 years ago. and he can certainly play and help them last year and this coming year in adelman's offense. its too bad JVG's lack of PT for him all but drove him to return to europe.

    any thoughts on this john. i know its 2 years ago, but wondering what you thought. not that he will come back, but do the rockets still have his nba rights?
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    of forget that last question, they traded him for scola

    I'm elated the Rockets have Scola, but I do think Vassilis had some potential that wasn't tapped appropriately. He played poorly when he had the chance, but I think JVG could have given him a little more leeway to play longer minutes earlier in his Rockets career to get him some confidence. I believe JVG was too strict in always having the best players on the floor playing, but I think you have to bring younger players along in order to succeed over a long season without damaging the team too much in the short term. Rick Adelman played Aaron Brooks more minutes than JVG did Spanoulis, and it seems to have made a difference in Aaron's game.
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    Yao was pissed off after the game. He wanted to win, but the coach just wanted to play it safe. We'll go all out for Lithuania!
 
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