Since Yao confirmed his retirement on Wednesday, many pieces have been written about Yao Ming’s career. YaoMingMania has been directing you to some of these items, and came across a few more that stand out above the rest.

The first is this blog post from one of two Americans who probably has known Yao longer than any other American: “Team Yao” member Bill Sanders, Chief Marketing Officer for Bill Duffy & Associates (a.k.a. BDA Sports), which represents some of the NBA’s top players.

Sanders blogs about the current mood at BDA’s offices around Yao’s retirement, the time he first met Yao in China back in 2000, what it was like during the whirlwind days of Yao’s first couple of years in the NBA (which YaoMingMania covered in detail back then), and much more. Check it out here.

Sanders also tweeted about this insightful article from the LA Times about how Yao’s retirement will leave China with a gaping void in their international “charm campaign,” and this NY Times article about the state and future of Chinese basketball with Yao now retired.

All we can say is that China has alot of work to do to make up for the loss of Yao from the world basketball stage.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 11:01 pm and is filed under *What they said about Yao, China, Retirement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.