Happy Birthday Yao Ming! His Top 5 Big Man Showdowns

Yao Ming‘s birthday is today, but I feel like it should arrive with a qualifier. You know, like a perpetual but that’s haunted his injury shortened career. Much how the Weather Channel tells you the temperature but also what it “feels like” outside, it doesn’t seem accurate to call Yao 32, which he is. He’s 32, but he feels much, much older because the talk about his arrival and promise seemed to last just as long as his eight seasons in Houston. Here’s another qualifier: He wasn’t in the NBA as long as many hoped thanks to numerous foot injuries — but when he was healthy, he could be one of the most dominant big men the NBA had ever seen.

So what better way to celebrate his birthday than to look at that sweet spot of his career, where he was destined to go on to score 20,000 points and grab 10,000 rebounds. Yao’s time in the league overlapped with Shaquille O’Neal‘s prime, and the two had memorable head-to-head duels, but Yao’s best games against upper echelon centers and forwards weren’t limited to the Big Aristotle. The sweet spot did not last long, but he was anything but a bust. Here are his top 5 games against the league’s best big men.

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5. MARCH 20, 2007: YAO VS. JERMAINE O’NEAL

Yao: 32 points and and 14 rebounds
Jermaine O’Neal: 25 points and 9 rebounds.

While O’Neal was hucking up a 9-of-24 game over Yao’s long arm, the Great Wall was putting his his double-double on a more efficient 10 of 17 from the floor, and even more impressive, 12 of 13 from the line in Houston’s victory. This game happened about a month after O’Neal’s last of his sixth straight All-Star game appearances in Indiana, but he was very much still in his role as a devastating low-post shooter.

4. MARCH 11, 2005: YAO VS. AMAR’E STOUDEMIRE

Yao: 27 points, 22 rebounds and 5 blocks.
Amar’e Stoudemire: 31 points and 10 rebounds.

Not to overlook from this boxscore’s all-around excellence is the nine offensive boards he grabbed in his 35 minutes on the floor as Houston won by 20. The caveat with this game is of course his pronounced height advantage on the 6-10, 6-11 forward when Yao was 7-6, not that STAT shied away from his own huge line. Stoudemire relished dunking over any target he could — the bigger the better — before his microfracture knee surgery, but Yao dished it right back at the young Sun.

3. DEC. 3, 2002: YAO VS. TIM DUNCAN

Yao: 27 points, 18 rebounds, 3 blocks.
Tim Duncan: 25 points, 12 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks, 2 steals

Many of Duncan and Yao’s 23 head-to-head games against one another could stand out, but this epic showdown was — if you can believe it — the very first in the series, and a Houston win. Just 17 games into his NBA career Yao confirmed the promise he’d shown in a 30-point, 16-board outburst against Dallas in Game 10. That was a loss, however. Against Duncan in his prime, Yao was 10-of-18 from the field, and 7-of-7 from the stripe. Shaq’s duels with Yao are the most memorable because of the hype but Ming had better overall performances against Duncan, scoring at least 20 points in 11 of those games, and six of those 11 were double-doubles.

2. NOV. 12, 2006: YAO VS. SHAQ

Shaq: 15 points, 10 rebounds.
Yao: 34 points and 14 rebounds.

By this time the rivalry had simmered with O’Neal in the Eastern Conference with Miami, but five months after the Heat’s NBA championship Yao and Shaq had another memorable faceoff on the low block. They would have only four more games against one another after this. Yao shot 12-of-13 from the free-throw line in nearly 38 minutes. The game wasn’t without its sloppiness — they combined for nine turnovers — but the hype from the Lakers-Rockets days was back, if only briefly.

1. MARCH 3, 2004: YAO VS. SHAQ

Yao: 33 points and 8 rebounds.
Shaq: 28 points, 7 rebounds and five blocks.

During their first meeting on Jan. 17, 2003, Yao had a nice game of 10 points, 10 boards and 6 blocks, but next to Shaq’s 31 and 13, it wasn’t even close. Ditto for their next matchup, when Shaq embarrassed Yao’s 6 points (on 3-of-13 shooting) and 10 rebounds with his own 39 points. And then … Yao fought back. This was the pinnacle of those games, even though it was a Houston loss.

What do you think?

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