Yao by numbers

Last Friday's Rockets-Lakers game featured the most hyped match-up of the season: three-time finals MVP Shaqille O'Neal vs. seven-foot-six-inch Chinese rookie and top draft pick Yao Ming. (The hype was amplified by the controversy over Shaq's faux-pidgin chinese and his subsequent lame apology. Bill Walton said it best--there's just no excuse for that from Shaq.)

If you caught the game you saw that Yao's pretty good (10 pts, 10 boards, 6 blocks) but Shaq still dominates (31 pts, 13 boards). Sports Illustrated published a nice statistical comparison of Yao and 20 other centres who were top draft picks. Though the season's only half over, the numbers so far show that Yao isn't the next Shaqille or Tim Duncan. But he might be the next Rik Smits. Another favourable comparison would be Zydrunas Ilgauskas, the 7' 3" Lithuanian centre playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Here's how the rookie years of Yao, Z and Shaq compare:

	Player
Statistic	Yao Ming (02-03)	Shaquille O'Neal (92-93)	Zydrunas Ilgauskas (97 - 98)
PPG	12.8	23.4	13.9
RPG	8.00	13.9	8.8
BPG	2.11	3.53	1.65
FG%	.526	.562	.518
FT%	.766	.592	.762

Also, even though Yao's presence has helped turn the Rockets around, he would have more impact in the Eastern Conference where teams tend to field smaller centres (for example, according to the stat sheet, Yao has nine inches on Ben Wallace--and I think Ben's official NBA height has been inflated). It'd be nice to see a few big men move east, if only to make the playoffs a little more interesting.