Interests of Rockets, China Set To Collide

Call it an Olympic-size injury.

The news that Houston's Yao Ming will miss the rest of the season with a stress fracture in his left foot certainly is a whopper. Not only does it impact the rest of the Rockets' season — taking them from dark-horse title contender to first-round roadkill — it also has some long-term implications that go well beyond Yao Ming.

We'll get to those in a minute. But first, here's the nitty-gritty for the Rockets.

With the 7-foot-6-inch Chinese All-Star manning the middle, Houston had won 12 straight games entering yesterday's contest against Washington and seemed poised to crack the top four in the Western Conference hierarchy.

Now the outlook is very different. Replacing an All-Star caliber player with question marks makes it unlikely the Rockets can play at anything approaching their recent level. Because the West is so insanely competitive, Houston will have a fight on its hands just to make the playoffs.

Although Houston has shown it can play decent basketball even without Yao — it went 20-12 during his 32-game absence a year ago — the Rockets' margin for error has shriveled.

Thanks to the unparalleled 1–9 strength of the West, it's likely to take 48 wins to make the playoffs. This means Houston will need to play .500 or so over their final 26 games to be assured a spot, which will be no easy feat without their meal ticket. (In contrast, Houston could probably lose all 26 remaining games and still make the playoffs in the East at 36–46 … how sad is that?)

But the more important news is how this affects Houston's future, rather than just this season. No longer can a Yao injury be treated as an anomaly — not when he's played 57, 48, and 55 of the Rockets' 82 games over the past two seasons and this one, respectively. This is the fourth major injury he's suffered in the past 24 months. Three of them — a toe infection and a broken foot in 2006 and Tuesday's stress fracture diagnosis — have been in his left foot.

The common thread is that these injuries — including the fourth, a broken leg in 2007 — seem to be wear and tear. At 310 pounds, Yao's legs and joints take a far greater pounding than a normal person's, making him more prone to breaking down during the NBA's 82-game grind. The Rockets haven't overused Yao; in fact, this is the first season in his career in which he's averaged more than 34 minutes a game.

He has, however, been overused by his country. Yao has hardly rested since coming to the NBA, playing for the Chinese national team in various tournaments every summer except this past one. Some of them were important (the 2004 Olympics or the 2006 World Championships), but others were almost laughably not — most notably the September 2005 Asian Games, in which China's easy romp to the title included a 98–10 win over Saudi Arabia and similarly competitive tussles against powerhouses like Uzbekistan, Lebanon, and Japan.

Houston won only 34 games the following season, in part because it went 7–18 while Yao was out for 25 games. One must wonder what the outcome would have been if he'd had more rest that summer. Unfortunately, this was part of the deal when the Rockets took Yao with the first overall pick in 2002 — Yao gets to play in America and make millions, but when the motherland calls, he has to answer. For the most part it's worked out pretty well for the Rockets, and not too badly for Yao either. However, their interests are about to collide spectacularly. The normal prognosis for this injury is that the player misses four months, which would put Yao out until around the first of July. That's normal, but for men as big as Yao, it can take longer than that to regain conditioning and get into peak shape.

That wouldn't be an issue for most players, because they'd have a summer to recuperate. But once again Yao's responsibilities to the Chinese national team get in the way. The Olympics begin August 8 in Beijing, and China has an unusual amount of national pride at stake in this year's gathering. Thus, it seems almost unthinkable that China would excuse him from playing.

Additionally, the Chinese side prepares much more diligently for international tournaments than America, with several weeks of practice and exhibitions. As such, one wonders if Yao will be rushed back into service before he's completely ready. Even if his foot is healed, he won't be in basketball shape, which could increase the odds of re-injury.

While it's too much to ask the Chinese to hold Yao out of the Olympics, one wonders if the Rockets can get some reasonable limits placed on his usage, especially in tune-up games against second-tier sides. Regardless, one presumes there's an increased risk of wear-and-tear injuries cropping up again next season.

At this point, both sides would be best served by agreeing to limit his future national team participation after 2008.

Yao is no longer an indestructible 23-year-old — he's now 27 and has a history of foot problems. Obviously, having Yao play in summers for China isn't helpful to the Rockets' interests. But the opposite is also true. One hopes the Chinese eventually realize that running Yao into the ground every summer, thereby hampering his odds at NBA success, doesn't necessarily advance their country's cause for sporting glory.

jhollinger@nysun.com