Last year, the great Paulo Gasol finally said goodbye to professional basketball.
In the NBA, he was a two-time champion, the first non-local best rookie in history (2002), and Bryant's best partner.
In the FIBA world, he is even more legendary. World Champion (2006), European Champion (09, 11, 15), two-time Olympic Runner-up (08, 12), and the top scorer in Athens and Beijing, the all-time scorer of the European Championships.
The great "diamond" Scola of the same year also retired.
In the FIBA world, he is no less than Gasol's interior killer, the representative of Argentina's golden generation.
He has participated in five Olympic Games and five World Championships, twice killed the Dream Team, won the Olympic gold medal, and was the scoring king of the competition (2010 World Championships) and the second in the history of the total score of the World Championships.
And, as we all know, he is Yao Ming's tallest interior partner he's ever met in the NBA.
He, Gasol and Yao Ming were all born in 1980, and at this time our chairman Yao has been retired for ten years.
Yao Ming, the best player in the history of Chinese basketball, has become a basketball bridge across the Pacific, but also set up an unattainable monument for future generations.
However, he eventually retired from the army at the age of thirty due to injury.
Looking at the three people in this photo, they were all the best players on the continent of this century.
But the other two have careers almost twice as long as Yao Ming.com.
Removing the attrition of years of fighting for the country, Yao Ming's injuries are also due to his experience in the NBA.
He weighed 132 kg in his rookie season and 142 kg in his last healthy season in 2008-09.
And after so many years of watching, at least in the player era, Yao Ming has almost no trace of extra flesh on his body.
In the seven seasons of the NBA, he added 20 pounds of "muscle armor" to himself.
He can brush such inside the line when he first enters the league.
Later in his career, it was such an inside giant.
He dunked the ball against Javier McGee, who was still in his rookie season and was all below his head in the league.
He went from a FIBA center who was 2.26 meters tall but had strong basic skills and excellent skills to an "American center" who was strong, solid and dominant under the basket.
But as he became more and more accustomed to the NBA, he also brought a greater burden on his own body. Eventually, the injury found him in advance.
Jeff Van Gundy and Rick Adelman, both head coaches destined to enter the Hall of Fame.
Both shaped him and destroyed him.
First, the little Van Gundy - both a strict teacher and a tyrant
To find out what kind of coach Jeff Van Gundy is, look no further than Knicks head coach Thibodeau.
From 1989 to 1996, Van Gundy assisted Pat Riley at the Knicks,
From 2003 to 2007, Thibodeau was Van Gundy's assistant coach for the Rockets.
The styles of these three famous teachers are almost the same:
Emphasis on defense, harsh style, and fierce superstarism.
Riley looks mild-mannered and brings out the "Showtime" dynasty of the Lakers in the eighties. But in the early 1990s, he went to the Knicks to create a New York gangster called the "second generation of bad boys".
Ewing really became the number one center in the East in his hands, but his knees were also tied early.
He led Wade to a championship in the third grade, but Wade's knees were sub-healthy for almost the entire time.
Without him, practice fiercely.
Thibodeau is famous.
Rose took the regular season MVP in his first year under him, but the injury soon came to the door and has been with the youngest MVP ever since.
During the Bulls period, his men, Lul Dun, Noah, Boozer and Jimmy Butler, were all tough guys who were very durable and eager to tear up with their opponents on the court for 48 minutes.
Sandwiched between the two, Jeff Van Gundy's style can be imagined.
In the words of Francis, who broke up with him in the first season:
"He's a control freak, and under him you can only play as he asks, you can't be yourself!"
Yao Ming met him in the second season of his NBA career.
TomJanovic, who first arrived and led the team to the only two championships in the history of the team, had to put down the coaching whip because of pancreatic cancer. So the Rockets chose Van Gundy as their successor.
The results were immediate, and in 2003-04, the Rockets not only made the playoffs, but also improved their defense from 14th in the previous season to fifth in the league.
In his eyes, Yao Ming should be the new "Patrick Ewing".
The Gorilla played under him for five years, bringing the team to the '99 Finals. Again and again, he arched his thick arms to guard the team's penalty area, and then roared at the offensive end to put the ball into the basket.
Two-time All-Star starter Francis and Mobley, who averaged 20+ per game, could not get into his eyes, and Yao Ming was the core of the team in his heart.
So even if the Rockets re-entered the playoffs after four years that year, losing 1-4 to the Lakers with F4 is not shameful, but his relationship with Francis is irreconcilable.
In the 2004 offseason, the Rockets took advantage of the conflict between the league's two-time scorer Maddy and the owner Magic, sending Francis, Mobley and the original main center Cato to bottom Maddy.
With O'Neill leaving Miami that summer, the "OK group" broke up. The Rockets suddenly had the strongest inside and outside punches in the league at the time.
The 2004-05 Rockets gradually began to bear the thick van Gundy brand. They are fourth in the league, behind the Pistons, Spurs and Bulls, who later played in the Finals.
Maddy 25.7 points 6.2 boards 5.7 assists, the league three, the team 51 wins 31 losses to the West fifth.
Yao Ming, on the other hand, had 18.7 points, 8.4 rebounds and 2.0 blocks, and was second only to the Sharks in the center (22.9 points).
And, his figure began to swell at a rate visible to the naked eye.
Van Gundy didn't need his "Shanghai tango" inside steps, he wanted a super center who could swallow the opposite side alive.
Yao Ming did not disappoint him, in the 2005 playoffs, against the Mavericks led by Nowitzki, he averaged 21.4 points per game while limiting the self-proclaimed "First Center of the West" opposite Dampier to only 6.6 points.
Coupled with Maddy's 30.7 points, 7.4 boards and 6.7 assists, the duo looks devastating.
But the Rockets were eliminated in seven games with a 2-0 lead.
The seventh of these is the most representative.
76-116, Maddy 27 points, Yao Ming 33 points, the rest of the Rockets 16 points. The opposite Nowitzki scored 14 points and could easily laugh at the victory.
Van Gundy's offensive system is actually quite simple:
Unleash the offensive abilities of the two strongest points to disrupt the opponent's defense, and the role players get the biggest open space to throw the ball in.
But the miserliness of the Rockets management at that time made them almost all the role players who had passed the peak or the league's tramp level except for Yao Mai.
So everything counts on the two bosses.
In that game of seven, Yao Mai's starting points were Padgett, who never scored more than 8 points in a single season, David Wesley, who is already 34 years old, Bob Sula, who is famous for picking rebounds and not giving Yao Ming a pass.
The sixth man on the team is Joan Barry, who is already 35 years old.
Losing to the mavericks who were the league's total salary at the time, there was no temper.
Throughout the Van Gundy era, the Rockets had both once-famous balloon stars like Juvan Howard, Rod Strickland, and Derek Anderson, as well as Van Gundy's old Knicks like Charlie Ward, Witherspoon, and Mark Jackson.
The only people who can be used are Battier, Uncle Mu, Alstom and a few others.
For Van Gundy, the player's execution of his tactics is more important than talent and ability.
After all, he has two All-Star starters.
But who would have thought that the 2004-05 season was already the pinnacle of the two of them.
In the 2005-06 season, Maddy was injured in the first month, and Yao Ming led the team alone, losing seven consecutively. Maddie returned in December with a five-game winning streak. Then Yao Ming was injured, and the Rockets won 21-6 and lost 15. After returning, he fought with both swords for a month, and Maddy was injured again in March.
Even though Yao Ming played at the super center level in March 2006, averaging 27.6 points and 11.4 boards per game, the 25 games after the All-Star game, 25.7 points and 11.6 rebounds were completely the performance of the league's chief center.
That season, Yao Mai missed 60 regular season games, and the Rockets did not even score the playoffs.
The biggest change in the 06-07 season for the Rockets was that Dawson, the general manager (who was an assistant coach) who served the team for nearly 30 years, took a back seat, and a young man from MIT who liked to delve into data (we all know who he was) gradually took over and officially became the rocket's general manager in 2007.
As soon as he took office, he began a series of "riot operations", using the eighth overall pick from last season's swing to pick up potential swinger Rudy Guy, and then traded blue-collar striker Battier, strengthening the team's forward line while giving Maddy, who began to gradually decline, a qualified bodyguard.
At that time, Yao Ming had grown into a muscle-knotted "American" center, and his average of 25 points, 9 rebounds and 2 blocks per game was completely the data of top centers, but the toe injury once again dragged him down, and he only played 48 games in the entire regular season, but even then it was still the second team of the league.
Maddy has lost the explosive power of the once proud league because of a waist injury, and has gradually transformed into an outside organizer and weak side attacker. But his overall performance of averaging 24.6 points, 5.3 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game also put him on the league's second team.
The team also finished fourth in the West with 52 wins and 30 losses.
They were chased 3-3 by the Utah Jazz in the playoffs with a 2-0 lead, and lost 99-103 to Deron Boozer's new version of Utah in the home game of the seventh, giving the year's Fire Honey a head-to-toe coolness.
Still the old problem, Yao Mai scored a total of 58 points. But with the exception of Battier with 16 points and Alstom with 11 points, the others who scored the most points were Luthor Hyde with 5 points.
In this way, Van Gundy ended his four-year career with the Rockets.
Under his rule, the Rockets became the league's defensive powerhouse after the Spurs and Pistons.
On the offensive end, his biggest hope is the Yao Mai combination, and the others are just tool people who add oil and vinegar.
Unfortunately, in the three seasons he coached Yao Mai, the two were really healthy only in the 04-05 year.
Under him, Yao Ming grew into a true American super center. Learned everything except health.
Second, Adelman - respect for talents, the breeze comes from the wind
In the 2007 offseason, the Rockets and Yao Ming welcomed a new head coach, Rick Adelman.
He and Van Gundy are the two poles of the coach.
Van Gundy ruled the army strictly, emphasizing defense, and the teams he led were all tough and victorious iron troops.
Adelman is humble, spring and rainy, focusing on tapping into everyone's talents, bringing out a number of strong teams with gorgeous and exciting playing styles.
Even his achievements made Van Gundy ashamed of himself.
In the late 1980s, he built the Trail Blazers into a two-time Finals-only Western Conference powerhouse, and Drexler became the second best under Jordan (1991-92).
At the beginning of this century, the sacramento kings with a gorgeous style were also from his men, and Webb, Peggy, Divac, and Bibby almost pulled down the Lakers who attacked the triple championship, if it were not for the referee, they could have become the first team to end the "OK combination".
Under his command, rocket players who have been suppressed by Van Gundy for many years gradually loosened their restraints on the offensive end and played more free-spirited.
At the same time, that year, Luis Scola finally landed in the NBA, and he and Yao Ming, two monsters in the FIBA world, actually formed an inside fist in the rocket.
Maddy's body is far from its peak, but under Adelman he has transformed into a real organizational striker, and the team's current player reserves do not require him to charge personally.
So the good days of the rocket began.
Three consecutive wins in the opening season, six wins and one loss in the first seven games. Even though Maddy injured his arm again in December 2007, the Rockets remained unaffected, and at this stage they won 7 and lost 2 under Yao Ming.
At that time, the Rockets were no longer the lame team that lacked any of Yao Mai's and would not play.
Yao Ming once again played the perfect 20+10 statistic, and he became the player of the month in January 2008, with 25.1 points, 11.6 rebounds and 2.8 blocks.
The only problem is,
Adelman was more dependent on Yao Than Van Gundy.
In the 2007-08 season, Yao Ming's playing time reached a career-high of 37.2 minutes, compared with only 34.2 minutes in the previous season.
When Maddy was no longer at the peak of his bravery, the burden on Yao Ming at both ends of the rocket attack and defense was too heavy.
At that time, he was already a star who weighed more than 140 kilograms, had a history of injuries, and never used physical fitness.
So in the Rockets' victory over the Bulls on February 24, 2008, Yao Ming suffered a stress fracture for the season, and even almost affected the Beijing Olympic Games.
The Rockets had already won 10 straight games, and they would go on to win 12 games in a row, creating the most moving regular season miracle of the season.
However, without Yao Ming's Rockets, the first round of the playoffs was still a 3-4 defeat to old rival Jazz. Even though Maddy tried his best to play the last highlight of his career, he still did not break through the first round.
In the 08-09 season, Maddy has completely sunk, but the Rockets have bottomed out defensive players like Atai. The whole team played more smoothly under the offensive system against Adelman.
They can keep a clean sheet with James in the regular season, allowing him to play the only "0 assists" game of his career.
Can sweep the magic that later reached the finals, Yao Ming is completely blood-suppressed against Howard.
In the end, they finished fifth in the West with 53 wins and 29 losses, and eventually killed the Blazers and broke through the first round of the spell.
Then Yao Ming still fell,
After playing the pinnacle of his career in Los Angeles, he once again fell on the soles of his fragile feet in the third game, fractured again, and a comeback was far away.
Although the Rockets used their lives to drag the Lakers, who later won the championship, into the seventh game, Kobe Bryant, who was at the peak, played his lowest-performing playoff performance of the year.
But it was over, the end of Yao Ming's era.
Adelman was lucky that when he took over the team, Yao Ming was still the strongest center in the league, allowing him to use it easily.
He was unfortunate again, Yao Ming was not his former Drexler and Chris Weber, without their flying, king kong incorruptible physique.
Yao Ming was lucky that under Adelman, he really became the offensive axis of the team, and there were enough teammates strong enough to charge around him.
He was unfortunate again, and the years of fighting made his physical condition precarious, and finally fell down at the closest time to the championship, never crossing the key line.
His career, trying his best, but full of regrets.