Thanks for doing the summary – some interesting articles there! Just a small nitpick – I found the summary of Andrew Sharp's article you posted a bit confusing, and had to read the whole article to figure out what he was actually talking about. I think it was the sudden segue into Gordon Gekko with no real explanation.

Cheers,

ST

First part of it is to reduce expectations for next season as mentioned in other posts.

But another more important side of it is to manage his public image in China.

Yao has been the quintessential good citizen. Give him marching orders and he will play in whatever tournament asked to represent China. Naturally a team with Yao will perform well. It gives the national team managers immediate recognition as a job well done. They can invest less resources to developing new talent (and be corrupt with government money, as the national team has with soccer). Yao knows because now he owns a pro team in China and knows how things work behind the scenes. But the national team without Yao exposes the team for what it is (despite all the big men the Chinese have). Turning on the national team now makes him look bad, but he has to do it at some time. In a way he's telling the Chinese that if there's enough public vitriol against him for not playing on the national team he will stop playing altogether. If Yao does not even play in the NBA, well, everyone loses. This is a case of acting like you're brain washed to die for your country versus having to manage your limited physical abilities to achieve personal vs. national goals.

In these comments I hear Yao coming to grips with the tough decisions he has to make at some point in his career. He cannot play forever, or even all year round. He has made up his mind. It's now up to the chinese national basketball team to decide how they want to manage Yao's decision (not play in London 2012). Do they want to portray him as a someone poisoned by western principle of greed, or allow him to pursue his personal goals? The chinese national basketball team used to say things like Yao is 'on loan' to the Rockets. But now Yao doesn't need to play for money and he can buy his own team. Is he still a subject of the country and 'his talents given by the mother country' or is he allowed to take whatever he has left to further not only his own cause but that of a billion people who would like to see him triumph on the world stage? In a way, with Morey's accomplishment to build a good team around him has made the decision more difficult. I think Yao got a taste of how close they were to a championship in the laker series they lost last year. The what-if's are creeping in. What if he had taken the summer off before? Would he be wearing a ring now? This time around the decision is his.

Yao might quit if foot doesn't heal

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=541...

why would he say that when we have all these trade assets and are trying to build a contender around him? I am dumbfounded.