To Keep Yao or not

It’s tough to build a team around one injury-prone player. It’s even tougher to build it around TWO injury-prone players.
The Houston Rockets have a two-headed conundrum in recently-injured Yao Ming and perpetually-injured Tracy McGrady. Let’s look at Yao in this blog.
He averaged 81 games and 31 minutes per game his first three seasons with the Rockets, but 53 games and 35 minutes per game the last three.
Some may say that his duty for his native China in the 2006 World Championships played an instrumental part in his proneness to injury the last couple of seasons. But Yao played in the 2004 Olympics while following that with nearly a full NBA season. Perhaps you could make the argument that playing in those Olympics – along with his other offseason duties to China before that – set up his body for the sort of failure it has experienced the last three NBA seasons.
Now that Yao is out for the remainder of this season with a stress facture in his left foot, the popular topic is whether the Rockets should continue to build their team around him. Can Yao’s growing injury history be dismissed as simply bad luck or is this a precursor to further frustration for Yao and the Rockets? Some have even called Yao the next Bill Walton, another highly-skilled big man whose NBA career was cut short because of frequent foot injuries.
In defense of Yao, we need look no further than Zydrunas Ilgauskas as an example of a big man who can overcome foot injuries to become a reliable player. Big Z missed 205 games between the start of the 98-99 season and the end of the 01-02 season and it seemed at the time that his career would end prematurely. Yet Z has averaged 79 games per season going into 07-08 and has missed only one game this year while maintaining a solid level of play the entire time.
So Yao has a reason to be optimistic. And he is still in his 20’s, so his pace of healing is still much quicker than if he were in his 30’s.
The fact of the matter is skilled big men like Yao are held at a premium, especially when they run 7’6” and knock down 18-foot jumpers in their sleep.
Even the most casual NBA fan can understand the league is still a big man’s game. Teams that employ Shaq O’Neal and Tim Duncan have won eight of the past nine NBA titles. The resurrection of the Celtics and Lakers is due in part to the acquisitions of Kevin Garnett and Pau Gasol and the emergence of Andrew Bynum. The Magic, Mavericks and Suns are strong playoff teams, if not title contenders, because of Dwight Howard, Dirk Nowitski, Amare Stoudemire and Shaq.
After the Beijing Olympics this summer, in which Yao will likely play since he is the host country’s most recognizable athlete, the Rockets might try to hold Yao out of future international competition so that he can get proper rest during the summer. But unless they can get back a star big man in a trade for Yao, the Rockets best future title hopes remains building their franchise around their 7’6” asset.