Sports/Olympics / Newsmaker
Yao Ming: Still hope for China at 2008 Olympics
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-08-28 18:46
BEIJING - Yao Ming thinks China's young team can still win a medal at the
2008 Beijing Olympics despite being knocked out of the world championship
in the second round.
The Asian champions led by 12 points before collapsing to a 95-64 defeat
by Greece in Saitama on Sunday having scraped out of the group stage on
the back of a last-second three-point shot.
China's Yao Ming dunks against Greece during their world basketball
championships game in Saitama August 27, 2006. [Reuters]
"I'll go back to NBA," the 7 ft 5 in Houston Rockets center said in an
interview with Basketball Pioneers newspaper. "I can promise I'll be
better in two years but I need my team mates to become better. I only
made five attempts (on Sunday) and we can't win if I only get five
attempts."
Yao had the best scoring average at the world championship going into
Sunday's game but pressure from the Greeks on the Chinese guards left him
with just 10 points and eight rebounds as his team collapsed around him.
"What our guards lack, sometimes, is a little bit of courage and
basically we need physical strength," he said. "That's what I've learnt
in my time in the NBA, to live on your strength. Look at my arms."
Despite the huge enthusiasm for the game in China, the national team
finished 12th at the last world championship in Indiana in 2002 and
eighth at the Athens Olympics two years later.
"To sum up, it was a tournament in which we can see more hope, more than
those in Indiana or Athens," the 25-year-old NBA All Star told the paper.
"Our performance in the group stage was better than I hoped. However, the
last game left me with some doubts. I hope it was just a blip."
Along with Olympic high hurdle champion Liu Xiang, Yao is China's most
popular sportsman and there is a lot of pressure on him to deliver a
medal in men's basketball in 2008.
"If we can keep the good form, if the players work hard in the next two
years, if we are fight as well as we did this time and if we are lucky at
home," he said.
"If all those premises exist, we might hopefully take a medal at home."
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