America symbolizes and dominates the high-level basketball tournament in the world and its National Basketball Association (NBA) is a grand stage that collects the most competitive, skilled and professional basketball players from all over the world. Almost every basketball player has set his dream of being a player in the NBA since he started playing basketball. Obviously, getting into the NBA is difficult but it will be more difficult later, because every basketball player in NBA is approximately the best in their habitations such as schools, towns, cities, or countries. They went through numbers of eliminations, and finally defeated their competitors to join the NBA. As an old saying goes “survival of the fittest.” A successful NBA player has to do his best in every game in order to stand out from other players who are as strong as he does or even stronger, and then success is near at hand.

Yao Ming is a retired Chinese professional basketball player who last played for the Houston Rockets of the NBA. Although a summary of his basketball career and influence on the game inevitably fails to do it justice, as a phenomenal basketball player with a unique combination of fundamental diligence, optimism, agility, and an unquenchable competitive determination, Yao redefined the successful international NBA superstar.

As the contemporary adversary of Yao, also the legendary NBA player- Shaquille O’Neal said Yao “could have been up there in the top five centers to ever play the game.” Also, the current greatest shooting guard-Kobe Bryant said Yao “opened up a mark in a whole new place in the NBA and ought to be named as a member of the Hall of Fame.” A brief listing of his top accomplishments would include the following: 8 times NBA All-Star; 2 times All-NBA Second Team; 3 times All-NBA Third Team; NBA All-Rookie First Team; 3 times FIBA Asian Championship MVP.

“No pain, no gain.” this is Yao’s motto and also the essential characteristic that allows Yao to stand out from the crowd. Although his innate quality and jumping ability are not better than Black or White players, he is always working hard to improve himself. He was the first player to join the training, doing extra exercises after every game finished as well. Yao is 7ft 6 in and 310 lb. The burning calories that every time Yao jumps, which is equal to that an adult raises seven hundreds eggs over his head. In addition, Yao never stopped his diligence, while he got injuries. When his foot got hurt, he did left weight to increase the strength of his upper body. In the same way, he did bicycling to increase the strength of his lower body. There is no reason for a basketball player not to be successful if he is talented and diligent, so Yao’s tremendous diligence made his career statistics with 19 points, 9.2 rebounds. Besides, Yao’s diligence is out of court. A lot of people are puzzled with Yao’s decision of going back to university last year because he had stared his basketball career since he was 11, and he is already the richest athlete in China. Nevertheless, Yao answered that basketball makes him succeed in his career, but not life, but the knowledge is what most people need in a successful life. I believe that Yao’s diligence will definitely help him to succeed in studying as well.
Yao’s movement is one of his marked differences. It is agile, inconstant, and cunning. Although Yao had to face many mighty and talent centers in his whole career, such as Shaquille O’Neal, Dwight Howard, Erick Dampier, his unique movement made him become competitive. The movement is actually called “Dream Shake”, which is being well-know of its inventor Hakeem Olajuwon. Who is considered one of the greatest centers in the NBA history, and Yao was trained and leant from him. The movement is full with spins, feint movements, shakes. For example, when Yao gets ball around the free throw line, he pretends to shot the ball. The defense in order to disturb his shooting, he comes to stay with Yao. And then Yao can use the lag to shake off the defense and get inside to dunk. If the defense is not tricked, the movement already helps Yao to create some spaces between the defense and Yao, so he can confidently shoot. Yao’s movement is flexible, and depends on different kind of adversaries. He frequently changed his steps to shake off the defenses and score.
Yao’s indefensible shootings are his critical and guaranteed scoring skill, it includes fade-away shoot, hook shoot, etc. When he played in the NBA, he was the leader in the free line shooting, which was almost 95 percentages. In addition, most of players choose fade-away shoot and hook shoot because it is hardly defensive. By watching his numerous basketball games, these two kinds of shootings are Yao’s most dominated scoring skill. His height and wide wingspan helped him be difficult blocked or disturbed by other players. Every time he spun or was backward, it created enough spaces for him to complete his shootings. His eyes looked at the basket clearly and his hands concentrated on balancing the strength. This is the cause why Yao’s main offensive skill is shooting, which is accurate, unsusceptible, and experienced. Pick and Roll is a classical and useful strategy in the NBA, especially the teams which focus the offensive on restricted area. Because the Houston Rockets have the powerful center-Yao, so his ex-head coaches Rudy Tomjanovich and Jeff Van Gundy had set Pick and Roll as the main strategy for the Rockets. Two of his ex-teammates Tracy McGrady and Steve Francis both are famous and comprehensive players. They both could engage defenses and create spaces for Yao to play one on one inside. Or Yao could expand the defenses to three point line, and defend the defenses to help his teammates scoring. If the teammates could not score, they could pass the ball back to Yao because Yao’ shooting was also a threat to the adversary. In conclusion, although Yao has retired as an athlete last year, he is still actively expanding his athleticism. For example, he is committed to doing philanthropy. His ‘Yao’ foundation invited the other international basketball players such as Steve Nash to host a charitable basketball tournament in 2010. Also, he donated millions of dollars to the disaster area in China. His success in the basketball is a superior example that inspires ambitious basketball players to move forward.