Basketball will miss Yao Ming

I was working on something to sum up my thoughts about Yao Ming's career to this unfortunate point but ESPN's Michael Wilbon put it perfectly. Yao Ming was under-appreciated in this league and sadly, will probably always will be.

Here's the link: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=wilbon/101220.

If this is indeed the end of Yao's career--bearing in mind he has admitted to no such thing--it's not the disappointment people seem to make it out to be. The disappointment is that it could have been legendary. He could have been one of the great ones. But, if it is over, this passage from Wilbon sums it up fittingly:

But know that the Houston Rockets are worse off for Yao's absence, as is the NBA, as is basketball in China, as is the general product that is professional basketball. Anybody who never won a championship, never even reached a conference finals but who can nonetheless be missed that much is truly a giant figure and in his case is hugely underappreciated.