Nigeria Content Online

China’s Yao Ming
says he might end his basketball career next year if the injury to his
left foot does not heal properly by the end of the NBA season, state
media reported on Tuesday. The Houston Rockets centre, who missed last
season after surgery on his left foot, also confirmed that he was
unlikely to play in the London Olympics in 2012.

The seven-time NBA
All Star, scheduled to return to the Rockets for the start of the
2010-11 season, is recovering from surgery for an injury the Rockets’
team doctor described as “career-threatening.”

The injury, which
occurred during a May 2009 game, was the latest in a series of physical
problems which have blighted an NBA career that began when Yao was the
first overall draft pick by the Rockets in 2002.

“If the foot injury
does not heal next season, I might choose to call it quits,” he was
quoted as saying last weekend by state news agency Xinhua.

The seven-foot
six-inch (2.28m) Yao exercised the player option in his contract with
the Rockets last month to avoid free agency and expects to be ready for
pre-season training. Still China’s most popular and wealthiest
sportsman despite a year on the sidelines, Yao said before the Beijing
Olympics that he was unlikely to play for his country at another Games.

“The chance (to
play in London) is very little. The foot injury will not allow me to
play so many games anymore,” he said. “As an athlete, I am not the
future of China basketball anymore.” Yao, who will turn 30 in
September, also criticised China’s lack of focus on development of
young basketball talent before the Beijing Olympics.

“We are paying for
what we didn’t do leading up to 2008,” he said. “We skipped the
development of a reserve team and the CBA league and focused only on
the national team and the Olympics. It’s like you are killing the goose
that lays the golden egg.”

Reuters