🏀 Autographed Yao Ming Houston Rockets Red Basketball Jersey Beckett BAS COA – The Certified Authentic Signature of Houston Rockets Center and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Yao Ming on a Rockets Red Team Jersey, the Autograph of the First Chinese Player Selected First Overall in the NBA Draft and One of the Most Dominant Centers of His Generation

🏀 When the Houston Rockets selected Yao Ming with the first overall pick of the 2002 NBA Draft, the selection carried implications that reached well beyond the basketball court. At 7'6" and 310 pounds, Yao was the largest player the NBA had ever drafted with the first pick, a center from Shanghai who had played in the Chinese Basketball Association's top tier and who arrived in Houston with questions about whether the level of competition he had faced in China translated to readiness for the NBA's best. The questions did not survive contact with Yao's actual play. In his first season he was selected to the All-Star Game by fan vote, the first of eight consecutive All-Star appearances he would earn across his nine seasons in Houston. 🏀

🏀 Yao Ming's career in Houston was built around a post game that the league's centers had to gameplan specifically for and that produced scoring and rebounding numbers from a position that the NBA had not seen produced with such technical precision in the 7-foot range since the prime years of the game's most decorated centers. The injuries that eventually ended his career in 2011 – a series of foot and ankle problems that accumulated across the final years of his playing time – cut short a trajectory that the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame still recognized in full when they inducted him in 2016. The red Rockets jersey he wore through those seasons in Houston is the garment associated with a career that changed the NBA's global footprint. 🏀

🏀 Yao Ming. Houston Rockets. Center. 2002–2011. 7'6". 8x NBA All-Star. Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2016). First Overall Pick (2002). First Chinese Player Selected First Overall. Autographed Red Basketball Jersey. Beckett BAS COA. Hall of Fame Sports. Condition: NOS.

🏀 Autographed Yao Ming Houston Rockets Red Basketball Jersey Beckett BAS COA. Hall of Fame Sports. Condition: NOS.