The Rockets Can Feel Yao’s Foot Pain

Today’s sports news comes with an anatomy lesson: being 7-foot-6 is not good for your feet. And when you’re Yao Ming and a broken left foot threatens your career, the pain quickly spreads through an entire franchise, the Houston Rockets, causes aches through the N.B.A. and sends cramps to China.

Ouch.

The news that Yao is the latest big man suffering foot woes — most remember Bill Walton as the founding member of this unhappy club — has put the Rockets in a bind, writes Ric Bucher on ESPN.com, and have them facing at least a season without the pivotal services of Yao, writes Adrian Wojnarowski on Yahoo.com. The Houston Chronicle’s Richard Justice prefers to look at this as an opportunity for the Rockets to remake themselves, but he doesn’t have much company there.

China, however, might be moving on to a new non-Chinese hero, Kobe Bryant, according to this article on WSJ.com.

The rest of the N.B.A. is preparing for the free agency frenzy to start Wednesday, with some big names likely to change addresses and teams like the Nuggets facing big decisions. Milwaukee got a jump on things by sending Charlie Villanueva on his way, a dumping he has shared via Twitter: “Well, I would like to thank my Milwaukee fans, for 3 great years, and Senator Kohl, but my journey in Milwaukee has come to an end.”

No word whether Marian Hossa is Twittering in Slovakian, but he’s the biggest name in the N.H.L.’s free agency pool, which also admits the sharks tomorrow. In non-free agency news, USA Hockey named Rangers Coach John Tortorella and Islanders Coach Scott Gordon as its Olympic team assistants giving the team a decidedly New York feel under Head Coach Ron Wilson. And we leave you to figure out this tidbit, courtesy of agent Drew Rosenhaus’s Twitter page: “I have been hired by the fans of the NHL’s Florida Panthers to negotiate lower season ticket prices. I will keep you posted on the outcome.” Insert your own punch line here.

Baseball is lurching toward the All-Star break, as signaled by the first please-vote-for-me stories — this one about the Angels’ Torii Hunter — and a few players might want that break more that most. As Joe Posnanski writes on SI.com, players’ careers start heading downhill at age 33. Foxsports.com, though, tells the story of someone who will be thrilled to reach 33, Jon Wilhite, a former college player who was the only survivor of the crash that killed the Angels’ Nick Adenhart.

A handful of major league players have lent a hand to the effort to revive baseball in inner-city Los Angeles, somewhat similar to the effort to bring golf to the city kids of Washington, D.C. And someone might want to do something about the sad state of sports in Boston’s schools.

In the N.F.L., players seem to have a full-time job keeping themselves out of trouble and Yahoo.com’s Jason Cole writes that N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell is leaning toward stiff penalties for the gun-wielding receiver Plaxico Burress and the dogfighting convict Michael Vick. Should Goodell relent and let Vick back in, USA Today takes a look at where he might end up. Once he makes those decisions, Goodell might then contemplate what to do with the runaway Twittering of Chad Ochocinco, who used that medium to compare the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson to 9/11.

If that’s not quite depressing enough, move on over to this story about the 13-year-old who just committed to play football for Tennessee. Or contemplate that the most dangerous sport, according to Livescience.com, is cheerleading.

After that, you might want a ball machine to pelt you with tennis balls, or you can read about the late-night party Wimbledon threw under its new roof, as described by Art Spander on CBSSports.com. The happiest of the partiers was the great British hope Andy Murray, who won the late match in five sets and took a big step in his career. Less happy are the women who are relegated to outer courts because they aren’t good looking enough, according to London’s Daily Mail.

They can probably feel Yao’s pain too.

Source :Nytimes.com