{"id":8316,"date":"2011-07-11T16:22:03","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T20:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=8316"},"modified":"2011-07-11T15:57:59","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T19:57:59","slug":"yao-ming-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=8316","title":{"rendered":"Yao Ming Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Yao Ming<\/strong>, the 7-foot-6 top overall pick by Houston in the 2002 draft and one of the pivotal figures in the globalization of the NBA, has decided to retire.<\/p>\n<p>The 30-year-old center had his career derailed over the last two years due to an injury in his left foot and ankle. He missed the entire 2009-10 season recovering from surgery to repair a broken bone in the foot and played just five games last season after suffering a stress fracture in his ankle.<\/p>\n<p>Over nearly a decade,<strong> Yao\u2019s<\/strong> presence helped facilitate the NBA\u2019s popularity in Asia. He was voted in as an All-Star starter eight times, largely due to an enormous Internet vote from China.<\/p>\n<p>His 2007 matchup with countryman <strong>Yi Jianlian<\/strong> was broadcast over 19 networks and seen in more than 200 million homes in China.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yao<\/strong> retires with career averages of 19.0 points and 9.2 rebounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6 top overall pick by Houston in the 2002 draft and one of the pivotal figures in the globalization of the NBA, has decided to retire. The 30-year-old center had his career derailed over the last two years due to an injury in his left foot and ankle. He missed the entire [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}