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Does anyone know what exactly happened to Yi a few years ago?

Why were he sent away to Mavericks? After all he was 6th pick of the draft and according to his profile he is 7' tall and bodyfat is only 3.4% while his max vertical is 38". He can shoot from downtown and a lot people thought he could be next Nowizki or Garnett. And I remember he used to be rookie of the month.

How come such a player was traded away?

He was really bad at basketball.

StatAintLie wrote:How come such a player was traded away?

He a bust.

Too skinny and soft and had injury issues. Also for a supposed good shooter, his %'s sucked.

Yi had stretches where he was good but that was like 20% of the time. He often lacked confidence IMO- he played much better when he played with team China.

He was tall and could shoot ok, but could not do anything in the paint, and could not create his own offense. He was also weak defensively and overall could not contribute much to a team.

Took wayyyyyyy too many long 2's. And as was said - his defense was nowhere near as good as what it should have been. He had good defensive tools, but he lacked toughness and frankly seemed to have zero competitive fire. If you don't compete, you have no chance. It was a shame, because he was a gifted athlete and seemed like a nice kid.

he shot the worst shot in basketball... the long 2. if he was exclusively a 3 point shooter and a good rebounder, we could have still used him but he sucks on the boards and defensively is non existent

Ruzious wrote:Took wayyyyyyy too many long 2's. And as was said - his defense was nowhere near as good as what it should have been. He had good defensive tools, but he lacked toughness and frankly seemed to have zero competitive fire. If you don't compete, you have no chance. It was a shame, because he was a gifted athlete and seemed like a nice kid.

LOL - that last part made me think about Cal Cheaney