姚明受伤因缺少自我知识与自我肯定
Yao Ming's Injury and Self-Knowledge


每日一语：

缺少自知与不敢肯定自我必定导致对自身的伤害。 --- 陈凯

Lack of self-knowledge and fear of self-assurance always leads to harm and disaster to oneself. --- Kai Chen

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Dear Visitors:

Last night at the game between the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Clippers, I watched Yao Ming severely injuring his right knee, breaking a knee bone. When he was screaming on the floor with pain, holding his right knee, my heart pained with him.

Having been a professional athlete, I understand what an athlete has to go through in his career. Glory and achievement are not without great cost. Pain, misery, blood, conflict, physical injury are all common elements in a pro athlete's life. But the most excruciating suffering is when you follow the coach's instruction, (as against your own common sense) and that instruction causes you harm and injury, for you know that you have done something stupid, only to please the coach and the authority.

Self knowledge and courage to be self-assured are crucial to an athlete's success in his career. My book "One in a Billion" will further elaborate on this point. When Yao Ming first entered the NBA, I analyzed his strengths and weaknesses:

Yao Ming's strengths: Good basketball IQ, tremendous height at 7'6", great feel and touch when he shoots mid-range shots.

Yao Ming's weaknesses: Lack of absolute physical power - by power I mean “strength + speed", lack of stamina and physical talent (running, jumping, hand speed, agility, etc).

Yao Ming is NOT O'neal. And Yao Ming should never play basketball O'neal style. Yao Ming should play his own style of basketball, not just mimic other great centers in NBA. Yet this is exactly what has happened. Rockets' head coach Jeff Van Gundy assigned Yao Ming a personal coach - Patrick Ewing. His style of basketball was vastly different from Yao Ming's. But somehow Yao Ming was supposed to follow his instruction and mimic him and O'neal. The coach is wrong, and Yao Ming is wrong to follow the coach.

The result of this fatal mistake is that Yao Ming has been constantly exhausting himself, playing other people's game, pleasing others and the coach. When he first entered the NBA, Yao Ming had many pleasantly surprising moves that other centers in NBA were not capable of. But as he timidly followed Van Gundy's instruction to play O'neal style of basketball, he has lost himself. Now he never touchs ball on the high post anymore. He never passes great assist anymore. There is a lack of intelligence now in his game. He is constantly frustrated and on the verge of exhaustion on the court. His game has become excruciatingly painful and tedious to watch. He has lost himself, in America!?

What a strange statement - "Lost himself in America"?! America should be the place for Yao Ming to rediscover himself, away from China. But he has lost himself in the conflict and eagerness to please others (China, Chinese community, Chinese authority, American coaches, teammates, media) and to erase himself at the same time. I have seen so many from China who have destroyed themselves this way.

America should be the place which is free to allow you to discover who you trully are and fulfill your life's potentials. But unless you understand the intrinsic meaning of America, you will probably still think and act the old way, chained and shackled by your old culture and way of thinking. If you come to America only for material reasons or to position yourself above others, you often will not find the fulfillment spiritually, for you don't understand what this country is all about. This in turn will hamper your own career as a professional and progress as a human being, for you will do things that are not FOR yourself, but AGAINST yourself, because you have always been taught (in China) to deny your spiritual side (either by filling it with evil ideology such as communism, or by filling it with Chinese nihilism to believe in Nothingness).

Yao Ming has passion and enthusiasm for basketball, which I like and admire. But he has not realized that it is Him (Yao Ming) who plays this game. No body in the world can play this game for him. He must understand and assure his own existence to effectively and joyfully play this game. But I see too much conflict in his life. He is not being himself, and he is not playing Yao Ming basketball. This injury may teach him something, but may not. To embark on a journey toward freedom, one needs not only willingness, ability and courage, one needs a moral compass.

In short, one must understand himself to understand the game he plays. Basketball provides the play ground for you to discover your true self. If you cannot discover this true self in you, how can you truly express it? If you cannot truly express yourself on the basketball court, you entirely lost the meaning, lost the point to ever have played this game.

My advice to Yao Ming: Rid off your conflict and contradictions, find your "true self", find your willingness and courage to assure who you truly are, find your moral compass, then this game will be truly for you, NOT against you.

Best wishes for Yao Ming and his family. Best wishes for you all in this great Christmas season. Kai Chen 陈凯