Speechless

I know, the idea is writing a post when you have nothing to say is counter-intuitive at best and downright stupid at worst, but something needs to be said. I just don't know what. We found out this morning that Yao is going to miss most if not all of next season and maybe even more after that. And this comes on the tail end of what has to be one of the most depressing weeks man has had to withstand in recent memory. I'm not comparing Yao's injured foot to the death of Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and Billy Mays. Screw it, that's exactly what I'm doing. It may seem disrespectful or unsentimental or whatever else you want to say about it, but Yao's career ending means just as much to me as any of the other events that have transpired this week. And yes, there are some problems that need to be talked about, some ailments that can be cured by discussion, but this isn't one of them. This isn't something that's going to be changing anytime soon. We now know for sure what we've feared for the past five years: Yao's feet can't take his lifestyle. They can't take his size. They can't take the pounding he gets every year, ever day. Sooner or later, this was bound to happen. We're just unlucky enough that it was sooner. We can sit here and complain about why one of the most talented 7 footers ever can't get on the floor while someone like Dwight Howard, with no real discernible offensive skills other thank dunking the ball, has missed less than 20 games his whole career. We can spend all day wondering, like we have so many times before, how good we could have been if Yao and Mcgrady had just been healthy together once. But, at the end of the day, none of that is going to change the reality that we're going to have to eventually face. The reality that the face of our organization, maybe even of the entire city, is most likely very, very close to being finished with the game of basketball. So at some point, we'll have a real post up, explaining what this means to us andthanking Yao if his career is actually over, but now's not the time for that. Right now we hope that by some miracle the news is wrong and that Yao's going to be back next year, hobbling around and fading to the baseline like he always has, as unlikely as it may be. Right now, this is all we have to say. Get well soon Yao.