According to Bob Wolfley, if you're Rudy Tomjanovich, if you're the Houston Rockets, don't you have to be scared to death about making Yao Ming the first pick in the draft?

This is more pressure than annually goes to the team with the first pick in the draft. There is a sense that the Rockets can't afford not to take him.

Yao, the consensus opinion seems to be, is too big to avoid

But you can pose in the press all you want. You can exude all the supreme assurance and confidence in your ability to divine the potential of another Ming Dynasty.

But the fact is Yao Ming is 7 feet 5 inches, but he's not a shot-blocker.

Think hard about that.

He's 7-5 and does all these other wonderful things for someone his size: dribble, take the perimeter jump shot, run the floor, pass, score.

But he's not a shot-blocker.

If the security sirens aren't sounding around chez Rockets because of that, then they need a new security firm.

If Yao is not a shot-blocker, then he's not going to be a dominating, game-altering defender or rebounder. What's the point of being 7-5 on this planet if you are not going to be a shot-blocker, defender and rebounder?

Guarantee you Shaquille O'Neal is not losing sleep worrying about how he's going to check Yao Ming. Yet, the Rockets are poised to draft him in hopes of getting past O'Neal and the Los Angeles Lakers in future playoff rounds.

If you had to predict where Yao will be five years from now in the National Basketball Association, it's easier to mount the argument he'll be closer to being Kent Benson or Pervis Ellison or Ralph Sampson than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Hakeem Olajuwon.

If you're 7-5 and you're not a shot-blocker or a game-altering defender, then what are you?

A bust from a would-be Ming Dynasty is what you are.