Agents are doing a lousy job these days. Yao Ming made that very clear last week.
The 7-foot-5-inch center from China impressed some people and disappointed others during a workout in front of NBA officials and media members, but that wasn’t what really mattered. What mattered could be found in the ink, not in the paint.
The man sure knows how to issue an impressive official statement.
There is a lot of uncertainty over who authored the dignified and elegant six paragraphs that were handed out to media members last week. Was it Yao or some midlevel bureaucrat in the Chinese government? Who knows? But it can be stated with some confidence that it likely wasn’t an American who did the writing and that it certainly wasn’t an American agent who did the writing.
Without so much as one dunk, Yao already has made U.S. athletes and their representatives look bad.
Perhaps I’m assuming too much here, so let me back up. If you read in the newspaper that so-and-so “said in a statement,” almost without fail in this country it means so-and-so’s agent wrote the words. It means that if Charles Oakley said Jerry Krause was more suited to be an ankle weight than a general manager, a statement would come out the next day clarifying the unfortunate misunderstanding.
“I regret that in the heat of the moment things were said that might have been misconstrued,” the Oakley people would write. “If in some way I have implied that Jerry is not especially qualified to be a general manager or especially qualified for what society would consider to be of minimum human stature, I do apologize to this great man.”
The genuineness in Yao’s statement was the tipoff that things were different. What was written on that piece of paper seemed to be written from the heart, and that would automatically disqualify most agents, who don’t have one.
The sentence that first caught my attention in the Yao release was this one, which was addressed to the representatives of the NBA teams in attendance Wednesday: “I hope I have not disappointed you with my performance today.”
An American agent never would have written that sentence, never would have even opened the door for the possibility of disappointment from NBA general managers. He would have written that Yao was looking forward to participating in the American marketplace and couldn’t wait to experience the thrill of direct-deposit paychecks.
An American agent, after learning a client had just beaten a girlfriend to a pulp, would call up the form letter in his computer:
“I love (insert name of girlfriend/wife/passing acquaintance) more than life itself. (Girlfriend/wife/passing acquaintance) and I have been going through counseling for a while now, but I’m sorry to say we recently had a `situation’ that was contrary to what a nurturing relationship should be. We’ll continue to try to work together through this challenging time in our lives. We ask that the media please respect our privacy.”
We will, just as soon as you, with that pitching wedge in your hand, stop running down the street after your girlfriend.
Most of us can smell an agent in an official statement from a mile away, and that’s why Yao’s missive caught us so off-guard. I’m just as susceptible to flattery as the next guy, and here was a person not only saying he appreciates what I do for a living but also that athletes should respect my profession.
“Your resourcefulness and work ethic are something I think we players should emulate,” Yao’s statement said.
This line of thinking goes entirely against the long-held belief of coaches and athletes that they work harder than the rest of the world and that we wouldn’t know adversity if it bit us in our very large behinds.
Yao’s statement also said he would like to take media members to dinner some time in the future. This is the final proof that the words could have only come from outside influences. There is just one thing American athletes think of picking up in bars and restaurants, and it’s not the tab.
As I’ve always maintained, nothing says “smart public relations” like writers with crumbs on their laps.
All it would take is more humanity in these official releases, and we’d all feel better about this wild world of sports we watch. If you don’t believe me, just ask my spokesperson.
