No athlete has ever been more important to a host country's Olympic efforts than Yao Ming is to the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. Yao isn't just the best player on the Chinese Olympic basketball team; he's the public face of an Olympic Games that China views as an opportunity to change outside perceptions of the world's most populous nation.
So the news today that Yao will miss the rest of the season with a foot injury has implications far beyond the NBA, and people are already asking how this injury will affect Yao's ability to play in the Olympics -- or whether he rushed into season-ending surgery so he'd be healthy in time for the Games. (Or maybe Yao actually wants to miss the Olympics.)
The Olympic basketball competition begins on August 9, meaning Yao has more than five months to rehabilitate the foot injury and still be able to play. With that time frame, and considering how much the Chinese government wants Yao to be on the floor for the Chinese National Team, the best guess at this point is that he will play. But there are a lot of nervous people in Beijing right now.
译文:
姚明也会错过奥运吗?
没有一个运动员像姚明对于北京奥运会那样对于一个奥运会的东道主有如此重要的影响力。姚明不仅仅是中国奥运男篮最优秀的队员，他还是奥运会的公众形象，一届被中国看作有机会改变外界对于这个世界上拥有最多人口的民族的印象的奥运会。
所以今天姚明因为脚伤将缺席剩余的NBA比赛的新闻其意义已经远远超过了NBA的范畴。人们已经在问这次的受伤会怎样影响姚明在奥运赛场上的发挥，或者是否他应该匆忙进行赛季结束后的手术以便能使他健康和及时的出现在奥运赛场。（或者也许姚明实际上是想错过奥运会）
奥运会篮球比赛将在8月9日拉开帷幕，也就意味这姚明有超过5个月的时间去恢复脚伤，而且仍然可以去参赛。在这个时间段里，考虑到中国政府是多么想姚明去成为中国国家队的基石，在这一点上最理想的假设就是姚明会参赛。但是现在在北京有很多人都很紧张。