At 236cm tall, it’s hard to overlook Chinese center Sun Mingming. The comparisons with NBA star Yao Ming are inevitable.
Able to dunk while barely leaving the ground, Sun just completed the most successful season of his pro career, helping the Hamamatsu Phoenix to a first-place finish in the Eastern Conference of Japan’s professional basketball league.
The 25-year-old’s size has led to the comparisons with his compatriot Yao of the Houston Rockets. The Bayan, Heilongjiang Province native went to the US in 2005 to train for a possible career in the NBA and was declared eligible for the draft that year. But after a brief tryout with the Los Angeles Lakers, he was not selected.
Sun was said to lack stamina and aggressiveness.
‘ACROMEGALY’
The news got worse for him that summer. Sun learned that he had a benign brain tumor pressing against his pituitary gland. The tumor was preventing the proper production of testosterone, decreasing his stamina and endurance.
The tumor was also causing an overproduction of growth hormone resulting in “acromegaly,” which causes various parts of the body to sustain abnormal and unstoppable growth.
The tumor was successfully removed in September 2005. Despite being in his 20s, he’d grown 10cm taller in the previous few years.
BACK IN FORM
Sun played in the all-star game in his first season in Japan and had 67 dunks in 49 games. He averaged 7.7 points per game and had 280 rebounds.
Last month, he had a season-high 19 points and 13 rebounds in 33 minutes against the Niigata Albirex BB.
Playing against Sun can be a daunting task to many of his opponents.
“It’s surreal,” says 203cm tall forward Lynn Washington, a two-time MVP in Japan. “You can’t really do much because he’s so big. He just holds the ball up in the air and it looks like a tennis ball.”
If he ever should make it to the NBA, Sun would be the tallest player in the league’s history, overtaking Manute Bol and Gheorghe Muresan, who both stood 231cm tall. Yao, at 229cm, is the tallest active NBA player along with Shawn Bradley.
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