I’m not sure when JE Skeets got his gig as an NBA Expert on Yahoo! (I’ll admit, I don’t listen to the podcast), but if anyone deserves it, it’s him. And he’s announcing that Yao Ming will miss the rest of the season to undergo surgery on a stress fracture in his foot. Not sure how surgery will help with a stress fracture, but there must be something I don’t know about modern medicine.

Anyway…

Does this make Dikembe Mutombo a good pickup? Yahoo (not Skeets) says yes:

Feb 26 With Yao Ming out for the year, Mutombo will likely see increased minutes.

Recommendation: He hadn’t been used much of late, and we actually think the Rockets power forwards - Luis Scola, Chuck Hayes and Carl Landry - will pick up a lot of the slack, but Mutombo will be out there when the team needs a true center.

Seeing as Mutombo hasn’t been on the court for a few, I’d also go with Scola, Hayes, and Landry before picking up Mutombo, but if you’re in a competitive league, those guys might be gone by the time you read this.

Scola was just added in the GMTR Readers League. Landry was actually added by the same team a few days ago… interesting…

I have just added Landry in the DroppingDimes Experts League (the other two guys were already on teams - tells you something about playing with Experts now, doesn’t it?).

What about the guards in Houston?

I’m actually going to posit the theory that this will hurt the Rocket Guards. Really, Yao does Scoring, Rebounding, and Blocking. So his absence creates an obvious opportunity for people who do that. But for the guards (with the exception of Tracy McGrady), there won’t be a lot of extra assists or open three pointers to go around all of a sudden. There will likely be more of McGrady taking on teams by himself, creating less assist opportunities, and more shots late in the clock. Yeah, I don’t really know that much about how the Rockets play, but unless they switch it up to a fast-paced game, I don’t see how Rafer Alston and Luther head are going to benefit from playing without Yao Ming.

On a more macro level, this probably means that the city of Houston can say Arrivederci to any playoff games they might have been looking forward to. At least they probably weren’t already selling them like some teams…

Oh, and I guess Gerald Wallace is injured. Who knew???