95. A strange sense of identification

Some things are not deeply etched in our memories; we only remember them when we hit a snag.

In the first month of the new season, Okafor suffered his fourth fatigue injury, and Zhang Yang finally recalled the severe injury Okafor had sustained early in his career—a stress fracture in his ankle.

This wasn't like a leg or tibia fracture where you could jump around after healing. Okafor's athletic abilities, praised as a 'taller version of Big Ben' in his rookie year, were severely impaired due to this injury.

The cause of this injury was his exaggerated weight of 127 kilograms. Okafor, only 208 cm tall, was too heavy for his height. When Yao Ming first entered the NBA, he was 226 cm tall—reportedly 229 cm with shoes—and weighed only 133 kilograms.

Even O'Neal did not weigh 133 kilograms in his second year of his career.