"Remember Yao Ming on that Olympic night three summers ago, grimacing, hobbling off the floor, a fist finally thrust straight into the air to say simply: I did it. Here was the start of the Olympic Games, and basketball's seminal figure, 7-foot-6 and falling apart, had gone the distance for the sport.

From the Chinese government and sports machine, to David Stern's NBA, to the American basketball icons Kobe Bryant and LeBron James across the floor on that night in Beijing, Yao had pushed and pushed until his body betrayed him. This was the summer night in 2008 when his worlds collided, and everyone could see the magnitude of the connection that he created between East and West, between basketball's yesterday and its tomorrow.

"Yao built the bridge for all of us," Bryant said.

Finally, Yao has decided he's done with the comebacks, done with the endless rehabilitations of his reconstructed left foot. Yao Mingdecided to retire, sources told Yahoo! Sports on Friday. He leaves the game a conquering hero, a forever figure in the sport.

He's 30 years old, played parts of nine seasons in the NBA, and yet he'll be remembered as a historic icon. In a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame full of political appointees as 'contributors' to the game, Yao deserves enshrinement for a global impact perhaps impossible to measure. You can't write the history of basketball without Yao Ming, and that's why his legacy ought to someday be recognized in Springfield.

So many others reaped the riches of his journey, and Yao lived with the consequences of carrying a burden too big for even this gentlest of giants. Yao was one of the most talented, refined and dominant centers to ever play, but his lower body couldn't withstand the game's grind, especially that of a Chinese basketball federation that overworked and overused him."