SHANGHAI, China, May 27- Star basketball centre Yao Ming has brought his one-year-old daughter to China for the first time and purchased a new home in Shanghai, as his future NBA career remains uncertain, according to media report.
The oft-injured 30-year-old Houston Rockets centre is recovering from a broken foot that kept him out of most of the 2010-2011 NBA season and is awaiting word from doctors on whether or not he will be able to return.
According to the Shanghai Daily, Yao flew into his home town late Thursday and plans to stay in China for most of the summer, doing charity work and working with the Shanghai Sharks, a basketball club he partially owns.
The towering 2.26 metre (seven-foot-six-inch) Yao has already been speaking to his daughter Amy in the local Shanghai dialect and will soon move into a new home in the bustling city, the paper said.
Amy "is taller than most kids her age," media reports say.
Amy is also travelling on a US passport, meaning she could soon be playing for Team USA if she chooses to follow in the footsteps of her father and mother, who once played for China’s national team, reports quipped.
"He’s been recovering great," the paper quoted Yao’s manager Zhang Mingji as saying. "The decision whether to stay in the (NBA) league rests with him."
Earlier this month, Yao said it would be August or September before he knows whether or not he can return to the Rockets, the Houston Chronicle reported.
"I would like to be here," Yao told the paper. "Nowhere else is better than Houston for me right now. The only issue is my injury."
Rockets owner Leslie Alexander and Daryl Morey, the club’s general manager, have said they would like to ink a new contract with Yao if he is healthy.
Yao is able to jog lightly and lift weights, and he will continue his workouts as planned until another examination by a doctor in the weeks before the start of NBA training camps in October.
