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Yao Ming is hot. His game is on.
Two days after appearing in the NBA All-Star Game, Yao's back in the news, making headlines again, and creating a reading-comprehension problem for this reader, who says:
"Yesterday morning, Yao Ming scored 29 points in the Rockets' 106-102 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. An AP report quoted Tracy McGrady as saying, 'Yao has been playing out of his mind lately.' When one goes out of their mind, they are mad, right? So, is McGrady saying Yao is mad?"
Well, no, T-Mac was suggesting nothing of that kind. Yao's not gone mentally ill and T-Mac was not talking about the big man in that manner.
In that game, Yao scored 29 points on 11-for-16 shooting for more than 68%, which is extremely high for any player. It is in this sense that McGrady called Yao "out of his mind".
T-Mac was effectively saying, "It seems every time he tosses the ball up, it goes into the basket. I don't know how he does it. It's strange, beyond reason, I can't explain it."
When a player does everything right on the court, especially shoots the ball well, he's described as being "hot", "on fire", "unstoppable", or even "unconscious".
Hot, as in: "He's got a hot hand tonight. We'd better get him the ball and let him keep shooting."
On fire, as in: "He is making tough shots. The guy's on fire."
Unstoppable, as in: "Kobe Bryant scored 82 points in a game. That night, he was just unstoppable."
Unconscious, which is closest in meaning to being "out of mind", as in: "He made some shots even with a hand in his face. He's unconscious."
At the other end of the spectrum, if a player is unable to make any shots, no matter how easy they may appear, they're described as "off form" or "having an off night".
For example, McGrady was off-form on Sunday, February 12. He missed 17 of 20 shot attempts. Fortunately, Yao did not have an off night that time, making 8 of 13 shots to lead the Rockets to a 90-83 victory over the New York Knicks.
And when things were really bad, you may consider using this gem cliché:
"The way we shot the ball tonight, we wouldn't have been able to hit the ocean with a pebble from the beach."
Alright, so much for hoop-speak.
Ordinarily, when we say someone goes out of his mind we do mean he's perhaps indeed going crazy - or as Dr. Lanyon put it, going "wrong, wrong in mind".
This passage from "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson:
"I suppose, Lanyon," said he (Mr. Utterson, the lawyer), "you and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?"
"I wish the friends were younger," chuckled Dr. Lanyon. "But I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now."
"Indeed?" said Utterson. "I thought you had a bond of common interest."
"We had," was the reply. "But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged Damon and Pythias.
"Never mind "unscientific balderdash", "Damon and Pythias", we'll get back at the "mind" game another time.
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