The Houston Rockets are one of the most oddly comprised teams in the NBA. There’s Tracy McGrady, a one-time superstar secretly (at least to him) moved to the dreaded “second fiddle” role. There’s Shane Battier, the most underrated-turned-overrated player because of a New York Times magazine article. There’s Ron Artest, nicknamed “Crazy Pills,” which says enough. And, of course, there’s Yao Ming, the towering pride of Chinese basketball who remains somewhat of a potential-riddled enigma because of his inability to stay healthy.

That particular trait — lack of health, particularly in his foot — appears to have manifested itself into a pretty scary problem: Yahoo! is reporting! that Yao could be out a very, very long time, even if the Rockets won’t admit it quite yet (they have said “indefinitely” but that’s essentially worthless with the season over).

“The realization has hit them that this is grave,” one NBA general manager said.

[...]“It sounds like he’s missing most of next season, if not the entire 82 games,” one league executive who has had recent discussions with the Houston front office told Yahoo! Sports. “That’s all that [the Rockets] will concede quietly, but they know it’s probably much worse.”

In other words, Yao could be done, well, forever. Which would be awful for a large number of reasons. First, of course (I think), is the fact that the Rockets will be worse without him on the basketball court. Second, as Ziller noted at the ‘Haus, “the run will be over” for this current Rockets’ nucleus: T-Mac was rumored as a potential trade possibility to Orlando and Artest is a free agent. Yao being done — even for the season — would force Houston’s front office to seriously reevaluate where they stand heading into 2009-10.

And possibly the most damaging aspect of Yao’s long-term absence could come in the form of an economical blow, given that everyone in China loves the big man, and there are two freaking billion people there, the Rockets would stand to lose a tremendous amount of revenue across the board. Not to mention Battier will have probably seen his last All-Star ballot.