He preferred using point guards, and Wade was a perfect point guard. He liked shooting threes, and Yao Ming happened to possess a historically soft touch for a center. So he reduced Yao Ming's post-up weight and allowed Yao Ming to lose weight for more flexibility in movement, then quite whimsically let this 226 cm big guy shoot threes from beyond the arc.
Of course, Mike D'Antoni hadn't gone so far as to turn Yao Ming into a pure shooting tower; he merely adjusted the balance between Yao Ming's post-up game and three-point shooting to make it more even.
This season, Yao Ming attempts to shoot 3.5 threes per game, hitting 1.3 of them at a 36% shooting rate. His three-point ability is roughly equivalent to Marc Gasol's when Toronto Raptors won the championship. They don't rely on threes to kill, but they surely can shoot, contributing tactically.
