YaoMingMania.com

Yao appears to get assaulted once again by Shawn Bradley Friday night in Houston during the Rockets' game against the Dallas Mavericks. Houston's upstate rival swept the season series by defeating the Rockets 100-85 in the final game of their regular season series. (Photo courtesy of AP).

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Believe it or not, 'Yours truly' is not terribly upset the Rockets lost to the Mavericks Friday night 100-85. Sure, the score sounds like it was another blowout against the Mavs, who swept their regular season series against Houston. But for the most part, the Rockets were competitive and showed some signs of brilliance. Here are some of my observations: The Rockets started off with one of their most exciting quarters of the season. You could tell immediately they were making an effort to pass the ball multiple times and find the open man, and it was working. Four of the Rockets first five buckets were dunks, and the fifth bucket was a lay-in by Yao that easily could have been a dunk. They were also running the fast break more effectively than I have seen in a long time. I've got to think the Mavericks were getting scared that the Rockets "team of the future" was blossoming before their very eyes. I just watched in amazement and said to myself, "THIS is what all this Rocket talent can do when it's working together." The Rockets led 30-23 after the first quarter and shot 60% from the field. Obviously, the Rockets weren't able to sustain that lead. They trailed 49-45 at halftime, and were down by 6 points near the end of the third quarter. That's all you can ask for when playing the team with the best record in the NBA. I think you have to be happy if you can just hang around close enough so that maybe you can steal a victory at the end. Unfortunately, Nick Van Excel hit a 3-pointer at the end of the third quarter to put the Mavs up by 9, then he hit another 3-pointer at the start of the fourth quarter to put them up by 12. Then Dirk Nowitzki hit a tough shot, which increased the lead to 14. Since the Rockets' shooters had been cold for almost 3 quarters (the bench only scored 13 points compared to Dallas' 35), the chances were low the Rockets were going to catch up. They did get it down to 9 points with 7:35 remaining, but Dirk scored a bucket and was fouled. After hitting the penalty free throw, the Rockets were down by 12 once again. One criticism of Rudy T: he decided to finally put Yao and Steve back in the game with 6 minutes left in the fourth quarter after the Mavericks increased their lead to 17 points. We felt with the importance of this game, Yao's presence (as well as Steve's) could have played a big part in a potential comeback if they had been inserted into the game a few minutes earlier. After all, there's only so much you can do in 6 minutes of play. The Yao Report Yao learned a tremendous amount about being aggressive against the tough defense applied by the Mavericks and Shawn Bradley. But Yao is so good at adjusting his game, you could see he got more aggressive as the game went along by going up for more dunks. He also had a stretch in the third quarter where he scored 9 points in a row for the team. In this game, Yao finished with 18 points and 11 boards. Based on Yao's quick adaptation to Bradley' improved defensive presence, if the Rockets are lucky enough to get into the playoffs, and they face the Mavericks, Yao will get the better of Bradley in that series (but the Rockets would lose that series).

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Detailed Yao Analysis
vs. Dallas Mavericks 2/23/03

Because of scheduling conflicts, a Detailed Yao Analysis and shot chart is not available for the Maverick game. For those of you who have been visiting the site since the beginning of the season, you may recall that my goal was to cover about 90% of the games this season. Fortunately, this is the first time in 54 games where a DYA is not available. So I'm 53-1: not a bad record. I wish the Rockets had a record like that. And I might even go back sometime and do a DYA for this game sometime in the future. Anyhow, I plan to have a DYA available for tomorrow's game against the Memphis Grizzlies. In fact, I'll be putting in double the amount of time since I'm planning to attend the game, which adds significantly to the amount of time to produce my game report.

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