Yao battles for a rebound against Utah’s Jarron Collins in both teams’ season opener on Wednesday night. Yao scored 22 and grabbed 9 boards, but his foul troubles and the Rockets poor play in general led to a 107-97 loss. Click here for the story. Click here for more game photos.

There was bad news and good news Wednesday night for the Houston Rockets.

The bad news is that they started off their season Wednesday night reminiscent of last season’s overall performance – disappointing.

The good news is that they didn’t lose by 42 points like the defending World Champions Miami Heat did the night before in their season and home opener. At least some other team with high expectations placed upon them failed to deliver more than the Rockets.

The Rockets shot poorly (T-Mac: 8-of-24 FGs, 8-of-13 FTs), missed too many layups, missed too many free throws (23-of-36), played poor defense (gave up 35 points in the first quarter) and gave up big shots down the stretch to lose in Utah 107-97.

The Rockets fell behind by 19 points in the second quarter, but Rafer Alston atoned for an 0-for-6 first half by hitting big shots in the second half (15 points, three treys in the fourth quarter). But that early deficit was too large for the Rockets to make up, even with a late surge that cut it to 99-94 with 3:30 remaining. That’s because Mehmet Okur, Deron Williams and Derek Fisher hit consecutive jump shots to send the Rockets home lamenting their poor start.

Yao scored 22 points on 8-of-12 shooting and grabbed 9 boards, but he got in early foul trouble after picking up his third foul with about 8:30 remaining, and his fourth foul with 3:56 remaining in the third quarter.

Those two fouls were silly enough to take you back a couple years when Yao frequently got into foul trouble. I’m not sure what he was thinking. Maybe his mind is rusty after not playing much in the preseason. The foul trouble held him to only 32 minutes of action, and the Rockets missed his firepower since T-Mac was shooting so poorly.

The Rockets’ problems just didn’t exist on the offensive side of the court. Their defense made the Jazz offense look like the late Red Auerbach‘s championship Celtic teams from the 1960’s, unable to stop big shots from Carlos Boozer (24 points, 19 rebounds), Williams (18 points, 10 assists), and Fisher (13 points, 6 assists).

Speaking of Fisher, somehow he got away in the fourth quarter with barreling his way TWICE into Yao on double-teams to “steal” the ball away without being called for a foul by the refs. That’s another reason why I have always hated that guy – he gets away with flops and fouls all the time.

But this game came down to the Rockets playing poorly and not playing hard enough. All I know is that Jeff Van Gundy is sure to start his annual ritual of working long nights breaking down game footage, with the dark circles under his eyes soon to return.

Click here for the game story.

Click here for the box score.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 2:27 am and is filed under vs. Utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.