But around 10 am that morning, a car pulled in at the players’ parking zone at Toyota Center, and out of the car emerged Yao Ming, who cautiously and slowly climbed out of his seat with his crutches. The rest of the Rockets might have had a rest day that day, but not for Yao Ming. He said he had rested for too long already, and it was time for him to pick up the slack.

Since his fractured tibia has been healing well, Yao Ming has started doing some slight strength exercises on his right leg. Yao Ming said: “Well, body strength is just like this; if you don’t do exercise for 3 to 5 days, you would lose everything, and to rest your right leg this way, the muscle will slowly wither.” Even though he was allowed to carry on some slight strength and conditioning exercises, the doctor still prohibited him from jogging. Yao Ming’s injury was healing very quickly, but the team and the doctors were not willing to risk Yao Ming’s career (by increasing his strength and conditioning exercises).

Therefore Yao Ming can only continue his workout with a single leg (i.e. his left leg) on the stationary bike, as well as working on his upper limbs to achieve the purpose for maintaining his level of fitness (and muscle). Yao Ming was getting a bit anxious and concerned since he was still not allowed to jog. “No matter how much effort I put in now on these exercise, as long as I still can’t jog, there is no way I can restore my physical strength.” He yearned to be able to start other training (with oxygen) as soon as he possibly could.

Yet compared to last week, his training regimen had increased: he started practicing his shooting while sitting.

Coming out of the gymnasium, Yao Ming arrived at the elevator area to take the elevator to the training hall which was in the basement of the Toyota Centre. Yao Ming slowly and painstakingly bent his waist, and bowed his head to move into the elevator. Although he still had difficulty moving around, Yao Ming beamed with joy since he finally was back on his familiar training court.

Waiting for him there on the training court with a chair was Tom Thibodeau, the Rockets’ assistant coach. Thibodeau moved the chair around, and Yao Ming would follow, sit and shoot. While sitting (which was much lower than normal) he had to use more strength on his finger tips and the arc of his shots were much higher than normal shootout. Despite all these limitations, Yao Ming still maintained a 70% field goal percentage. But Yao Ming did not take these practices too seriously. He said: “Surely we can’t take these field goal percentages seriously; there was no confrontation; there was no one guarding you; how could this possibly happen in real-life competition?”

After the shootout, Yao Ming still sat in his chair motionless. Tom Thibodeau took out a full basket of tennis balls, and started pitching them hard to Yao Ming from 10 meters away. Tom Thibodeau chuckled: “Let’s see how many you can catch today.”

This exercise of catching tennis balls was intended to train Yao Ming’s reaction/reflexes as well as his ability to catch the ball. Yao Ming’s butterfingers (to catch and hold the basketball firm) used to be one of his major weaknesses. Because of it, Thibodeau designed this training method. Yao Ming had become very familiar with this training method, and now, there were less and less tennis balls that he missed, as evidenced from the very few tennis balls rolling on the floor.