Yao does some special exercises to rehab his injured leg before Wednesday night’s game in Houston against the Toronto Raptors. Click here for more photos from Yao’s workout before the game.

The Rockets cannot wait for Yao to return to the lineup since the Rockets were blown out by an improved, but much younger, Toronto team.

It looks like the wheels are starting to finally fall off in Houston without Yao in the lineup. The Rockets lost their 3rd game out of their last four, this time to the Toronto Raptors at home Wednesday night 106-90. Sure the Raptors are much improved, leading the Atlantic division with a 31-26 record and having won 9 of their last 12 games. But we’re talkin’ about the EAST!

The Rockets other two losses in their last four games were to Eastern Conference cellar-dwellers Atlanta and Boston. May day, May day! Now all they have to do is lose to Milwaukee on March 26th in Houston, and they will have pulled the trifecta of losing to the teams at the bottom of the three divisions in the East.

The Raptors jumped out to a 27-21 lead in the first quarter on 13-of-22 shooting. Then in the second quarter they shot even better — 80% to score 40 points! Yes, I said 80%. 16-of-20. The “80-40” rule must have been in effect: shoot 80%, score 40.

In that slaughterhouse of a second quarter, rookie Andrea Bargnani hit 5-of-5 (including 3-of-3 from three-point territory), Jose Calderon made 3-of-3, Juan Dixon made 4-of-7 and Chris Bosh made both of his field goal attempts.

Meanwhile, Houston didn’t shoot too badly. They scored 26 in the second quarter on 11-of-19 shooting. It’s just that their defense sucked. You know that if Yao had been in the middle, a lot of those shots would have been a little more difficult for the Raptors to hit.

The Rockets made up some ground in the third quarter, outscoring Toronto 21-12 and cutting the deficit to 9 points. They could have made up more ground, but Chuck Hayes plain-and-simple blew two consecutive layup attempts at the rim. It was indicative of the frustration the Rockets have had lately with their shot.

Then in the fourth, the Raptors went on a 10-0 run to extend the lead to 19, and that was the ballgame. Of course, just like the previous game against the Celtics when they were trying to get something consistent going, Luther Head jacked up an ill-advised three-pointer without ever having moved the ball around.

Then on the next possession, John Lucas jacked up a trey and missed. By the end of the fourth, the Rockets missed 6-of-7 three-pointers in the quarter (sound familiar?). For the game, they missed 14-of-21 treys. Better than against Boston, but still not good enough.

Meanwhile, for the game Toronto shot 8-of-17 from behind the arc, and hit 57% of their shots for the game.

The only thing that was more insane than Toronto’s shooting was this remark by the indelible Clyde Drexler, who topped his previous winning remark a couple of weeks ago when he said that Rafer Alston is a “great finisher” at the rim when Van Gundy has publicly stated that’s Alston’s biggest weakness, and everyone knew that already. With about 4:50 remaining in this game and the Rockets down by 21 points, Clyde “the Cliché” Drexler said, “There is plenty of time” for the Rockets to make a comeback.

Did this guy play the game? Hard to believe it. Just as hard to see the Rockets go down in flames at home against teams they should beat. Sorry, I have to vent toward someone, and Clyde just happened to pass through my crosshairs tonight. Yao can’t return soon enough.

I’m sorry that we haven’t had more direct words from Yao in his journal. I was able to interview Yao in October, which is close to being the same as a journal entry from Yao. But part of the problem is my schedule syncing up with Yao’s since I don’t live in Houston now, and Yao is not an email or phone kind of guy.

Another reason is the delayed launch of a new ClubYao site, brought on in part because of Yao’s recent leg injury. We were planning to have Yao’s journal entries made first available exclusively to official ClubYao subscribers, with release to casual visitors of the site a few days later. That would have created more of an expectation for this content to be provided, but since he hurt his leg on December 23rd and hasn’t been playing since then, that delayed the launch of the new ClubYao site. Obviously, we want to launch the new site when he is active and playing, which is when fans are more interested in following what he’s doing.

Finally, Yao has been granting lots of interviews with Sohu.com, Titan Sports and other online publications, which we have been posting in the YaoMania! blog section of the site. Obviously the information he is giving these folks is most likely the same thing that would be posted in Yao’s Journal. Click here for recent interviews with Yao that we have linked to — or translated from Chinese to English — in YaoMania!, thanks to Raymond in China.

Regardless, looking ahead, we do have a strategy to get more direct communication from Yao in the next few months, and we’ll keep you posted.

Yao adjusts his leg brace before the Rockets played the Celtics Monday night in Houston. Yao didn’t play as he continues his rehabilitation, and it’s easy to see by looking at the brace why Yao and Jeff Van Gundy are concerned about how it could alter the way he runs, creating even more problems down the road. Click here for more photos from Yao’s workout before the game.

The brace is just as ugly as how the Rockets played Monday against the Celtics, scoring a season-low 72 points in a loss without T-Mac who was sick with flu-like symptons.

I don’t care if Yao or T-Mac didn’t play Monday night, it’s unbelievable how the Rockets lost 77-72 at home to the team with the worst record in the NBA, a team had lost 12 road games in a row, and 22 of their last 23 games.

T-Mac had “flu-like symptoms.” If one of those symptoms was throwing up, then he and I may have the same sickness today. That’s what I feel like doing right now. Either that, or choke…just like the Rockets did.

Houston was outscored 28-10 down the stretch to a team that has Paul Pierce and a majority of their players with less than 2 years experience in the NBA.

Leading up to the Rockets’ fourth quarter collapse, it was probably one of the worst games played this season by two teams in the same game. In the first quarter, the Celtics shot 25% (6-of-24) and the Rockets were 6-of-21. Still, the Rockets led 22-14 after the first quarter. Bonzi Wells scored 10 points thanks to 6-of-7 shooting from the free throw line.

In the second quarter, the Rockets opened the lead up to 27-14, and I was thinking, “Okay, this is more like it.” But the Rockets let the Celtics chip into their lead, and by halftime their 13-point lead was down to six, 35-19, even with the Celtics missing 15 of 19 shots, 5-of-6 three pointers, and missing 6 of 12 shots. That’s because the Rockets didn’t shoot much better, missing 12 of 16 shots and missing 3-of-8 free throws.

In the third quarter, the shooting still sucked for both teams (Rockets made 35% of their shots and missed 4-of-7 free throws), but at least Houston had a 9 point lead on a hapless Celtics team, and that was without T-Mac in the lineup. I’ll take that kind of lead heading into the fourth.

They opened up a 13-point lead with 9 minutes remaining and 12-point lead with 7:30 minutes left on the clock. But that’s when the bottom fell out. The Houston offense stagnated, with Luther Head jacking up threes. It became so predictable, one of his three-pointers was blocked.

Then Head dropped a pass on the inbounds play. That was just one of several turnovers Head had (4) since he was handling the ball more with T-Mac out and trying to make too much happen.

Rafer Alston and Shane Battier also jacked up some three-pointers in the fourth quarter that missed. Then Juwan Howard took it upon himself to take it to the basket (not a high percentage shot), and was blocked on a controversial no-call. Then Alston threw a bad pass to Bonzi, and the ball was tipped by Boston’s Delonte West for a turnover.

Meanwhile, Boston outhustled the Rockets to go on a 10-0 run in 3 ½ minutes to come all the way back and take a 70-68 lead. Then Paul Pierce hit a tough fallaway three-pointer to make it 73-68 with 25.9 seconds remaining. That capped an unbelievable 24-6 run.

Houston went to a strategy to foul Boston and hopefully have them miss at the free thow line, but they were stupid in letting their best foul shooter on the floor, Delonte West (84% FT shooting), easily get the inbounds pass, requiring them to foul him and send him to the line. He made all 4 FT attempts down the stretch to seal it.

Okay, here’s the really ugly part — Houston’s shooting that contributed to their worst shooting percentage (32%) of the season. Shane Battier: 1-of-12 (shocking!). Alston: 1-of-11. Luther Head: 3-of-11. Three-point shooting: 1-of-22. In my mind, the Rockets missed a lot of those shots in the fourth (0-of-8 from behind the arc) not only because T-Mac wasn’t there to give them better looks. It was also because Boston’s younger legs and frenetic pace wore the Rockets down in the fourth quarter and they didn’t have their legs underneath them.

As a team, they shot 32% from the field, their worst for the season, and scored their fewest number of points. They were also out-rebounded 53-48, their fifth consecutive game where they lost the battle on the boards.

Van Gundy had this to say after the game: “I don’t like our transition defense. I abhor our rebounding and our pursuit of loose balls. What has bailed us out in a couple of those games (we have won lately) has been our three-point shooting. Tonight we didn’t make (3-point shots), so we had to rely on our foundation, which is defense, rebounding and low turnovers, and in the fourth quarter all three abandoned us.”

The only bright spot was Bonzi Wells scoring 27 points on 8-of-16 shooting, but he only made 11-of-16 free throws. The other was Jake Tsakalidas, who grabbed 10 boards and scored 7 points on 3-of-4 shooting. He played pretty well in the second half when the Rockets needed some offense, but having not played very much this season, he tired out in 21 minutes of action.

It was a tough loss for Houston since they are trying to keep up with the Spurs to get one of the top 4 playoff seeds in the Western Conference that would give them home court advantage in first round of the playoffs at least. They are now 3.5 games behind San Antonio. Looking at losses to teams like the Hornets, Hawks (Friday night), and now Boston, it will be painful if the Rockets miss getting home court because of lapses to some of the worst teams in the league.

Raymond has translated another interview that Titan Sports conducted with Yao Ming last Friday at the beginning of the Rockets’ recent road trip to Atlanta and Orlando. In the interview he talks about the brace support that concerns Jeff Van Gundy about his return to the court in mid-March. Thanks Raymond for all the hard work in translating this very long interview!

TITAN: So how do you feel now that you’re back to the days of traveling by plane, living in hotels, coming in and going out of visiting team’s changing room, and sitting with your teammates in the same place?

TITAN: You mentioned earlier you must maintain 6 hours per day for your rehabilitation such that you can return to competitive form and shape as soon as possible. How can you guarantee that 6 hours of rehab now that you’re traveling with the team?

Read the rest of this entry »

Uh-oh. Just when you think Yao’s return by mid-March is going to happen, we get this on the wire.

“What we’ve seen in the brief things he’s able to do with us, you get the sense he’s a lot further away from playing NBA basketball than maybe the timetables would suggest,” Van Gundy told the Houston Chronicle before Sunday’s game at Orlando. “He does not look comfortable at all with the brace. He does not look agile. Last year, he looked on the cusp of [returning]. To me, he looks like we have problems to solve there to get him back.

“Remember two years ago when I wore the arm brace?” Yao said. “I had a lot of trouble with that and that was on my arm.”

I just had to write a note about NBA great and Austin NBA D-League coach Dennis Johnson, who died last Thursday and whose memorial service was in Austin on Sunday. I wish I could have attended, but I was out of Texas and couldn’t make it.

I met DJ a couple of times over the past year. The first time was in Austin where I saw him in a parking lot and stopped to say hello. I was really surprised how nice he was. I think he even asked what I did for a living, and we talked for a few minutes.

Then when I was in Las Vegas last summer for the Vegas Summer League, I saw him in the stands and mentioned how I met him in Austin and how I worked on this Yao Ming web site. I swear, we ended up talking for 20-30 minutes in the stands while watching some of the action on the court. Here he was, an NBA legend who had more basketball experience in his pinkie finger than I had in my whole body, and he was interested in what I had to say about Yao Ming, and basketball in general. We talked about a lot of other topics beyond the NBA, like how he loved Austin, how he was planning on moving his family there, etc.

I always respected his game as a player when he was the Sonics and the Suns, but I always hurt that his Boston Celtics beat my Houston Rockets in 1986 in the NBA Finals. However, by his spending that much time with me, just a regular guy, proved to me that he was a class act and I became a big DJ fan after that.

Now when I read all the stories about how great of a person he was, I can believe it. He had ex-teammates like Bill Walton and Cedric Maxwell fly into Austin just for the memorial service. That goes to show how great of a man he must have been – that teammates 20 years ago flew halfway across the country to pay their respects. I wish I could have been one of them.

Click here, here and here for details from the memorial service, how much he was loved, and how much he’ll be missed.

If Yao Ming was looking to get accustomed to intense road games again on the Rockets’ road trip, he certainly succeeded with their game on Sunday.

A couple of days after getting upset in Atlanta, I was afraid it could happen again in Orlando…and it almost happened.

The Rockets had a comfortable lead cut to only two points late in the fourth quarter when they couldn’t score for about five minutes of play, but Luther Head hit a big three-pointer off a T-Mac assist, and then T-Mac hit a big jumper himself with about 30 seconds remaining to help hold off the Magic 97-93.

McGrady scored 34 points, which included 15-of-18 free throws, 3-of-6 three-pointers, and 6 assists. Rafer Alston continued to shoot unbelievably from behind the arc, hitting 5-of-9 from downtown for 20 points.

Luther Head scored 20 points on 5-of-8 shooting, including 3-of-5 treys. And Shane Battier hit 3-of-6 three-pointers (5-of-10 overall) for 14 points.

When you add it all up, the Rockets shot an amazing 14-of-27 from three-point land, and all four of the aforementioned players shot 24-of-49 field goals, almost 50%. But the Rockets shot 43.2% as a team. So which players dragged that shooting percentage down?

Well, Bonzi Wells only made 3-of-11 shots (and 3-of-6 free throws to boot) and former Magic forward Juwan Howard was 0-for-4.

But it didn’t matter as the Rockets got out of O-town with a W, then jumped on a plane headed to Houston for a back-to-back against the 13-42 Celtics, a sure win that even a paranoid fan like me can’t create fear about.

Accompanying the team to Atlanta, Yao practiced with the team before Friday night’s game the Hawks. Later, the Rockets lost a game they should have won. Click here for more photos from Yao’s practice.

Yao made the trip to Atlanta to join his teammates on their short 2-game road trip to Atlanta and Orlando. He jokingly said it was because he wanted the “road trip per diem,” but it was really to learn some of the new plays they have put into their playbook the past 8 weeks while he has been injured, and to get used to the pace of being on the road again and the intensity of the crowd, among other reasons. (You can check out a more extensive interview of Yao’s progress by reading this earlier blog post).

Yao practiced before the game and later worked out during the game itself. He said he hopes to be ready to play in a week to 10 days, although he admits he won’t be medically cleared to play until after that. You can read more about his thoughts on returning iback to the lineup in this short Houston Chronicle article.

Regarding the game that was played while Yao worked out, you would have thought the 21-33 Atlanta Hawks were the Phoenix Suns Friday night.

Houston’s league-leading defense couldn’t stop the league’s worst-shooting and lowest scoring offense in a 105-99 loss. The Hawks seemed to score at will most of the game, shooting 47.4% for the game. They gave up 19 second-chance points, second only to the 22 they gave up against Denver in another devastating defeat earlier this season.

When you see performances like this, it makes you think the success the Rockets have experienced without Yao playing could be a house of cards that could come tumbling down at any moment.

The game was fairly close all night long, and the Rockets had a chance to build a lead in the fourth quarter that probably would have been insurmountable for a young team that hasn’t “learned to win” yet, as they say. But the Rockets missed 5 free throws in the pivotal fourth quarter, with Bonzi Wells and T-Mac missing two FTs each. As bad as the defense was, those missed free throws were the a big ifference maker. Maddening.

Atlanta is clearly more athletic than the Rockets, with high-flyers like Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams, Josh Smith, and Josh Childress. When Houston doesn’t play good defense, like getting burned by Johnson multiple times coming around screens for open shots, or Chuck Hayes slacking off and not blocking out Johnson on the boards to prevent a follow-up dunk, that’s inexcusable.

The Rockets now go to Orlando and play a team that’s better than Atlanta. The Magic are 27-29 and have Dwight Howard, who is athletic and sure to wreak havoc on the boards against Houston. Howard is not only the Magic’s leading rebounder (12 per game), but also leads the team in scoring (18 ppg), field goal percentage (59.9%), and blocks (1.8 per game).

Let’s hope there is no ‘magic in the Rockets’ cards’ Sunday afternoon, and they can keep their house from crashing down against an inferior team

Here’s the latest translation from Raymond of a Sohu.com interview of Yao in Atlanta with some candid revelations on what he’s facing practicing with the team again.

Sohu Sports: Yao, do you worry a bit, if you have to pivot on your right leg and make movements?

Yao Ming: Maybe we are in different situations. He is still playing with the team and therefore he has this kind of feeling. I have been away from this team for a long while now. I don’t have this kind of feeling yet. Maybe after I return to court, after I recapture my form and condition and my confidence, then I will have this kind of feeling. Now I do not have this kind of feeling. I have been idling on the bench for too long now.

Yao participated in shootarounds before the Rockets-Heat game on Wednesday. A few hours later, Houston impressed by dominating the defending World Champs. Click here for more photos of Yao practicing before the game.

The Rockets showed a national television audience Wednesday night that they are for real. They outplayed the defending World Champs Miami Heat to impress ESPN announcer Bill Walton so much in a 112-102 victory, they haven’t had that much love thrown their way in years.

The Rockets put on a clinic in the first half to take a 63-48 lead, the most number of points they had in the first half this season. They hit 52.2% of their shots, including 6-of-14 three-pointers. Rafer Alston was a big part of that, filling it up with 4-of-6 treys for 12 point. And Houston had 17 assists compared to Miami’s 8 in the first half.

Everything went their way. T-Mac shot an airball only to have it rebounded by a teammate for a basket, giving McGrady an assist. He made a shot from the baseline that banked off the glass accidentally.

There was no drop-off in the second half, with the Rockets finishing with 50.6% shooting. They shot even better from behind the arc, making 9-of-16 three-pointers.

McGrady scored 15 points in the second half to finish with 32 on 12-of-24 shooting. He also dished out 8 assists, many coming off beautiful laser-like passes. In the fourth quarter, he hit two three-pointers to hold off the Heat, as did Shane Battier (12 points) and Luther Head (10 points).

Bonzi Wells played one of his best games of the season, scoring an efficient 11 points on 5-of-7 shooting. Alston had one of his best games, scoring 20 points on 7-of-15 shooting, including 6-of-10 three-pointers and only two assists.

Sadly, Dwyane Wade separated his shoulder in the fourth quarter. I had never seen him in such pain, and was pretty bummed since I love the guy for what he did against Dallas last season, but also because they head to Dallas and play the Mavericks on Thursday, and I wanted him to take over and beat them again. Now the Heat have no chance.