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?

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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.