Yao and Rafer Alston take time off on Monday to teach some Houston area kids basketball fundamentals at Toyota Center in an open day with Rocket fans. Click here for more photos from the event.

It’s good to see Yao, Rafer Alston, and Chuck Hayes take some of their precious time off to instruct kids at Toyota Center on Monday, which is quite an unusual event to happen the final two weeks of a playoff chase. Something like this typically happens near the start of the season when the atmosphere at Toyota Center would be a little more laid back. Given they just lost to Utah on Sunday and the playoffs start in a little over two weeks, I wonder if Jeff Van Gundy would have liked to have spent Monday doing some teaching of his own players.

Regardless, Raymond has some great photos from the event posted in the YaoMania! discussion forum.

Yao throws one down with Utah’s Mehmet Okur looking on. Yao carried the Rockets with 35 points, 16 boards and 4 blocks, but several breakdowns contributed to Houston losing a 9-point second-half lead and letting the Jazz sneak out of Houston with a huge victory. Click here for more photos from the game.

The Rockets lost a huge game to the Utah Jazz Sunday night in Houston. I was confident the Rockets were going to win after taking a 9-point lead late in the 3rd quarter. I thought surely they would make the necessary defensive stops and hit the buckets they needed to take a lead in the standings over Utah for home court advantage in the playoffs, especially after seeing the two clutch wins they had in Los Angeles this past week.

But they lost, and I narrow it down to four specific things that contibuted to Houston’s loss.

First: the officials. Carlos Boozer hit a huge bucket with 43 seconds remaining in the game, but he charged into Shane Battier. Battier had position to draw the charge, but the damn ref called it the other way, saying Battier was too late in sliding over. I vehemently disagree.

That was a huge call that put Boozer on the line for the penalty free throw, making it 85-81 and capping an 8-0 run. ^&#%@*! REFS! If anything, you don’t make that call. You let it go if you’re not sure at such a crucial juncture in the game. That 4-point edge with 43 seconds remaining was going to be hard to overcome.

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