Yao Ming goes up for a shot against the L.A. Lakers Wednesday night. Yao had 26 points and 13 rebounds, but it was an off-night for him since he made only 6-of-18 field goals, and uncharacteristically missed 6 free throws (one was missed intentionally). The Rockets had their chances in the end to win the game, but couldn’t make shots down the stretch in a 93-90 loss.

This is probably going to be short since many of you in the U.S. probably saw the game on ESPN Wednesday night, it’s late, and Tuesday night’s loss against the Memphis Grizzlies compelled me to write a longer post than normal that kept me up fairly late Tuesday night.

Wednesday night’s game against the Lakers had so much drama that it could take me hours to recap it, but I’ll try to boil down my key observations for you.

As I’m sure you heard, Tracy McGrady injured his elbow, and as I write this late Wednesday night, it looks like the MRI results show it’s just a strain, and that he may miss only a week. It’s a pretty big week to miss with all the important games they are going to play, which includes San Antonio on Friday, Phoenix on Saturday, and Dallas on Wednesday.

In the first quarter, I decided I was going to start tracking all the questionable shots that McGrady threw up, and it didn’t take long to find one. At the 4:40 mark, McGrady could have passed it to Luis Scola, who had hustled down court on a fast break, but McGrady didn’t reward Scola’s hustle with a pass to the baseline where he was wide open. Instead, he shot a three-pointer on a freakin’ fast break, and missed. The Rockets didn’t get the rebound.

So McGrady was “down one” on my questionable shots tracker.

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The Rockets went back to their old style of play Tuesday night in a 105-99 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. I swear, if Rick Adelman hadn’t been seen on the bench, I would have thought I was watching the 2006-07 version of the Rockets, but this time with a worse defense.

Before I start talking about the Rockets’ offensive struggles, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a bad defensive effort where the Rockets couldn’t stop the likes of Mike Miller (6-of-11 for 17 points), Pau Gasol (26 points on 6-of-11 from the field, 14-of-17 from the line), Darko Milicic (20 points on 9-of-14 shooting), and Rudy Gay (6-of-11 for 15 points). Memphis was 1-4 team before Tuesday night. They looked like an All-Star squad considering how easy it was for them to make baskets.

I had hoped the Rockets could have made a run at signing Milicic this off-season, but the price tag was way too high. Alot of people like to think that Milicic is a stiff because he never got off the bench at Detroit and people made fun of him since he was such a high draft pick, but that was mainly because the Pistons were a championship team his rookie year, and also because Larry Brown was being too JVG-like and not giving the rookie some playing time. Now he’s proving alot of people were wrong about him. I digress. At least the Rockets got Luis Scola, but Scola’s transition to the NBA game doesn’t appear it’s going to happen overnight. He needs more time, just like Milicic needed.

Sorry to say it, but a couple of times Yao Ming got caught napping on defense, like when he allowed Milicic to make a strong move into the lane for a hook shot without much resistance, and then in the fourth quarter Yao easily could have pinned Stromile Swift under the basket after Swift had grabbed an offensive rebound underneath the boards. But Yao let Swift off the hook by jumping up into the air on a pump fake, thus giving Swift the little room he needed to go up and put a shot off the glass for a very important basket in a tight game.

Not that I want to harp on Yao for this loss. He made 7-of-12 shots and hit all 8 of his free throws to score 22 points. He was the least of the Rockets’ worries. Instead, let’s focus on a bigger problem that was also evident in most of Sunday night’s game: the offense.

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